Phone call

August 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chowder supper

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

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

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

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

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

Bad mother

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I guess that qualifies as abuse too.

Adapting

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

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

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

Old People Out On The Town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a most interesting evening!

Grooming and Vetting

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

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

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

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

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

Ringside seat

Hapi and I went downtown today, she was dragging her butt. I may not be able to take her down there much more, she goes so slow and I just want to get my shopping done before the stores close. Plus she wants to visit several shops that I don't want to go to in order to beg for treats. I've had to cut her off those dog treats because most of them are not good for her. I carry good treats for people to give her but they're often too quick for me. Half the time she's not interested in the treats anyway, she just likes visiting. And begging.

I crossed Main Street at a crosswalk to go to the post office. On the other side of the street is a small parking lot and in the slot next to the sidewalk there is a truck parked with an old fellow sitting in it. He is often there, apparently he just parks there to watch the world go by. He was grinning at Hapi slowly crossing the street so I stopped to chat with him.

"You have a ringside seat there," I said. Had to repeat it a couple of times because he couldn't hear me.

Then he basically told me the story of his life. Grew up in the backwoods a little ways from town, adopted by an illiterate couple. He didn't go to school. He says he sits out here now because he doesn't like what's on TV and he can't read, he can hardly write his own name.

I commented on his cap with a logo of a local excavation and building company. I know the company because they did some work for me. He told me he worked for them for 40 years, and before that he worked at a gas station that is long gone now. He said his friend asked him if the company gave him a pension and he told his friend no.

The friend said, "After making all that money from you for all those years, they never gave you a pension? I'm going to speak to them about that!"

The old man just grinned at that. Can't get blood from a stone.

When your kids are sick

The dogsitter I lined up for the upcoming kayak trip lives just around the corner from me but we communicate via text. The other day I ran into his mother who works at a local big box store. She told me that actually her son is in the hospital seriously ill, but he has his phone with him.

I was alarmed. I admit my first thought was that I was going to have to find someone else and my second thought was that he is often quite ill and who's to say he won't get ill while I am away. His mother assured me that he was on the mend and would be able to dogsit very soon.

"He loves your dog. He misses seeing her," she said.

"This must be hard for you having him be so sick," I said, feeling a little guilty for that not being my first thought.

"Him and his brother," she replied.

I remembered that my dogsitter's brother is in even poorer health.

"Every day that I still have them is a blessing," she said.

Can't be fun.

I think it might be Spring

This is the frustrating part of Spring, still lots of ice and the temperature swings wildly between below freezing and almost-T-shirt temps. Snow flurries, rain and sun. I can see funny little soil bumps in the garden where tulips are about to push through and the birds are not visiting my birdfeeder near as much (they're too busy nesting). On nice days I've been doing a bit of yardwork in preparation for gardening season.

I've been thinking about preparations for Hapi's demise. My son told me a couple of things about Hiro's last days that made me think that I should be prepared. One is, Hiro spent his last days on my son's bed, Hapi cannot do that because my bed is too high for her to get up on. So I have spent the last few days figuring out how to lower my bed so she can get up. Not that she cares, she has never expressed an interest in sleeping on my bed, but maybe that will change. Another is, I realize that taking a very large dog in pain to the vet's office for euthanasia is just not realistic, I need to talk to the vet about house calls.

Not that I am expecting this to happen in the near future, but the time from my son realizing Hiro was in trouble to the time of death was only a matter of days, I need to be prepared. Most of Hiro's early symptoms were simply signs of old age: stiff joints, increasing lack of energy, and the occasional falter in gait. Hapi has all of those on occasion, but I'm still thinking it's just old age. Another vet conversation. I've decided that I won't be taking heroic measures, but comfort is important.

And I have a kayak expedition coming up in May, very exciting. Already have Hapi's dogsitter lined up, he lives just around the corner so Hapi can stay home while I'm away. This time we won't be camping but rather staying at a lodge on a lake at a seriously discounted price ('winter season'). Hopefully we'll be out there before the black fly become awful but after the ice is gone. So exciting!

