Mayhem in D'arcy

Yes I did attend the Mayhem in D'arcy last week. The weather on Friday was cold and wet and the only accommodation was field space for tents, so a lot of guests bailed. I don't blame them, it didn't look good then. But Saturday and Sunday were very fine days.

There were five of us who did arrive in the rain; Dan and Aimee got the guest bed in the attic, Pascal and I slept in our respective trucks, and Shane decided not to put up his tent in the rain and the dark but sleep on the couch instead. Good plan.

Dan, Pascal and Shane are very old friends of Sam's, they have at various times lived together and share some common interests. If anybody was going to show up in spite of the weather, it would be them.

The Mayhem was basically a gamers' heaven, Pascal brought a truckload of strange card games, there were lots of munchies and barbecue foods and soft drinks, and the wide outdoors for taking breaks from the main activity of the weekend, which was the card games.

We played Munchkins, Killer Bunnies and Chrononauts. Munchkins is a kind of role-playing game with a lot of silly adventures and actions, "munchkin" is a nickname for a role-playing gamer. Killer Bunnies involves collecting "killer" bunnies and other objects as if you were trying to win by accumulating stuff, but the winner is actually pre-determined and has very little to do with the actual playing of the game. Chrononauts involves changing historic events, as represented by certain cards, to get a particular historic outcome described in "Mission" cards. There was another game we didn't play called Flex, in that game you get to change the rules of the game in mid-game.

Not being a gamer I had never heard of any of these games, let alone played any of them, but they were sufficiently simple enough to learn and at the same time complex enough to maintain interest.

The dogs of course were not impressed by all this indoor activity.


We got out for one fairly good walk with them though.





On Saturday night Sam got a campfire going and we sat around into the night poking at the burning logs and discussing a variety of topics. Shane was a bottomless well of information on every topic we managed to cover, he reads pretty broadly. Pascal is a very imaginative "what if..." kind of guy, proposing all sorts of oddball topics and projects. So the conversation ranged widely and was never boring. We got out Sam's star charts and looked for various stars and constellations, and we watched Jupiter rise above the trees.

There's a configuration called the Summer Triangle, a fairly obvious triangle of stars located fairly high in the sky roughly in the south. The triangle is made up of Vega, Altair and Deneb, in the constellations of Lyra the harp, Aquila the eagle and Cygnus the swan respectively. I was looking for Arcturus as well (you find it by following the arc of the Big Dipper handle, arc to Arcturus), but the moon was too bright or the trees too tall, I couldn't find it.

On Sunday the swords came out and there was a bit of sword and knife play. On previous Mayhems there has been archery, but the bows and arrows were left at home this time.


What impressed me was that this was a crowd of young people that manages to have great fun together without any drugs or alcohol involved. None of them appear to have any particular objection to the use of such things, they just don't bother with it. Mind you, they are not so young, all of them being in their early 30s. But I think this is a long standing habit with them, they were never great indulgers in mind-altering substances.

I know this doesn't sound like much mayhem, but it was fun and we did manage to leave Sam's place in a pretty good mess.

Eva Mackenzie

My granddaughter, born 8.00pm Monday August 30, to proud parents Josh and Kim. Right on schedule too!


She is the main excuse for this trip west.

My home

I took possession today, on the other side of the country.

My iPhone

Shortly before I left Nova Scotia I bit the bullet and got myself an iPhone.

I had been thinking of doing this for some time, had discussed it with folks at the dogpark in my Toronto neighbourhood, but until the very end of July just hadn't been able to bring myself to do it.

For many years I have had a "Pay and Talk" phone, a very simple cell phone that I only paid ten dollars a month for and that did most everything I wanted a phone to do: I could call people up and they could call me. No texting or taking photos or browsing the internet or downloading my email, just a simple cheap cell phone.

Our resident geek at the dogpark had advised against an iPhone, he disapproved of Apple because they censor the software apps you can download (upload?) onto your phone. He recommended another brand of smart phone, one just like his that had one of those slide-out keyboards for texting. But for a number of reasons I decided to go with the iPhone, not least of which was the fact that Isaac has one and he could help me get started on it.

So I got my brand new iPhone, and my brand new 3-year contract at $50 a month, in July just before I left Nova Scotia. It worked just fine on the trip back to Toronto. I exchanged text messages with Isaac all the way, checked my email while on the road, and everything was just fine. I didn't know how to use most of its functionality but what the hey. I felt like I had joined the 21st century.

In Toronto Isaac ripped a bunch of my music CDs and uploaded them to my iPhone so I would have music on the road. I learned a few things about how to operate the phone, and Isaac got me a neat little attachment that allows me to recharge the phone battery in the truck and play my music over the truck stereo system. Good idea for a long road trip.

Then I set out for BC.

Well.

Somewhere past Sault Ste Marie in northern Ontario my iPhone stopped working as a phone. I could still use it as an iPod, but it didn't work as a phone, I couldn't send or receive text messages, and I couldn't download email or check the internet or use the map and GPS function. I thought my phone was broken.

It took me two days to get from the Soo to the Manitoba border. No phone. At the tourist info centre there the lady told me this was common and I should find that my cell phone works again a few kilometers down the road in Manitoba. But it didn't.

In Winnipeg it suddenly started working again, and I was able to use the map function to find my niece Tara's place. There I called the phone company and gave them hell for the lack of phone coverage in northern Ontario. The fellow I talked to informed me that that was only half the bad news. That aside from Winnipeg, I could expect my lack of phone coverage to continue all the way through Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and I would not see my phone working properly again until I got to Alberta!

What an unpleasant joke. My old $10-a-month phone had always worked just fine through these parts, now I was paying $50-a-month for no coverage over 3 days worth of highway.

Sure enough, the phone kicked in again when I crossed the border into Alberta a couple of days later. And all the way through the mountains of BC it worked just fine. Except in D'arcy, but I knew that about D'arcy, no cell phones work there.

On Gambier Island I told my friends there about this highly annoying problem with my new phone. Dave is recently retired from the phone company that I have my contract with, and he explained the background to why my phone didn't work. It turns out to be all politics, there is no technical reason for it, just politics. And unfortunately the politics involved are not under the control of the phone company, so I can't really blame them for the problem. Although I sure wish someone had told me before I set out on this trip.

Coincidentally Johanna had gotten a smartphone about the same time I got my iPhone, but she got a different brand name, a Motorola phone. We've been comparing phones. Her phone seems to have more features than mine, but the features that I do have seem to be better quality. For example, her camera has a flash and various options for manipulating the image, but mine has no flash and no options. However the resulting photo seems to be better quality and the picture taking action is faster on my phone.

I don't have the slide-out keyboard which looks quite nifty on her phone. Also, we both have bluetooth, but the bluetooth functionality on the iPhone is only good for headphones (apparently) whereas she can use hers for sending photos to another cell phone. She tried to send me a photo but couldn't because my bluetooth wouldn't accept it.

I debated reactivating my old "Pay and Talk" phone for the trip back east, I still haven't decided about that. It will cost me an extra $50 to reactivate and I just don't know whether it is worth it. In the past I have travelled through the USA without a phone and relied on the kindness of strangers when I ran into truck-trouble. I think the kindness of strangers probably works in Canada as well.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So here are a few of the photos of my trip from my iPhone. Not very exciting, but better than nothing!

Lunch at a rest area somewhere in northern Ontario:


View of Lake Superior, a small inland sea! It was a windy day with breakers on the water:


The Terry Fox monument, just east of Thunder Bay on Lake Superior. Can't not stop there. He's my hero.


The Sleeping Giant as seen from the Terry Fox monument.


Crocheted cobwebs in a tree at The Forks in Winnipeg:


Bathroom stop somewhere in Manitoba.


A river in the city of North Vancouver. Where else do you get a river like this right in the city?


Leia hunting rocks in the river.


I took no photos in Alberta or BC on the trip because there was no point, it was too smokey. I probably should have taken photos of Saskatchewan grain fields or oil wells in Alberta (actually the first oil well I saw in operation was in southwestern Manitoba) or other picturesque stuff like that, I am just not very good at whipping out the camera when there's something interesting to catch.

From D'arcy to Gambier and points in between

I arrived in D'arcy very late on Friday, and while I intended to head to Gambier Island the very next day, it just seemed a little too rushed and I was tired. So I stayed put for a day, walking the dogs and watching videos and just hanging out in one of the prettier parts of the province of BC.

Getting to Gambier Island was complicated. I had to drive to Horseshoe Bay, park my truck in longterm parking and then haul my stuff to the ferry terminal to catch the Langdale ferry. Sam and I stopped for lunch in Pemberton and that kind of made me a bit late---catching the ferry is always a hurry up and wait affair---and so I ended up trying to run from the underground parkade in Horseshoe Bay to the ferry terminal with a heavy backpack, a dufflebag, a shopping bag and my shoulder bag full of stuff for fear of not catching the ferry in time.

But I made it to the ferry and almost an hour later I was in Langdale, where I had to wait another hour for the New Brighton ferry, a little walk-on ferryboat called the Stormaway.


There were five of us and an ambulance waiting for that ferry. It turned out that a young man on Gambier had broken his ankle while hiking, so the ambulance had come to pick him up, but the ambulance could not go on a walk-on ferry, they had to wait for the unfortunate young man to be ferried from the island to Langdale.

One lady waiting for the ferry approached me to find out who I was and who I was staying with on the island; it's a small island and everybody knows everybody so I guess I kind of stuck out as a stranger. In return for that information she proceeded to tell me that she and her husband, who lived year-round on the island, were en route from a hospital in Vancouver to a hospital in Sechelt, but were stopping at their home on Gambier to pick up the necessaries for an overnight stay in the Sechelt hospital. Turns out her husband had been feeling poorly last week so they had gone to his doctor in the big city and he had ordered up a colonoscopy and the colonoscopy had revealed colon cancer. So lickety split they were off to the Sechelt hospital for surgery. Thank goodness the process for diagnosing the problem and getting it treated was so fast (less than a week), but surely worrisome for being such a serious matter.

After telling me all this, she then points to another waiting passenger and confides that that woman had also had cancer. I guess island people have no secrets.

In short order the Stormaway arrived and we all boarded and paid our fares. Ten minutes later we were at the dock on the island, where the young man with the broken ankle was lying on a stretcher on the dock. Apparently the ambulance people had decided that they would not take him after all, but rather ordered up a hovercraft to go get him and take him directly from the island to the big city. But that meant that he had to wait a little longer for the hovercraft to get there. I suppose in the long run that was faster and easier, but at the time it didn't seem so. He was getting lots of attention from folks coming and going though.

My friends were waiting there for me and we packed all my stuff into their island car to head back to their place. I was only staying overnight, but it was equally beautiful there (as D'arcy) and very relaxing. We had a lovely supper out on the deck and then later went for a stroll down to the wharf to see the sunset. We also saw a deer in their yard and a seal off the wharf.


The next day we went for a walk with the dog in the woods, puttered around the house and later in the afternoon headed back to the ferry dock to go back to the mainland. The plan was to spend a couple of days in town and then go back to the island, but life got complicated and we ended up not returning to the island at all. We will probably go back for the long weekend coming up.

So in town I have managed to make all the financial arrangements for buying the house in Nova Scotia and had a brief visit with Josh and Kim who are expecting their baby imminently.


I'll also be going back to D'arcy for the Mayhem, an annual event amongst Sam and his friends. Not having ever attended before I can't tell you much more about it. But I am guessing that when a young man invites his mother to a weekend-long party, it must not be anything he wouldn't want his mother to witness.

Smoke

I arrived in D'arcy late last night, just around midnight. The dogs, Hapi and Hiro gave me a wonderful greeting, I think they might actually remember me from last winter's visit. It was good to see Hiro healthy again. They were so excited that they had to go off and play together for a bit to burn off some of that energy.

As usual the trip was interesting. I left Toronto Sunday evening to drive the short distance to Barrie where my brother lives. I had a late supper there and a short visit. The next day I set out for northern Ontario. It was so hot in Toronto when I left that I wasn't really thinking about the possibility that it might not be hot anywhere else. In fact I packed my cold weather clothes in a suitcase that I put in the very back of the truck, figuring I wouldn't need it for awhile. Hah!

My second night was spent in a campground just west of the infamous Wawa. It's a place I've stayed before and very peaceful and quiet, by a small northern lake with loons. I almost said I woke to hear them calling, but actually I awoke in the middle of the night, freezing. I had to get up and dig out my warmer sleeping bag. And later in the morning I had to tear my careful packing of the truck apart to get at the warm clothes. The Toronto heat and humidity was a thing of the past.

I spent another night in Ontario, in another campground that was even colder than the first one, but this time I was prepared. It was 10C when I woke up that morning, but I was snugly warm in my sleeping bag.

The third day, I guess I am not really counting my Sunday drive to Barrie as a full day, I arrived in Winnipeg where I had arranged to stay with my niece Tara and her family. My brother had warned me about Tara's futon, and Tara quickly told me that I would not be subjected to that, I could sleep on either couch instead. She asked me if there was anything in Winnipeg I would like to see, and I had to confess that no, there wasn't. Then I asked her, if she was giving a tour of the city, where would she take a visitor. She had a list! She told me of four or five places she would take a visitor, in order of importance and depending on how much time they had. So I told her I had a couple of hours in the morning, where could we go.

Tara first drove me along the route I would need to take to get out of the city, and then we backtracked to the parliament buildings (the Golden Boy) and The Forks. The latter is a market situated at the fork of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in downtown Winnipeg. We went for a little stroll along the river with William her one-year-old, and then through the market, window shopping various craft shops.

Mostly though, we talked. I was happily surprised at how much we could talk about, it was a most interesting visit. I didn't leave her place until 1.00pm on Wednesday. In checking email I had a reply from a friend who had moved to Calgary that he looked forward to my arrival there, but he tended to work late so I thought I could arrive there late and did not have to rush away from Tara's. Nevertheless I did drive all day to make it to Buffalo Pound Lake provincial park in Saskatchewan, more or less halfway between Calgary and Winnipeg. Saskatchewan seemed smoggy, I was wondering how Saskatchewan could have smog, it being a mostly agricultural province. The sunset was an eerie red and grey affair.

My experience of Saskatchewan campgrounds is that in Saskatchewan they like to camp cheek by jowl out in the open. Granted, Saskatchewan does not have a lot of trees at the best of times, but still, you'd think they'd try to grow a shrub or two in a campground. I arrived in this particular campground fairly late, just before dark, so I just camped where the woman at the entrance booth suggested. However, the next day I drove around the park a bit, it was really quite large, and found an empty group camping area that would have been perfect if I had known of its existence the night before.