I've been off Facebook for a month now. I thought I'd pop back on briefly to let my Facebook friends know what I've done, but every time I think of doing that I just don't feel like it. I was talking to another son over the weekend and he mentioned that he had told my DIL that I was off FB but still on Instagram. I had told him previously that the one thing I miss from FB is that DIL's posts about her kids. So she has decided to move her activity to Instagram, and sure enough I am starting to see her posts there. Sweet!

Two of my grandsons have Instagram accounts so I see their posts as well. One of them is very quirky, as only a 12/13 yo boy can be. I was supposed to Skype with him on his birthday recently but he was having a serious meltdown so the Skype got postponed to the next day. I've never seen a kid who could throw a tantrum like he could when he was a toddler, apparently he has honed his skills in that department now that he is officially a teenager.

Hiro, 2006-2019

Hiro died on Monday March 11. My son arranged for the vet to come to the house and he and his housemates carried Hiro out to the backyard. They surrounded the dog and petted him while the vet performed the euthanasia. Needless to say, my son is devastated and I am pretty sad too. I'm sure Hapi picked up on my mood and has been a little subdued the past few days.

I had to laugh the other day though, I was walking with Hapi downtown and a fellow stopped to ask about her.

"Is that a husky?"

"No, she's a malamute."

"Seems kind of small for a malamute."

"She's a small malamute."

Most people comment on how big she is, someone thinking she is small is pretty unusual!

"And her fur is funny."

"Some malamutes have long hair, some have shorter hair. She's the long-haired kind."

"Malamutes I know have fur this long," and the fellow indicates about a foot with his hands.

"Huh," I said.

He shook his head at Hapi's oddness. Or perhaps he thought I didn't know real malamutes.

Oh Hiro

I just got a message from my son out west who owns Hapi's brother Hiro. Hiro is not well and the veterinarian has suggested that my son consider euthanasia. He might recover on his own but it will be a recurring condition if he does.

It makes me very sad. I love Hiro as much as Hapi I think. He is more stand-offish than she is, but also more vulnerable. Hapi was happy to come live with me but Hiro didn't like it, he depended on Hapi in ways that Hapi did not depend on him. He is a bigger dog and always had less stamina than her, much more of a homebody than she was in their youth.

Oh Hiro, I may not get to see you again.

She's back!

Hapi and I coming home from the Reservoir

The ice on the Reservoir ponds is buried under a foot of heavy snow. It looks like someone tried to clear some of it but didn't get very far. I think skating is over. But the snow is good for X-country skiing so I've been out doing that and also snowshoeing. Snowshoeing makes trails for the other dogwalkers so I feel like I am performing a service. The town sent a little snow plough into the Reservoir but it didn't get very far, too small. They never used to maintain the trails but I guess with one suicide and a senior falling on an icy trail and requiring an ambulance made the town maintenance people rethink that. The part they cleared is okay but the part where they got stuck is a bit of a mess. The snowshoers and dogwalkers do a better job.

Dee is back! That was the big excitement at the Reservoir this week. Years ago she took a fall in another province and injured her back. One thing and another she had to return home to get treated, by car (2 day drive. Can you imagine? Two days in a car with an injured back?!?). Anyway, she had surgery but unfortunately it only partially fixed the problem. She could walk but she was in severe pain. For years. She and her dog came to the Reservoir almost every day and she was just the funniest, wittiest, sympathetic and sensible person I've met in a long time. Her dog Lily was scared of Hapi but eventually she got over it. Sometimes the pain was too much and she didn't come.

So last November she went back for a second surgery to fix the problem. It was very risky, she might have ended up paralyzed and there was no guarantee they could fix her. But I guess she figured she had nothing to lose. We dogwalkers didn't know until January how it went. The worst of the pain is gone and she is not paralyzed but the surgeon said she had to be careful or all his good work would be undone. Best physiotherapy was walking, so walk she did, just not at the Reservoir where the risk of slipping and falling was too great.