The smog was worse the next day, and after arriving in Alberta I could start to smell it. It wasn't smog, it was smoke. Wood smoke. From the forest fires in British Columbia. On the radio they were issuing public health warnings for the major cities of Alberta: people with compromised systems should stay indoors with the windows closed, healthy people should avoid exertion. The closer I got to Calgary the worse it got. My eyes burned.

My friend Jerome welcomed me to Calgary. The last time I saw him, a couple of years ago, he was living in Vancouver and then I found out via Facebook that he had moved to Calgary but I never got the details of why. He did not seem to me like someone who would move away from Vancouver, ever. Over a great seafood dinner at a local restaurant, Jerome told me the story of why he was in Calgary.

Briefly it involved job layoffs for him and his partner, union rules allowing a laid off person to "bump" another union member from their job, then further complications that resulted in one of them remaining in Vancouver while the other was forced to sit out almost two years in Calgary. Jerome was the one in Calgary. They had bought a town house and furnished it quite nicely with second hand and borrowed furniture, but no beds.

Jerome told me that I was his first guest since he moved to Calgary over a year ago and he decided not to tell me there was no bed until after I arrived, for fear that I might change my mind and not come. But a foamy on the floor is still more comfortable than a two-foot wide bench in the back of a truck, he had no worries there.

I left Calgary around 10.00am the next morning. I had decided I would head to Sam's place in D'arcy rather than Vancouver, since I was more assured of a place to stay there and it looked on the map to be about the same distance from Calgary. So that meant driving through Banff and Kamloops and Lillooet. The smoke got thicker as I approached the mountains, in fact I did not actually see any mountains until I was at the very foot of one, the visibility was so bad. Quite suddenly there was this grey shape looming out of the fog.

I stopped in Canmore for gas, since I was reasonably sure it would be more expensive in BC than in Alberta. The gas station I stopped at was full serve, the fellow who came to fill up my truck asked me where I was going to/coming from. I told him I was coming from Nova Scotia and he immediately told me he was from Cape Breton. He said BC was nice but if he won the lottery he'd be back in CB in a flash. But no jobs there. I commiserated, told him Cape Breton was beautiful and I certainly understood his sentiment. Asked him what part, he said Sydney, I said I had friends in Margaree Harbour. Then another gas jockey walked by and grinned and said I'm from Nova Scotia too, what part are you from. I told him The Valley and he nodded and said Antigonish. Ah. Saint FX (Antigonish) and Acadia (Wolfville) are college football rivals. He said, Welcome, there's a lot of us here.

That was kind of neat. I had a good feeling about the place already.

The famous scenery of Banff National Park was lost in the smoke. Arriving in BC was kind of anticlimactic, no mountains. The few that I saw were ghostly in the foggy smoke, surreal. The smoke got thicker as I headed westward. It just was not fun or pretty or anything. By dusk I was past Kamloops and Cache Creek, headed toward Lillooet. The moon rose red in the smoke. But very soon the smoke cleared and the moon turned white. I could breathe the cool clean air again.

By Lillooet I was tired. I still had another 150 km to go. I was going to call Sam to say that I thought I'd camp out tonight and arrive in the morning, but he didn't answer so I kept going. The Duffy Lake road was awful. It is up and down, switchback after switchback, never a straight level stretch at all for a hundred kilometers. I was between two other cars, I couldn't put on my highbeams and I had the headlights of the car behind me in my sidemirrors. At one point I pulled off and let them get ahead of me so I could drive in the dark. That was OK for awhile, but I eventually caught up with them again. Then there were cows on the road. The car ahead of me honked to make them move off the road faster, but they seemed in no rush. As if there was really nowhere else to go, they were happy to just stay in the road. They stared at us balefully.

Finally I arrived in D'arcy. It was midnight and Sam had a campfire going with his dogs. I got an enthusiastic doggy greeting from a couple of giant malemutes, they nearly knocked me over.

Good to be arrived.

Off again

I am leaving today or tomorrow for the west, will blog later!
I have officially given up my apartment in Toronto, my belongings are stacked in a pile awaiting removal. For the next few weeks I am homeless.
Good old truck. My home away from home, my home in a pinch.

Pit stop

I'm in Toronto now, briefly, before setting out again for BC, probably sometime next week. The first day on the road was pleasant enough but the second day was very hot. I arrived in Toronto hot, sweaty and cranky.

I spent yesterday unpacking and cleaning up. While I was away my apartment was painted and there was some mess leftover from that. Not so much paint mess as furniture and belongings moved and packed up to make room for the painter. I selected the colours long distance and via online colour chips which I don't recommend. The real life colours are not exactly what I had in mind, but not my problem.

I bought one of those IGA barbecued chickens to eat while on the road, and I have to say I am royally sick of barbecued chicken now. Basically I ate lettuce and chicken for two days. The lettuce was OK, I'm not sick of that, but it'll be awhile before I buy another barbecued chicken. Not sure what I'll eat on the trip to BC but it won't be barbecued chicken.

It was nice to get back to the dogpark and renew acquaintance with the dogs and their owners. Taiga looks different, he has crossed the invisible line from teenager to adult. The difference is subtle, he's the same size and shape and colour, but his face just looks older. He's a husky-malemute cross and his face looks more wolf-like now.

But all the other dogs are pretty much the same. Valentine had her DNA tested and turns out to be a mix of 4 dog breeds, none of which look at all like her. 95% husky and pomeranian, 5% shih tsu and greyhound. The husky part explains her constant wandering off, but no one would ever guess pomeranian or shih tsu! She's easily as big as Billy the german shepherd. I'd have guessed some kind of collie-shepherd mix, with something very white thrown in. Maybe that's the shih tsu in her.

Now that I am unpacked and tidied up, today is a day for errands. Pick up library books, put stuff in the mail, do a bit of shopping. Overnight the temperature and humidity here dropped dramatically so it's a good day to get outdoors. By Sunday it will be hot and humid again.

My Canning mechanic fixed one of the rain leaks in my truck and partially fixed another. So now the box stays dry and the cab doesn't get quite as wet in the rain. I finally got a good downpour to test it while driving in Quebec the other day. I am happy with the improvement.

My kayak is going to live on the truck roof for the foreseeable future, until I get back to Wolfville it has no other home. Hopefully the urethane I put on it last summer will protect it from the extended UV exposure. I am still debating whether to drive through the USA or Canada, there are pros and cons both ways. In the east I prefer Canada, in the west I like the USA.

Isaac is proposing that he rent a truck and take a load of my belongings to Wolfville for me on the Labour Day weekend, then he gets to see the changes to our old house. I haven't decided yet whether to go along with that. From experience I don't like having other people do my packing for me, but it would be nice to have the bulk of my stuff moved down while I am away. There won't be time for me to pack up before I leave for BC. Ideally I'd like to go with, but Isaac is not free later in the fall, and I am not free earlier. There are some other considerations as well, so I guess I have to think about it for awhile.

Sex, lies and home sales

It's done and I am heading out in a few days. I am exhausted and emotionally drained so it will be good to be on the road for a couple of days to just numb out.

The purchase of the house is more or less completed, they have removed it from the Multiple Listing Service. I guess they'd put up a Sold sign if they could, but the For Sale sign came down a long time ago so I don't know that they will go and erect a Sold sign now. I wouldn't, if I were them.

The financing is complicated (of course), so I won't breathe a sigh of relief until after that's done too.

This morning the garage has my truck for a final check before the long drive, I still have home insurance to take care of. And tonight the Gaspereau Summer Film Festival at the Gaspereau Walk-in Theatre (aka Lin's driveway) is showing Tulku, a documentary about Gesar Mukpo, one of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's sons. It's a fair-weather-only and bring-your-own-everything (beverage, snack, chair, bug dope) kind of thing.

Last week we watched Animals, a documentary by a local guy about his effort to raise and kill his own meat. I don't know the guy personally but he has a farm in a town I pass through to get to the Harbour. So you see the slaughter of various farm critters from this guy's perspective. He felt that if he was going to eat meat then he should have the courage to kill the animals concerned. The results vary.

There was also a short about a girl who works on a phone sex line. Her Dad calls. It's kind of funny in a black sort of way, but unfortunately a couple of the audience members were not up for the somewhat explicit humour and had to leave before the main film. I wonder if they'll be back this week.

It's complicated...

A week since my last post, a lot has happened but only in the sense of 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. The seller and I are in some kind of weird little dance, my fourth offer on the house went in on Friday and I guess I'll hear the response soon.

I think the realty agents are colluding to get this sale over with, they both work in the same office and this house has been on the market---off and on---for ten years. My agent wants to get me a good deal on it, his agent just wants it done and gone. The seller, well, I'm not sure what the seller wants, it seems complicated. I suspect he doesn't know what he wants.

In any case, I think the agents know what they are doing and one way or another the deal will go through. I may be moving sooner than planned, or not. It has been such a complicated negotiation that I am ready to walk away from it if things don't resolve this week.

Isaac came for a whirlwind visit over the weekend, we had some business to discuss and we did a little visiting as well. He left early this morning to meet the rest of his family in PEI and head back to Toronto.

I got myself a little iPhone just in time for Isaac to hep me set it up. My cellphone bill immediately jumps from $11 to $60 a month, but it has so many features that I like and can use while travelling, that I am finally taking the big leap.

My truck has developed a leak that I patched with duck tape. I know it is sold as 'duct tape', but originally it was Duck Tape, so I am sticking to the original, and in this case I think that name is entirely appropriate. I was waiting for a good heavy rainfall to test my patch but all I got was occasional showers. So far the duck tape seems to be working, so I am going to stop waiting for the heavy rain and just get the truck packed and ready to go early next week. The plan is to be back in Toronto next week, then head west for a visit with west coast friends and family (and the soon to be newest member of the family!).

Depending on how the house negotiations go, I will spend the winter either in Nova Scotia or Ontario. Or who knows, maybe even BC.

Home?

My house hunting may be over. I have an accepted offer on a house, the financing is secured, insurability is almost there (one glitch to be overcome), and the building inspection just happened. My inspector is grumpy and negative-minded when it comes to this sort of thing, but he OK'ed it. Besides which, I like the house and the more I see of it the more I like it. What's not to like, it's my old house.

I used to own this house, I lived in it for six years and then rented it out for another eleven before selling it to the current owners. They bought the place at a bargain basement price because eleven years of rental and lousy property management had taken its toll on the house. They put a lot of work into restoring and improving it, had three babies while living there and finally moved out because it was just big enough for a family of four but not for a family of five. They rented it out for another five years before I offered to buy it back from them.

I think I have already described my first visit to the house, on my second visit the current owner happened to drop by and gave me and the real estate agent a bit of a tour of the place, showing off all the work he had done on it. A lot of it was behind-the-scenes invisible work, rewiring and replumbing and insulating and even rebuilding the roof. The obvious stuff was the hardwood flooring and thermal pane windows and finished basement, the second bathroom and the wood stove chimney. Less obvious was the wiring for sound of the basement rec room (it's home theatre-ready), and fixing the basement leak. Not to mention the plum tree, the grape arbour, the gooseberry and quince bushes, and flowering shrubs and perennials in the front and back yards. After his tour I felt like I really was getting a bargain.

There are a couple of down sides to this house. One is that I won't be here for the closing date, and the other is that the owner has lined up tenants to move in before the closing date and to stay for an as-yet-unspecified amount of time. I am aiming for them to be out next spring, but I suspect they will want to stay longer and I am not sure yet of the legal requirements here for such things. So buying this house is a little anti-climactic, I won't be able to walk into an empty house on closing day and say, Mine!

On the other hand. It feels good. I look forward to moving in. I have all winter to pack up and arrange moving details, one more winter of weaving and woodcarving classes, and all the other things Toronto has to offer.

A Canadian hero

I picked a book from the shelves here to read, it's called The Sword, The Scalpel: the story of Doctor Norman Bethune. It was written in the '50s so it is quite old and has no pictures at all. The authors had access to his voluminous writings, and also correspondence with his wife and friends. One of the authors knew Bethune personally, the other only by reputation, so they combined subjective and objective viewpoints.

Bethune died relatively young, at the age of 49, in a remote part of China. He prided himself on being a Communist, he hugely admired Mao Tse Tung (who he met and chatted with during his short time in China). He was right in the thick of China's battle to fend off the Japanese invasion,. Before that he participated in the Spanish Civil War and before that he campaigned for "socialized medicine" in Canada and the USA.

Doctor Bethune was originally from Gravenhurst, Ontario, and like many Canadians I knew he was sort of famous and revered by the Chinese, but I didn't really know much about him. I didn't know for example that he nearly died of tuberculosis himself as a young man, and had committed himself to a sanatorium to await his end. But as a trained doctor he continued to read medical journals and he heard about a radical surgical treatment for TB and decided to get it done to himself.

Basically it was a procedure of collapsing and shutting down the affected lung. He had it done and immediately recovered, although it was years before his collapsed lung became functional again. Before that happened though he was quite the bon vivant, and a very driven man. He made a lot of money dealing in art, he travelled a lot and he lived very well. After his bout of TB he came to realize that TB was a disease of poverty, it was rampant because poverty was rampant. He became a convert to the idea of socialized medicine but he did not live long enough to see his dream realized. His experience of nearly dying of TB really changed his perspective on what his life was for.

Doctor Bethune practiced medicine in Montreal and Detroit before volunteering to help in Spain. He was horrified by the treatment of common people in time of war. Being one of those people who is either all on or all off, he worked tirelessly to help refugees and resistors. They finally insisted that he return to North America to tell the real story of what was happening in Spain to try to raise money and support for their fight. He did return but his efforts were to no avail, the great powers of the time allowed Spain to fall to Franco with assistance from Mussolini and Hitler. In the meantime though Bethune heard about the struggle in China and decided to go there to help.

These days we take a dim view of Mao Tse Tung, in great part because of the so-called Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and also because of the invasion of Tibet. But he was an admirable leader during the actual revolution itself, providing a degree of freedom, opportunity and inspiration to millions of peasants that had never been available to them before. Bethune considered Mao very wise, and took many of his sayings very seriously. He did not live to see how things turned out, he died in 1939 and the Chinese Communists only achieved victory in 1949.

I was very interested in some of the historical information in this book, as well as the account of Bethune's life. I was particularly interested in the details of Spanish Civil War and the early days of the Communist Revolution in China. It made me realize what a slanted view conventional history texts and news accounts provide.

The thing that struck me the most though was about all these battles going on in the '30s. I think of World War II as starting in 1939 since that is when Great Britain and Canada declared war. But in reality it started long before that, we North Americans just downplayed or ignored what was going on. Bethune was aware of what was happening to Jews in Germany and other European countries even in the '30s, that information was out there, just not really paid attention to. Japan was busy invading China long before it ran afoul of the USA by attacking Pearl Harbour. The USA tolerated Japan's activities in China quite easily. Canada and the USA and Great Britain tolerated the invasion and subjugation of Spain, they even abetted it because the resistance was supported by Communists. Fascism was seen as a good thing, it opposed Communism.