This week after the big snowstorm she thought she might be safe at the Reservoir. She said she would walk by the entrance and poor Lily would cry because she wanted to go in. Everyone who met her was so happy to see her, and Lily was happy to be off leash and meeting all the other dogs. She was even glad to see Hapi! Dee is her old self, funny and witty as ever. Said the walk around the Reservoir ponds was about ten kilometres (it's not), only slightly further than from her bed to her bathroom. She's still in pain but not like before. The surgeon thinks there was a tiny sliver of bone left behind after the first surgery, it's gone now.

It is so good to see her back, it made my day.

Some things you just don't see coming

I had a very interesting experience today, one of those things that make you rethink opinions and attitudes you've held for a very long time.

This morning I took Hapi to the Reservoir as usual and for reasons I won't get into right now I decided to walk along a trail that is well out of the way. One of the mountain bike trails that is narrow and steep.

I had arranged earlier that I would talk to my eldest son on the phone, just to catch up on things since Christmas. Yes it's been that long since I last talked to him. When his dog was still alive we used to go for long dog walks and phone each other, him in Toronto and me in Nova Scotia. Since I was on a trail that I used to walk along for those talks I called him. He was having breakfast in bed and said he was about to call me. So I walked and we chatted, with Hapi following along behind.

At a certain point I noticed that Hapi had stopped quite a ways back, so I stopped too. She was looking back the way we had come and I saw a man coming along behind us. Hapi was waiting for him sociably. I was at a fairly level point in the trail so I stepped off the trail so the man could pass me but he didn't.

He said, "I know you, we met fifty years ago."

I was holding my cell phone, still in the call with my son, so he was hearing the conversation. The man started to describe the time that we met, it was the birth of my youngest son and I realized immediately that the man was the doctor on call that day. It wasn't fifty years ago, it was 42 years, that son has just celebrated his 42nd birthday.

The birth was a home birth, without benefit of a doctor or midwife, just a couple of friends. I lived in a cabin that I had built a couple of summers previous, situated almost a kilometre from the nearest road. No electricity, no running water, no phone. And a blizzard that day with a foot of snow on the ground. The birth went reasonably well but afterwards there was too much blood and one of my friends went to the neighbour's place over a kilometre away to call a doctor. This was that doctor.

Nothing bad happened, everyone survived without intervention, but I did have to go to the hospital "for observation" for a couple of days. There was more blood than there should have been but I didn't think it was life threatening. But I was young and fearless then so perhaps I underestimated.

I never liked that doctor. I thought he said and did things that were uncalled for, but being in a somewhat vulnerable position I did nothing about it other than to avoid ever having to deal with him again. Until today.

He seemed really happy to meet me today. He started recounting that long ago day as he saw it. Our memories did not match up entirely, but after all it was 42 years ago.

He said, "There was so much blood, I was really worried!"

I said, "Really? I wasn't."

He said, "Well you should have been!"

But he said it in a nice way, he wasn't criticizing. Then he told me that that had been his first year in practice and he had only just moved to the area.

"What a way to start out!" he said.

I didn't know that. It kind of put things in a different light. He was inexperienced, trying to handle a situation that he thought was beyond him, trying to appear like he knew what he was doing. And this was my third birth, I did think I knew what I was doing.

He told me that he had just retired.

I said, "Do you miss it?"

He said, "Oh yes, I miss it a lot. All those people, they were like family, they were my family. I miss them a lot."

I was a little sad for him. I didn't know that a doctor might feel like his patients were his family.

Anyway, we shook hands and he continued along the trail, I waited until he was out of earshot.

I said to my son who was still on the phone, "Did you hear that?"

"Wow," he said, "Wow!"

He was six years old at the time and present at the birth. He remembered it.

I always had a very bad opinion of this doctor because of that single encounter 42 years ago. I avoided having anything to do with him. But he turned out to be a nice man, a good person, and probably a good doctor.

Ironically I walk by his house every day on my way to the Reservoir. I didn't think he knew that, but he did.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I also went skating today. I've been trying to go almost every day because you never know when the ice will disappear under a foot of snow or a whole bunch of rain. I tried to go skiing but the snow is very icy and I am a very bad skier. I lose my balance easily and fall down, then it is really hard to get back up again. After the third fall I thought that if I fall again I won't even bother trying to get up. It feels like a lot of work for not much joy. Unlike skating.

Hapi is not keen on my skating or having to go out on the ice but she is patient about it. And today there were lots of kids skating so she got plenty of attention.

Making Change

Counting sheep

It has been 6 days since I deactivated my Facebook account. It does feel a little odd, I get these urges to post something and then remember that I can't. And I am out of the loop as far as what various Facebook friends are up to, but it doesn't feel like a huge loss. It's a little loss, one I can live with.

I read that someone conducted a major study in which half the subjects continued to use Facebook as usual and the other half were cut off from it. The end result was that the people who had no access to Facebook reported more well being and more free time than those who continued as usual. I can attest that I spend less time on the internet, I don't know about the well being. Yet.

I also decided to look into cognitive behaviour therapy for insomnia (CBT-I). Guess what, there's an app for that. I borrowed or downloaded a few books about insomnia and found one that I especially liked, Overcoming Insomnia and Sleep Problems, by Dr. Colin Espie. He walks you through the process with lots of explanations and suggestions. 

At the core of CBT-I is "sleep restriction": first determining how much sleep you are actually getting by keeping a sleep diary, and then restricting the amount of time you spend in bed to that amount of time. So, if you usually spend 8 hours in bed but are only sleeping for 5 hours, then you start by only spending 5 hours in bed. The idea is that you gradually increase the time you spend in bed as your "sleep efficiency" (time spent sleeping/time spent in bed) increases.

I am currently at the stage of keeping a sleep diary (on my phone app) to see how much time I actually sleep. I am also trying some of his suggestions around "sleep hygiene", such as turning on all the lights in the evening to make my living space as bright as possible and setting an ideal waking time and working back from that to determine an ideal bedtime. What I have learned so far is that I actually get more sleep than I think I do, but that doesn't make me feel any less tired. I am not getting as much as I think I need.

Dr. Espie describes "normal" sleep for different age groups, and of course normal sleep for old people is not great: waking up lots of times during the night and not reaching deep stages of sleep as much as one used to. He cautions old people that while CBT-I will probably help, it will not return them to sleep patterns they experienced as young adults. Those days (and nights) are gone!

In keeping my Sleep Diary I set an 8 hour period for sleeping, which means that I am now aiming to go to bed a couple of hours later than I used to. Between staying up later and getting off Facebook, I suddenly have many more hours of free time. But I am also very, very tired, I feel like I can't actually do anything with all that extra time. 

Dr Espie says it will get better. This is the downside of CBT-I: it's a lot of work and not very pleasant initially, but supposedly it is the best long term solution. We shall see.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Last week I went to a local shop that sells outdoor clothing and asked about winter boots. I wanted boots that were easy to get off and on, I thought zippered boots would be good. But the proprietor said he didn't carry zippered footwear because the zippers rusted and broke too easily. 

I saw a boot I liked the look of but it was very expensive. I went home and thought about that boot for several days and finally decided to bite the bullet and pay the high price. I went back and the boot was gone, but there were a whole lot of winter boots and shoes on sale. The shop was already stocking up on springwear and putting their winterwear on sale. 

I tried on some of the boots that were on sale. A woman who worked there showed me a boot I could try and it was the boot that I'd seen before and thought was gone. It was just the right size and very comfortable, and it was now half-price!

I love my new winter boots. 

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Reservoir eagle

Yesterday I took Hapi for a walk at the Reservoir and then drove downtown for groceries. It was such a nice sunny windless day that I took Hapi for another walk on the dyke. I ran into a man who was also going for a walk in the same direction. We had such an interesting conversation that we walked together for quite a long way, much longer than I intended. 

By the time I got home Hapi and I were both exhausted. That evening I yawned my way through to my new bedtime unable to do anything other than watch more TV. 

But it was a very good day.

Life is a garden

Life is a garden,

not a road.

We enter and exit

through the same gate.

Wandering,

where we go matters less

than what we notice.

~Bokonon, from The Lost Book

Joy, and Obligations

Okay first the Joy. I went skating this morning. The ice was amazing, like glass. And I was almost the first person on it since the last big rain and subsequent freezing. I met the guy who tries to keep it clear on my way in and he said the ice was so good that you really need sharp skates or you won't be able to skate on it. My skates are sharp.