Bethune was horrified by the suffering, angry at the lack of action by governments that ought to know better. He proudly declared himself a Communist because to be a non-Communist was to sit by and ignore the suffering of others.

Bethune was not an ordinary person, I think he must have been an extremely obsessed and driven man. He had a terrible temper, he scared the very people who adored him. When he was in China, the Communist revolutionary soldiers he lived with engaged in regular sessions of mutual criticism, and they told him in no uncertain terms how damaging his temper was to them. They loved him, but.

Of course they were devastated when he died. Temper or no temper they really did love him.

Sunny day

It's a lovely warm sunny day, after a somewhat muggy and rainy day yesterday. I am hearing about heatwaves in the eastern USA and heavy rain and flooding in the west, but here in Nova Scotia we are having the perfect summer. June had enough rain to satisfy the farmers and gardeners, and enough sun to satisfy the rest of us. And probably the farmers and gardeners too. Last year was terribly buggy here, this year they are making themselves scarce, the bugs that is. The North Mountain is living up to its long time reputation of being almost completely free of them. I saw maybe a couple of black fly last month, and this month a couple of sluggish mosquitoes. Today it is 30C in the Valley and about 25C here on the Mountain, a perfect warm sunny day in the woods.

I hear several different kinds of birdsong and the occasional scolding squirrel, and the chuggling of the brook in the vault below. The stillness broken by occasional bird and squirrel sounds feels as if time has stopped dead in its tracks. Nothing happening, not a damn thing.

A baby chickadee showed up at my birdfeeder yesterday. I had bought some birdseed for the nesting junco, but after she abandoned the nest I put it all in the feeder and strung it up in a tree. The baby chickadee was clearly a novice at this birdfeeder thing, he kept pecking at the seeds he could see through the clear plastic seed bin of the feeder. Could not figure out how to get at those seeds. And he was sufficiently naive that he didn't startle when I came out to get a better look at him. He was obviously a baby, you could still see the down sticking out between the adult feathers. Today he came back, but he seems to be a little more educated now, he flew away when I came too close. And he didn't peck at the clear plastic but rather picked up a seed from the tray and chewed on that.

I will soon be leaving here, won't be staying the whole summer this time. The house hunting is getting down to the wire, I am still looking and there are a couple of options but nothing firm. In a few more days I am going to have to give it up as a lost cause. It is quite discouraging and frustrating. It keeps me too busy to stop and enjoy being in the woods, and not having a phone or internet access is a real impediment. I knew I wouldn't be here long enough to justify having it put in and so far it has only made things more difficult.

Seeing as how this is shaping up to be a perfect summer weather-wise, it really seems a shame to have to cut things short and fill up that short time with real estate business. That's the frustrating part, it seems right now that it is all for nothing. I guess I'd be OK with giving up a summer if I knew it was for a good cause, but at the moment that is not how things are working out.

I was kvetching about it all on the morning dogwalk, Valerie was trying to make helpful suggestions and I really didn't want to hear it. At one point I think she was trying to tell me that I shouldn't be so focussed on future finances, I should just let the future take care of itself and buy something I like regardless of the cost. Which really makes no sense to me. I admit to being fairly cautious about how I spend my money, but I think that has stood me in good stead over the years, I am not inclined to throw caution to the wind now. She thinks I am being extreme about it. I don't think she realizes that I am operating on a much slimmer budget than she is, and there really is no fat to trim.

Swamp Rock and river rock

On the weekend I went to the South Mountain Swamp Rock Opera with the Hupman and Dungaree Brothers, and tubing on the Gaspereau. A great good time. In between was a late night campfire and G&Ts at a friend's place.

Last time I went tubing on the Gaspereau was in the 70's, a good three decades ago. As I recall I was not all that sober at the time. However this time we went on a Sunday morning and aside from the rum in the fruit compote at breakfast, I think we were all quite sober.

The Gaspereau is a shallow rocky river that runs into the sea, named for its fish (in other parts of the world they are called shad or alewives, here they are gaspereaux). There's quite a little fishing industry on that river, using these great counterbalanced nets that are lowered into the river from streamside. The river runs through hardwood forest and pastureland for dairy cows, at one point you pass a ford in the river where the cows are driven from a pasture on one side to the barn on the other. There's a precarious suspended walkway over the river by the ford, the cows walk through the river and their human drivers walk over it.

The river is dammed by Nova Scotia Light and Power for hydro-electricity, and for tubing you put into the river just below the dam. The Hydro controls the water level in the river, and generally it's a good idea to go tubing before July when they leave the water fairly high. After mid-July it is lowered quite a bit.

You rent your tube from one of several homes near the put-in and take-out points. We rented ours from The King of the River (KOTR). Some folks who had already been down the river called out to us that it was good tubing today, the river was high. And it was.

My memory of that first trip down the river back in the '70s involved a lot of bum-scraping. This time I hardly touched bottom at all. The high water also made it faster flowing, and sections of rapids were kind of exciting. We'd see some fast water and rocks ahead and try to remember which side was the better side to be on. Some times we guessed right, some times we didn't.

Sometimes we floated down alone, sometimes we rafted together, four of us. It was delightful.

Peter told us about one of his sons who put together a Pirate Tube. He had a styrofoam cooler full of beer duct-taped to his tube, and a waterproof plastic container on the other side for storing cigarettes for the ladies he encountered. And of course a pirate flag on a broomstick. Once someone paid him $50 to rent his Pirate Tube for a trip down the Gaspereau.

The take-out point is at the bridge in the town of Gaspereau. People park their cars here and also at the put-in point, it's a long way to walk between. So we had one car in each place and when we got out at the end we piled our tubes on the top of the car there and tied them down for the drive back to the other car at the dam. It was so hot that we were pretty much dry by the time we got back.

The Swamp Rock Opera was good too. Let's just say that it was a very South Mountain affair, raucous, rock-y and bantering.No swamps no opera, but a lot of rock.

Road trip afterburn

I found out more about the houses we looked at the other day. Turns out Mike did some work on the older house, he remembered it. In particular, he remembers that the oil tank used to be outdoors by the back door. I now have a theory that the oil smell at the back door is from an oil spill when they moved the tank indoors. There must be oil in the ground there. The real estate agent says that the present owner admitted that she occasionally caught a "whiff" of oil at the back door. This was more than a whiff though, it just about knocked us off our feet.

I told the agent my emotional reaction to the houses we viewed and that I wondered if I should be paying attention to that or not. She said that every client she has ever had knew immediately when "this is it". Every house purchase she says is an emotional decision, not a logical one.

I've talked to a couple of friends about it and they think I should go with the feeling not the logic. Except Lin, who fell for the older house. Later that day she even went back to look at it with her husband. He pointed out a few things we missed on the exterior of the house, a bit of rot on the back porch, no window sills or flashing on the front windows. She doesn't like the house that I liked, she doesn't like its location. I told her maybe she should buy the older house, maybe it is the house for her. She says no. She wants me to buy it.

My fantasy is to find or build a small place in the woods. I guess I would like to build it myself. But the reality is I am 62, and I hate the building code and I have limited funds. And I have a bit of a time crunch. The reality is I can't have it all, I have to choose. Everyone I talk to keeps mentioning my age, You're a woman in her sixties, you need to think about what's best for your age. Part of me feels like that kind of thinking will put you in your grave a whole lot quicker.

I just finished reading The Wayfinders by Wade Davis, the Massey Lectures for 2010. Among other things he describes nomadic peoples and the pressures they face to settle down. Something about modernity does not like a nomad. And part of me is very much a nomad. Besides the cabin in the woods fantasy, I have another fantasy of being homeless, of not being tied down to any one location. Like those RVers who travel endlessly in their motor homes. A very unsustainable life style given the amount of fossil fuel involved, but nevertheless one with a certain appeal to me. I sometimes imagine travelling in a gypsy wagon, perhaps pulled by a couple of horses or mules. What a romantic I am!

I hate having to be practical in my old age, it seems like there is so little time left to live one's dreams, one really ought to just do it before it is too late. But then I think about the practicalities, like, what does one do with all one's stuff? Just dump it? Buy an expensive house to store it in and then have no money left to finance the nomadic life? Rent a storage locker? What's the point of having all that stuff if it just sits in a storage locker?

Sigh...

Another day another meal

Last night the junco babies were in their nest, this morning they were gone and the nest pulled out of its hidey hole and dumped on the ground below.

Mike says he has been watching that nest too, taking photos of it. I have a photo of the eggs, he has photos of the babies. He says the nest was lined with a very fine grey down, and the down also covered the babies so that when he examined the photos he took it appeared as if the babies were in a grey fog. He counted four babies in his photos.

I don't think the snake would have pulled the whole nest out, it might have been a raccoon. But I don't know snakes very well, so perhaps it did. Anyway, the nest failed. There was no down left in the remains of the nest, something gobbled up the entire contents of the nest.

I only ever saw one adult junco at a time, I wonder if it is common for juncos to raise families alone, or if the mate was gone, or if only one of the pair ever showed up at a time. But if there were two parents, it seems odd that they would leave the nest unattended at any time, which indeed was what was happening.

I think actually the babies were dead or dying before the raccoon got to the nest. Last night around dusk the junco was not sitting on the nest, that seemed odd to me that she would leave the nest unattended at night. Certainly she'd been there in the evening every other time I looked. The babies were not moving or making any sound. I think she abandoned the project as a lost cause.

It is still early in the summer, if the junco can find another mate it could start another family.

Rainy day road trip

It rained heavily all day Monday. I had to take my truck into the garage for minor repairs and the garage gave me their loaner for the day. I went over to Lin's for breakfast and we discussed real estate. A couple of weeks ago we looked at a cabin on the South Mountain with a real estate agent and we both agreed that we liked her, if ever either of us were looking for an agent we would probably like to deal with her. So I phoned her and she was in her office doing paperwork. I said I'd like to look at some houses for sale and she invited me to her office to discuss it. I asked Lin if she wanted to tag along and she said she would, but she needed to get ready so I should go see the agent at her office first and pick her up later.

I went to see the agent and we talked about what I was looking for and she showed me what was currently listed on her computer. I picked a few that I was interested in and she checked to see if they were still available. They were. So then she put together an itinerary for the afternoon. All of the places I had picked turned out to be currently vacant so she didn't have to book in advance, we could go right away or whenever we liked.

I said, Oh goody, a rainy day road trip! and she laughed. I think she was up for an afternoon tour in the rain. I called Lin and arranged to go for lunch with her first and then we would meet the agent later at the first house on the list.

The first house was not really on my list as a serious prospect, it was out of my price range. But I told the agent that I was curious about it because I used to own it when I lived here in the '80s. She thought that was a good enough reason to put it on our list, and it was the closest to her office so we would start there. She arranged the list so that we ended up at a house near where she lived and also near the garage where my truck was, so she could go home and I could get my truck.

I probably shouldn't have gone to see my old house, it was probably a bad idea. I never wanted to sell it, I knew when I moved away that I would eventually be back and I had hoped to hang onto the house until then. But being a long distance landlady was just way too stressful and eventually I sold it. The new owner did substantial renovations on it and had repeatedly tried to sell it over the years (the agent looked up the history of the house for me). Apparently there were no takers.

I liked the changes the owner had made to the house. Except maybe the windows in the master bedroom which are smaller than the old windows, and the stairwell in the kitchen. But everything else looked nice. And the row of pines I planted on the north side of the house, there had been ten of them but only three survived and they are now taller than the house. They were only four inches tall when I planted them. More trees had been planted, including a dogwood and a maple in the front yard. And the driveway is now paved.

The fatal flaw of that house though was the leaky basement. It always leaked when I lived there, and I just made sure nothing was in the way of the water. It came in the east wall and flowed across the poured concrete floor to the drain. But the new owner has completely finished the basement with three rooms with laminate flooring. I think it has been set up as a rental apartment. And in one corner of the bathroom you can see a little water staining and I don't think that is from the shower, I think it is coming in from below. The leak is still there, under the flooring. That's probably not a good thing.

Nevertheless I liked the house, I felt right at home there. Surprise surprise.

Next we looked at a brand new as yet unfinished house on the North Mountain. It is located in a place with a fabulous view of the valley below. The owners were in the process of completing this house when something happened and they had to stop and sell. So it is not complete, it still needs about $25,000 worth of finishing. But it has a well, an approved septic system, and all the basics. The owners even had quotes from various trades to back up the cost estimate for finishing the house. However, it felt cramped. It was being built as a summer place and you could tell, it did not have a lot of storage space, the bathroom had space for a shower but not for a bath, and the kitchen livingroom area was very small. It was awfully close to the road, and that road is fairly busy because of the view and the campground just down the way. I didn't particularly like it, but both the agent and Lin did.

The final house was in a small town on a small cul-de-sac near the downtown area. It was over a hundred years old, with wooden shingle siding and virginia creeper growing up one wall. It is walking distance from the town shopping area, the grocery store, the drugstore, the coffee shop and the library. And it backs onto the property of Lin's boss. Well, he is Lin's boss in name only, in reality Lin is his boss, she tells him what he is going to work on and when.

From the photos on the internet, it was clear that someone had done a lot of work on this house. No septic to worry about, it is on town water and sewer. According to the description there are fruit trees in the yard. It has a solarium in the front and a covered open porch in the back. But when the agent unlocked the back door we were greeted by a strong odour of furnace oil. Not good. The ground level looked good though, nice exposed plank floors and thermal pane windows. A propane fireplace in the livingroom, solid wood cabinets in the kitchen. A lovely staircase to the second floor. On the second floor there are two bedrooms and a large bathroom, including a huge clawfoot tub in good condition. There were skylights in the bedrooms with no drips or leaks, new carpeting and the ceilings appeared to be insulated.

But the solarium on the ground level had two leaks in the rain. It had been freshly painted, you could still smell the paint, and the drips from the ceiling beaded on the newly painted floor.

The basement was dry and in good shape, we could not locate the source of the heating oil smell. It was most likely the tank which may be at the end of its lifespan or the furnace itself. We couldn't tell. Lin called her boss to ask him what he knew about the house, the agent discussed strategy with me. We walked around the outside of the house as well to see what shape it was in. Half the house had been recently painted, the other half had not. The roof was so-so but clearly there was a problem with the solarium roof. Lin thought it was a flashing issue.

I asked the agent if she had to choose, which house would she go with, the first or the last one.

She said, Are you serious?

She thought it was no contest, the last house was clearly the superior deal. She said the smell was fixable, so was the roof, the house was a find. Which is why I should never have gone to see my old place, I was completely sold on it, leaky basement and all.

It makes me think of relationships. You date and look for the guy who is going to get your juices flowing, not for the guy who is reliable, a good find. I want to walk into a house and feel excited by it, not just that it is sound and a good deal. Is that a good idea? Is romance a necessary pre-req? Or is that being blinded by fleeting emotions?