Hapi ventured out but only made it a few feet to a mound of snow that looked like a little island surrounded by a glassy sea. She stayed there the whole time I was skating, she looked like an Eskimo sled dog abandoned on an ice floe. Each time I came around her little ice floe I thought, Just one more time, one more time and then we'll go. It was so hard to stop, I was in skating heaven!

I did finally stop and after changing back into my boots and Lee Valley Icers because the trails are as icy as the ponds, we went for a hike through an apple orchard and then a woodland trail. By the time we got back to the ponds parents and little kids were arriving for skating and hockey because today is a holiday.

The photo above was taken a couple of weeks ago, today it was even better: the sun was shining and the sky a brilliant blue.

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The comments on my last post were pretty unanimous, don't feel guilty and take time for yourself. How exactly one does that is of course for me to figure out. After venting about the problem, I then turned it around from what I didn't want to do to what I did want to do. I had a list of things I wanted to spend more time on. That list made me feel better, I felt justified in staking out time to tackle my list.

I called E to explain about how driving to her place at supper time was too hard, that I would drop by in the daytime if/when I was in town to shop. She seemed to accept that, but three days later there was a message on my phone (I didn't hear it ring) pleading for me to come visit. Ugh!

I called her and said I'd visit soon and she was more than welcome to come visit me whenever she wanted. Next day she got her son to drive her over. It was suppertime of course, but at least I wasn't out driving around in the dark, and her son texted me when they'd be arriving so I was prepared. But OMG, watching her struggle out of the car, up the driveway to my back stairs, then precariously manouevre herself up those three steps with her son behind her with his arms out in case she fell backwards, then across the back deck and through the kitchen to the nearest chair: that was painful!

We had a nice little visit, there was a stack of photos of children and grandchildren on the table by her chair which we went through after she fed her little bag of dog treats to Hapi, and then it was time for them to leave. The painful process of getting from the car to the chair was re-enacted in reverse and they drove away. But not before E tried to nail down the exact time of my visit to her place in the next couple of days. I just said, Soon, soon.

But I don't know which is worse, driving to and from E's place in the dark when I am tired and hungry, or watching her struggle in and out of my place. I feel doomed.

So yesterday I was talking about this situation with a dogwalking friend, F, and he described his own struggle with aging parents. First his father and now his mother. His father died in his 90s and was both blind and demented, his mother is mentally healthy but blind and physically deteriorating, also in her 90s. In comparing notes I realized that my relationship with E is rather like his with his parents, and the sense of obligation is not much different. Although E is only a few years older than me, regarding her as a debilitated and dying parent puts things in perspective. There are obligations I can shake and obligations I can't, much as I would like to.

We commiserated on feelings of obligation and what it did to the rest of our lives, also on our growing desire to withdraw from everyday socializing altogether. I think it's a bit easier for guys to retire from social obligations than for women, there is more of an expectation of women to "take care of people". I can reduce the socializing with J more easily because she is still mobile, has a car of her own, and multiple other friends. But E has none of those things. Plus, her son has been a real lifesaver for me in the past, so I can't just say, Sorry, I don't feel like it. He said to me a few years ago, You are part of our family. Unfortunately I'm afraid that is true.

I spent the last few days tidying and reorganizing my home which was immensely pleasurable. I now have bags of garbage and recycling prepared for disposal and a couple of bags of stuff for Value Village and/or the SPCA. If I take it to VV, they will give me discount coupons to shop there which I could give to E, but E commented that she hates that place and would rather shop at the SPCA. So maybe I'll take my stuff to the SPCA.

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I am going off Facebook. I disabled my account yesterday, if all goes well I will delete it in a month or so. A Facebook friend posted a TEDx video by Tristan Harris on why one should quit social media and most of his reasons made sense to me. There are pros and cons to everything but right now the cons are outweighing the pros for me.

Mr Harris noted that he thought the first couple of weeks after quitting would be the hardest but then one would adjust. We will see. Last night I went through my Facebook friends list and noted three people for whom I have no other contact info. It may be that I will lose those friends, I don't know. Two of them might be able to contact me if they remember the email address I had before Facebook and the third, well, I think I could probably track her down through mutual friends if I had to. All of them currently reside in other countries.

Aspiring Recluse

This is a bit of a whiney post, but …

I have this friend who is a shut-in, health issues and poverty keep her confined to a basement apartment that she shares with her son. They both love my dog. They used to live just up the street from me and several years ago I got into the habit of taking Hapi to visit them and E would feed Hapi dog treats. I usually went around supper time because E's son didn't get home until then and I wasn't up for going there much later than that.

Anyway, they moved to the next town over but wanted me to continue to bring Hapi to visit, at suppertime. Now it involves a 15 minute drive on the highway one way and in the wintertime I am driving after dark and sometimes in bad weather. I have cut back the visits to twice a week rather than almost every day, but E notices and comments that I don't come often enough and do I hate her, has she done something to offend me?

Since the town they live in now is where all the big box stores are I usually try to combine the visit with grocery shopping, but I have to say it is my least favourite time to shop. Last week I didn't go for the whole week, due to bad weather and a mild sinus infection that sapped my motivation.

Another friend's father is 102 years old and just got out of the hospital after a bout of pneumonia. He's OK, but my friend tells me he is fading fast. His 103rd birthday is coming up in March and we think that anticipation of that celebration is his primary motivation in staying alive. I like this man, I have known him for well over 40 years. He's in an extended care home and I'd like to visit him while he's still around, but trying to schedule that around my visits to E is problematic. At first I thought I could do both in the same trip but then realized it was just too much. I still haven't managed to get over to see him yet.

I feel guilty that my ability to be helpful and compassionate is rather limited, I get impatient with it all rather quickly. I just want to be left alone, I don't want to be running around helping people or visiting them because they are needy.

I spent all of last week (when I was staying home not visiting E ostensibly because of the sinus infection) thoroughly enjoying sitting around reading and sorting through my accumulation of useless junk. Being home alone and without responsibilities feels like a holiday in paradise.

I get out with Hapi every morning for about two hours. I often meet other dog walking ladies, which pretty much satisfies any need I have for social interaction. When we get home she expects water and a treat (she doesn't come indoors and her water bowl freezes if I leave it out so I have to bring it in and out all day), then I have to remove all the winter clothing and put it away and then bring in a load of firewood for the day.

By the time all that is taken care of it is lunchtime. If I don't have errands to run or household chores to take care of then the afternoon is free time, although once a week I go to one of book club, needlework group or bridge club. I have my writing group on Friday mornings which means Hapi's walk gets postponed until the afternoon. She howls when I leave her behind on Friday mornings.

Due to increasing insomnia I have great difficulty getting enough sleep. That means I don't want to go to bed late and thus I don't want to go out in the evening. I do go out occasionally, but I pay for it in sleep deficit for a couple of days after.

I'm really having a hard time with this. I am at heart a petty selfish person who does try not to be, but at the moment petty selfishness is winning.

Big Raven

Hapi and I have been sick the past week, I am recovered but I don't know if Hapi is. She looks un-Hapi and she hasn't eaten her dinner in a couple of days. She does eat any treats offered though and still likes her morning walk. No one else can see any sign of her not being her usual self. I'm thinking it is temporary, she's done this before.

As a result of not feeling well I have had no motivation to go outside for anything other than Hapi's walk and I have to say I am enjoying that. I did get out skating once and skiing once at the Reservoir. The skiing was interesting, I got a lot of advice on how to ski as I made my way around the ponds. The advice was coming from older dogwalkers who used to ski back in the day. I think they were envious, they wanted to ski too. Two mentioned that they still had their skis in storage somewhere, maybe they'd dig them out. I'm not a good skier so I don't mind advice. Who knows, maybe I'll have company for another ski.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I've been puttering around. I got it into my head to finish the woodcarving that I started in Toronto years ago, it has been sitting on a high shelf in a closet since I moved to Nova Scotia (in 2010). I got it down and looked at it.

Where are my carving tools? I spent a day ransacking the house looking for them. In the process, found all sorts of other interesting things and decided to throw away half of them. Interesting garbage, not much more than that. Found the tools.