Not being an expert in such things I have no idea. But it was a fun road trip.

I definitely like the agent. She made the whole thing fun, I felt like I could trust her and she was very informative.

Junco babies

I was away for a few days, when I came back yesterday I saw the junco still sitting on the nest. A couple of hours later I noticed she was gone and took a peek at the nest from a distance. The eggs are gone and there are a few tiny junco babies in the nest. I couldn't count, I think at least three, and they weren't moving so I think they must just have hatched.

Ghosts

Last night I went for a walk in the woods. It was quite wet out so I wore my gumboots. Nevertheless my pant legs got quite wet from wading through dripping ferns.

After walking around in the woods along the vault for awhile, I came back out onto the road and walked down to the clearing where the house I built used to be. It burned down seventeen years ago. The clearing has been maintained by its current owner as a grassy meadow with flowers: lilies, foxglove, mallows, forget-me-nots and lupins.

I went into the clearing and walked around, finally coming to the place where my house used to stand. I built it in a spot surrounded by beautiful white birches, but those birches were badly scorched in the fire, and now they are all dead. I feel bad about that.

As I was standing there, I thought I could make out the outline of the walls of my house. It was a hexagon, six-sided, and I could make out the six walls as faint lines in the grass. I stood at the spot that would have been the front door. When I built it I put the door in the wall facing the road, but a later owner moved the door around to the opposite wall. I stood where I put the door. I turned around to look at the view, where the path was to the road, where my outhouse was, where the slashpile was beside the house.

And then my father walked by me, from the right to the left, and disappeared. I don't believe in ghosts, but I could see him there, walking by my front door. He died three years after the fire.

It gave me a bit of a chill, a cold sadness for things lost. I could never live there again. Don't think I haven't thought about it, but not now.

Here's to you, Mr. Gnarr

How do I get to be an Icelander?

The more I hear about that country and its people, the more I like it. I want to be there, I want to be one.

The latest is this article in the New York Times, "Icelander's Campaign Is a Joke, Until He's Elected", about the new mayor of Reykjavik, Jon Gnarr. He's a comedian who ran for mayor as a kind of joke, but actually got voted in. He led the Best Party, a bunch of punk rock musicians, and he made campaign promises like free towels at all public swimming pools, a polar bear display at the zoo and a drug-free Parliament by 2020. He has zero political experience, quit school at age 16, and considers himself an anarchist. And apparently is drop-dead funny.

His ideas sound silly, but the free towel thing is to promote tourism: in order to be considered a spa, European Union rules require a pool to provide free towels. Icelandic pools have seawater and sulfuric baths, but not free towels. Easy fix. The polar bear display is another easy fix: lately six polar bears swam to Iceland and were duly shot. Mr Gnarr proposes that Icelanders stop shooting the bears and put them up in the city zoo instead. And a drug-free Parliament? Well, why not?

Mr. Gnarr, lacking political experience, proposed a coalition government with any party that could prove it had watched all five seasons of The Wire, and the Social Democrat party qualified, although he suspects they got an underling to watch and make notes. Gee, I would qualify, I watched all five seasons and frankly I think it is one of the best dramatic TV series I have ever seen. What a great criterion!

I wannabe an Icelander...

The hummingbird

For various reasons I have not put up any birdfeeders this summer. So the blue jays don't come and I hear other birds but rarely see them. The occasional warbler and of course the junco. And the hummingbirds.

Lots of people around here have hummingbird feeders so I am not too worried about them, but I guess they remember my feeder from last year because they still come around, presumably looking for it. I don't see them but I do hear the distinctive hum of their wings.

This morning I was standing under a tall spruce beside my house and I heard a hummingbird. I looked up to see if I could see it. And I did! It was of course looking for the feeder in the general vicinity of where it used to hang, but not finding it I think it saw me and was trying to check me out without me seeing it. So it was flitting around just beyond the spruce branches, kind of peeking at me between the branches. It did this for several seconds, finally coming within five feet of my face, hovering in the air looking directly at me.

Later in the day I was in the back door shed and I heard it again. This time it hovered just outside the doorway and looked in at me. For a moment it looked like it was considering flying right in, but it flew away instead.

I think it was trying to tell me to put up my feeder again.

The junco

There's been a little junco hanging around my front door. Juncoes (juncos?) eat stuff off the ground, you won't see them too often at a birdfeeder, they pick seeds up off the ground. This little junco was hanging around the front door, sometimes actually under the house. I'd see it flying away when I came up to or out of the front door.

Then I noticed that it seemed to have a resting spot under a rock in a little embankment about ten feet from the doorway. A couple of times I saw it fly out of there, as if it were erupting from the ground. I looked but couldn't figure out which little indentation it was coming out of, there were several rocks sticking out and just enough space under them for a little bird to get itself out of the rain.

So I kept watching. I was curious which rock it was hiding under, and what it was doing there.

This morning I found out. I walked over there and the little bird flew out and I saw which rock it flew out from. I looked under that rock and there was a tiny nest with five tiny eggs in it.

I went back into my house and looked out the kitchen window, I could just make out the five little eggs, now that I knew what to look for, and where. The little junco was sitting on a low branch of a nearby baby spruce tree, her back to me, seemingly ignoring me.

I finished my chores and got my bike out to go meet the dogwalking ladies of the Harbour. I met them on the road heading into the woods and I told them the story of the little junco. Valerie likes to come in to my place to use my "throne"---she loves the little throne house I built last year. But I said that as long as the junco is nesting there, I can't have the dogs come in, so I was very sorry but she wouldn't be able to use the throne for awhile. She said that was OK.

When I got back from the dogwalk, I put my bike away and went indoors, not looking at the embankment where the nest is. But I went to the kitchen window and could not see the eggs. The junco was sitting on top of them, but she is so grey that I can't see her at all. Except when she turns her head, and I see the movement of her tiny yellow beak.

I have another close neighbour. Well, there are the squirrels of course, but this year they are not staying in the kitchen door shed where the antlers are. They obviously spent the winter there, but they are gone now. No, my neighbour is a little snake. He is brown, just over a foot long, and he lives under the house. On sunny days he comes out to sleep in the sun on the bedrock at my front door. Other times I see him slithering around the woodpile, or in the grass behind the house. But I am pretty sure he lives under the house. Not ten feet from the junco's nest.

I don't think this will end well.

Barred owls

This is a Barred Owl I saw in the ravine behind Carolyn's house. Its distinguishing feature is the alien-like large black eyes.

When I was walking in the ravine, I passed this owl in a tree and it flew out and down the path in front of me. It landed in this tree and I took a photo of it. But I was uncertain whether it was facing me when I took the photo, so I tried to get a little closer to take another photo. He didn't like that, he sidled further out the branch and reached up with his beak to grab the end of the branch and pull himself up, then tipped forward and silently glided away down the trail.

I guess I was lucky to get this photo, it was the only one he allowed.

We have Barred Owls in the woods here in the Harbour. Some years ago the boy scouts put up some nesting boxes and the owls use them. One nesting pair has produced a baby this year, Ruth and Mike saw it on an evening ramble in the woods recently.

I hear them sometimes in the evening. The parents hoot and the baby mewls, a bit like a lost cat. It's nice to know there's a baby owl out there.

Real estate business

I made another offer and then revoked it. This time on a house in the Harbour.

It is a nice little house sitting on 19 acres of land, mostly abandoned pasture grown up in alders and a little bit of forest that has been clearcut. Its fatal flaw though was a drilled well and septic tank less than twenty feet apart. The water tested clean, it may be fine, I just don't know and I don't know how long it will be fine. Maybe forever. The not knowing, and not knowing even what it would cost to do something about it is the scary part.

Or one of the scary parts. The other scary part is the finances. I don't even know now whether I can afford to buy a home at all. If I had done it last year, I might have been OK, but this year the real estate market in Nova Scotia has taken off, prices are rising and I think I am being priced out of the market. I think I missed my window of opportunity.

So, I am thoroughly frustrated and depressed. I am even losing weight, a sure sign of things not being right in my little world!

When I started the process of making an offer on this little house in the Harbour, a friend and neighbour volunteered to inspect it for me and give me his opinion of its strengths and shortcomings. I appreciated this kindness very much, even though his opinion was ultimately fairly negative. He burst my little balloon of excitement about the place.

Later, when it came time to withdraw the offer, it turned out my offer to purchase contract required a signed statement from this friend stating what the problem was. My friend was a little reluctant---to say the least---to do that. I don't blame him at all, but it did put me in a bit of a bind. So yesterday, the day I was supposed to sign the termination papers, was probably the most stressful day of all, trying to gently convince my kind friend to sign on the dotted line to get me off the hook.

An onlooker, a mutual friend, listening and watching this whole process was wisely refraining from expressing an opinion on the matter, although at one point he ventured, You're looking to buy a place?

I turned to him and said, No, right now I'm looking for a hole to crawl into and hide in.

You know how when you get depressed everything in your whole life is connected and it's all bad? Right from the day you were born into this sorry world on down to the burnt toast this morning at breakfast? OK, it's like that.

I have two failed offers to purchase under my belt in as many months. Is the universe trying to tell me something? Other stuff as well, which I won't get into here.

Not to mention the rehash of the state of my finances and coming to the conclusion that perhaps I am screwed. Perhaps the recent stock market mess really did bite me harder than I thought. Can't buy, can't rent, and too many "assets" to even get into seniors' housing. Seniors housing! My god, has it really come to that? Never mind, I can't get in anyway.

Stupid thing is, I have all these friends here trying to help me. Friends I don't even know. When I was first realizing the septic-well issue, one friend said, Oh, you need to talk to Brian, he's the go-to guy on all things septic.

So on my way back up the Mountain, I stopped at Brian's house and his wife gave me his phone number to call later because he wasn't in. At supper time I called him, and he said, I'll be right there.

And not ten minutes later he was at the property in question examining the situation. This guy never even heard of me till I phoned him, and he drops everything to drive seven miles to check out a suspect septic.

Brian gave me his opinion of the situation, from both the legal and the "under the table" perspective. He actually was fairly optimistic about the solvability of the problem. He liked the property, thought it was worth trying to fix. I agree with him, I just don't have the resources to take the risk that the solution might turn out to be more expensive than I can afford. It's one of those things, it could be real simple or it could be real complicated, and short of actually doing the work, there's just no way to tell which way it will fall.

When the deal fell through, another friend got on the internet and immediately dug up another prospective home and even called the real estate agent to get the details. She printed off the pertinent info and got in her car and drove back in the woods looking for me. She insisted I go look right away.

By this time I had no appetite for anything real estate-related, but it's hard to resist the insistent kindness of a friend, I dutifully trundled off to look at this house.

The new option is a tiny house on the edge of the one town in the Valley I wouldn't mind living in. The instructions are to knock on the door of the neighbour to the left who has the key to the house. I pull up in front and before I am even half way across the road, the neighbour to the left is on his front porch enquiring, You lost? You lost?

I tell him I have come to look at the house for sale, he scrutinizes me for a minute, then looks at the for sale sign out front, then back at me.

Oh yes, it's for sale, the old lady just died. Go look around, I'll call the agent.

He goes into his house to phone, I walk around the house for sale. It is tiny tiny, the pink paint is peeling, and all the blinds are drawn on the little windows so you can't see inside. I walk around a couple of times before the old man comes out again and squints at the for sale sign to read the phone number of the agent. He dials the number. His wife comes out to see what's up. She sits down in a chair on their porch and proceeds to tell me the story of their lives.

They bought this house shortly after they got married over sixty years ago, and have lived there ever since. They love it there. Quiet road, close to town, nice place, nice neighbours. You know, they leave you alone unless you need them, then they're right there. Couple next door pretty much the same as them, bought the place almost sixty years ago too. They adopted a kid, raised her there, she got married and moved away. Then a few years ago, he died and she stayed on in the house by herself. Not a lot of money, couldn't afford to fix it up, lucky to have a home at all. Now she's gone too, died in the hospital only a couple of weeks ago.

The old man speaks to the phone, tells whoever is there that they need to send someone right away to let me into the house. His wife watches. She turns to me and says, All the men are dying. They're all dying off.

She shakes her head.

I'm not lettin' this one, gesturing to the old man on the phone with her chin, go so easily.

In a few minutes the real estate agent drives up in his red convertible sports car.

He gets out and shouts at the old man, Why'd you hang up on me?

The old man says something and the agent says, Why didn't you let her in? You have the key!

The old man looks a little sheepish.

The agent comes and shakes my hand and goes to unlock the door. Turns out he's never seen inside this house either. It is dark and smelly and small, the windows are tiny and they don't let a lot of light in. The kitchen is big but there are five tiny rooms arranged around it, it's kind of crazy inside. The house is essentially sound, but it clearly needs work, and it's right on the edge of affordability for me. I can't afford the work it will need. It is a good deal, just not for me.

God help me, I am eyeing the other house where the old man and his wife live and wondering how long before that one comes up for sale, that one I might actually consider.

This real estate business makes me feel like a damn vulture.

In a while, crocodile

Everything is fine but I just don't have time to post here now. I'll get back to it when the dust settles. Sorry about that. For folks wondering, I'm fine, my kids are fine, my grandkids are fine. I'm just busy and pre-occupied at the moment.

And I don't have a phone or internet hookup.

Change of scene

I left Toronto just after rush hour on Monday and made it as far as Cornwall before stopping for the night. The next day it rained almost the entire day, so I didn't dawdle, there was nothing to stop for. I should really have stopped for the night in Fredericton, but I didn't and that last hour or so of driving was pretty bad. Heavy rain, low visibility and feeling very tired, it was a struggle. But it meant that on the third day, Wednesday, I had only a few hours left of driving to do.

Dropped by Sheila's place and gave her the beret I knitted, she loves it but refuses to wear it, she says she's going to frame it! I guess I should feel honoured, but I kind of wanted her to wear it. Sigh...

I have jumped feet first into house hunting, have already made an offer on one place which has been accepted so I am working on the subject clauses. It's all very stressful and nerve-wracking, I am not sure of myself at all. The Pros and Cons lists are not helping, I really wish I had a bed to hide under.

To top it off I got word shortly after arriving here that my grandson is in the hospital with suspected meningitis. It takes a spinal tap and 48 hours of culturing the results to confirm or deny the diagnosis, but apparently the doctors think he has the more benign viral form. Sometime tomorrow they will know for sure. In the meantime he is set up in his own room (he's in isolation) with a TV and a Wii and all sorts of toys, his symptoms have subsided so life is not too shabby right now.

Apparently I promised to drive to Halifax with a friend in a couple of days, she reminded me this morning. It completely slipped my mind that I might have said such a thing, so we agreed to check in later on the prospects of such a trip. I am so wound up I can't keep anything straight.