Then I thought I'd rearrange the furniture in the living room so that Hapi's bed is closer to the armchair I usually sit it, I thought she might spend more time indoors if she could be closer to me. Did that. Didn't make a difference, she seemed to think the new location was a bit odd but she could live with it.

Where are the notes I took in the woodcarving class? Another day ransacking, but still haven't found them. I suspect I may have tossed the notebook they were in. After looking at the set of tools I realized that I have forgotten what many of them are for. I may have to find a book on it.

The instructor in the woodcarving class was a woman whose name I forget. Most of the students were older than me and had been in that class for years, they had a nice thing going. It was a 4-hour class, but halfway through they took a leisurely coffee break and sat at a round table together just chewing the fat. We each had our own project that we worked on independently and the instructor was available for advice. When I joined the class (I was only there for two years), she took several half-sessions to get me up and running, and she did that with every new student. We shared the tools, which were high quality carving tools that she provided. She was a professional carver, actually made a living doing it. It was a very relaxed fun time and I very much enjoyed listening to their stories. One carver was the same age as my Dad would have been and he had the same name! Both given and surnames! They were both in World War II, what an amazing coincidence.

My project is a bas relief (that is what she started everyone on, once you completed that you could do anything you wanted) based on an Emily Carr painting called Big Raven. I love almost everything Carr has done, but Big Raven is my favourite. The instructor approved of my choice, she said it was not too detailed and would transfer nicely to a bas relief.

The first step was to photocopy an illustration of that painting from a book and blow it up to the size of the bas relief, about 12"x16".

Then I laid out a slab of plasticine on a piece of masonite and transfered an outline of the photocopy to the plasticine by poking a needle through the photocopy along all the lines. I also traced the same lines onto a transparent film of mylar with a magic marker. I used the mylar outline to draw the picture onto a 2" thick slab of balsa wood.

The plasticine was for a mockup of the final bas relief, I started by carving the plasticine using the same tools I would use on the wood. Plasticine is a little more forgiving than wood if you make a mistake.

I started carving the wood before I completed the plasticine mockup, the idea was to always be a little further ahead on the plasticine than on the wood. Actually there are parts of the final bas relief that are started (some background details and a tree) that don't appear on the mockup. I don't remember why that is the case.

While I was writing this my neighbour phoned and we had a long conversation about this and that. By the time we were finished I had been given three assignments—call my son about his daughter, call another neighbour about a concert ticket, and call a mutual friend to arrange to go out for lunch this week—which I had to complete before getting back to this blog post. All done now. Texted my son, left a message about lunch, and reserved a ticket for Friday.

PS, I looked through old blog posts about my time in the woodcarving class, the instructor's name was Ruth.

Death in the Park

One day this week I went to the Reservoir to walk Hapi, but a policeman stopped me and said the Reservoir was off limits for the day. He wouldn't say why. I could see that they had heavily sanded the icy road in, presumably to let vehicles drive safely into the park. There was ice on all the trails, I gave up on the idea of an off-leash walk for Hapi. I could have gone out on the dykes, but it was too windy and cold for me.

I went back to the Reservoir the next day, but other than the sand on the icy road there was no sign of what had happened the day before. The day after that I walked with another woman (the wife of the Fairy Door Man) and she told me. A young man, a teenager, had committed suicide in the park. There was already a memorial marker put up by some of his school friends. A crude cross, a tea can, and a full bottle of homemade wine.

This is the third young man in two months to commit suicide in this small town. Like the first one that I wrote about earlier, his mother was also well known in town. I do not know her personally but I recognize her name and many of my friends do know her. I don't know much about the second person, just that there are at least three now. It appears to be viral.

It has cast a pall. I have no doubt that the young man's family and friends are devastated. In addition, the whole town is aware, and it is frightening. I was talking to a friend at my writing group this morning and she said, this is what it must be like in those small First Nations communities when this happens. No where to turn, nothing to be done, and who is going to be next. I guess I now understand why some religions make the act of suicide a sin. It not only hurts family and friends but it tears gashes into whole communities.

After the first one I talked to several women who related terrible stories about their own children's battles with depression, drugs and suicide. It is scary how easily someone you love can be lost. One woman said, when the first one goes, the others who are struggling see that there is a way out. Not a good way, but a way.

Ice

A few days ago Hapi and I were on the trail where the ravens have been tearing up the pine tree branches. A raven in the woods whistled. Hapi responds to whistles (I can't whistle so I can't take advantage of that) so she went tearing off into the woods. She went right to the tree where the raven was perched but she did not look up, she didn't see the raven. The raven was looking down at her, kind of surprised I guess. He wasn't intending to call her. I thought Hapi would come back when she couldn't find the whistler but she did not, she went further into the forest where I couldn't see her. I continued walking, calling her occasionally so she would know where I was, and eventually she reappeared.

The next day I went into the woods where she had been the day before to see if I could find whatever had attracted her after the whistling raven. I found an area of trampled snow, lots of rabbit tracks. Hapi went into the midst of the rabbit tracks to sniff around and I looked to see how big the trampled area was. There were no other tracks, just the rabbit tracks. I'm guessing there is a warren in there somewhere. I mentioned it to a friend who asked if I saw coyote tracks as well but I didn't. The coyotes don't know about this yet.

Yesterday a major storm passed through here, coming from Toronto the day before. In the morning it snowed and was very cold, but since I knew it was going to rain later in the day I took Hapi to the park in the snow. At one point it was snowing so heavily that it was like fog, you could hardly see anything. I decided to walk across the long pond since it is well frozen and people have cleared a skating rink on it. Hapi doesn't like walking on the frozen pond, she knows the risks. She once went through the ice in the Wolfville harbour in January and had to walk home drenched in freezing water. Anyway, she came with me but made it clear she did not consider it safe. She started growling. Ahead of us on the other side of the pond I could just make out two human forms on the ice. Getting closer I saw that they were hardcore skaters with big shovels clearing the snow off the rink. That's what Hapi was growling at, she thought that was really suspect behaviour. I stopped to chat with them about the ice, they were hoping that if they cleared the snow then later when it rained nice smooth ice would form.

When I got home I shovelled the snow off my driveway in hopes that the rain would wash everything away and my driveway would be bare afterwards. But it did mean that it was very icy for awhile. After the snow transitioned to rain Hapi came indoors. She doesn't mind sleeping in the snow but the noise of rain on the deck roof bothers her. In the evening it warmed up dramatically. I went outside and left the door open, just to be in the open warm air. Could barely see the moon. If I had been able to stay awake past midnight I might have seen the lunar eclipse. Maybe. The forecast was for heavy rain through the night so the chances weren't great.

This morning most of the snow was gone. It was cooler than the previous evening but still above zero. We went to the park. The trails were totally icy and optimistically I had not brought my Icers. You could have skated on the trails! I met a couple of other dog walkers and we set out on one trail that didn't look too bad, however once out of sight of the parking lot it turned to a sheet of ice. The other walkers decided to turn back but one of them loaned me her walking stick to continue on.

There are two ways to walk on ice. One is the Old Lady Shuffle and the other is just sliding. I can slide on ice that is relatively smooth but if the ice is bumpy or has a lot of debris in it then the Old Lady Shuffle is best. Either way you have to go slowly. The stick helped. We made it all the way around both ponds but I did not dare go onto the bike trails because they are too steep. At one point I was walking uphill on ice toward the parking lot and the only decent foothold I could get was on some of the dog poop on the side of the trail. People are supposed to pick up after their dogs but obviously not everybody does that. Walking on it was better than trying to walk on the icy slope!

At the parking lot a friend arrived in her car with her big Pyrenees dog. Lulu is bigger and younger than Hapi and just wants to play; Hapi is not interested in playing but she does like the company of other big dogs. I told Lulu's owner E about the ice but she thought she'd try it anyway because she was wearing ice grippers. Not as good as the Icers though. We got a little ways down the trail before she gave up and we turned back to the parking lot.

It is supposed to get really cold tonight. The skaters will get their wish, the ice on the pond will be perfect. And I will not be forgetting to bring my Icers, it is going to be very icy for the foreseeable future.