Zapped Brain Cells

Brain Cells Zapped

Every time I have a hot flash ... that's when your crazy mixed up adrenals shoot an overload of adrenalin into your system ... I feel as if my brain has been zapped by something like a battery operated mosquito killer, only this zap is powered by something much more powerful than a couple of 2A batteries.

My hot flashes are nuclear powered and the number of brain cells that get zapped is in the multitudes. I can forget my own name when it happens, never mind the train of thought or even the topic under discussion.

But I could learn to live with the ones that happen during the day if I could only get a night's sleep. I am awakened every hour and sometimes awake for two or three hours when I get one of these night sweats.

I find myself dying to go to bed each evening because I am exhausted, and dying to get up for the day in the small hours of every morning because sleep is impossible.

Last night I took a herbal remedy for insomnia containing Valerian. I was wonderfully relaxed and fell asleep immediately. Of course I fall asleep immediately anyway because I am so exhausted by bedtime. But imagine my surprise when I was wide awake at 11 but peaceful so I went back to sleep. And then again at 12 and 1 and 2.

Except that at 2 I lay there thinking. I wasn't anxious, just very awake. I read for a while ... a book of short stories by Melanie Little. I had met her in a poetry course we were both taking and then again at the International Writers' Festival where she was speaking. In that occasion, Marta and I discussed her in the washroom and a voice emerged from one of the cubicles saying she was listening and she was Melanie. A few months later, Marta and I took a weekend writing course from her and we all had lunch together. Then she became the writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta and we lost even those ephemeral strands of connection. Last week I read in the Globe and Mail that Melanie has started a small publishing house in Calgary, where she is the only employee. She has limited the number of books she publishes this fall to 4. The first one, a novel by Marina Endicott called Good to a Fault has been nominated for the Giller Prize. Wow, Melanie!

In Melanie's own book I discovered a note from her, a response to some poems I had written. I couldn't even remember the poems she mentioned.

I was wide awake so I went into my den closet where I store all kinds of writing, my own and that of others. I hunted for half an hour and finally found them. I almost couldn't remember the woman who wrote them. I think the hot flashes must have zapped those cells completely.

Here is a poem by that other Oma.

It is part of a series called "Acts of Casual Brutality".

Disappearing Acts

Where do you go when you leave?

Do you disappear into a book?
your work?
a bottle?

an all consuming affair of the heart?
a vagina?

or do you drop wordlessly
into an abyss?

When women friends plummet
I worry
so I hunt for them
and try to help them out

but with you I'm not sure ...
with you I perch uneasily ...

At first
you phoned as soon as you got home,
left things here,
returned.

Then the small disappearing acts began.
Unanswered emails.
Dead phone lines.

One day you vanished completely.

Later you said it was temporary.

Where did you go?

and where are you now?

You know you are getting older when ...

There are some things you just can't do any more.

My eco-wood arrived 2 days ago. Usually they truck it to the bottom of my hill and I help carry it in and stack it in the porch. This time the delivery man refused to bring it down the hill. He off-loaded the pallet beside my car. There are 39 steps down to my house and another 40 horizontal feet to the porch door. Each box weighs 35 pounds. There are 60 boxes on a pallet. That meant that I had over 1 ton of unwieldy weight to carry into the porch. If I were burning regular wood I could have carried it a few logs at a time from a wood pile, and I would have stored it outside. Eco-wood has to be stored indoors.

I was not happy with the new rules. Had I known this was going to happen I would have waited till the snow fell to order my wood so that I could use a sled to bring it down the hill. Or I would have considered an alternative to eco-wood.

Oh well, I thought stoically, I will just keep it wrapped in plastic and take it a few boxes at a time. We are supposed to have sunshine for the next few days. I'll carry about 20 boxes per day. I went over to the pottery to "break" my first three tiles for the bathroom, and, when I returned, started to transport the boxes to the porch.

I had a system.

I took the wheelbarrow to the top of the hill, unwrapped the plastic and put three boxes in the barrow. At the bottom of the hill just before the last set of steps I began the task of carrying each box into the porch. Because of the shape and weight, the only way to carry the boxes was straight out in front of me. I could feel the strain on my back almost immediately. By the time I got six boxes down to the porch, my back was screaming for mercy.

It was clear that I needed a new system.

I called Leonard and asked whether he could bring his fork lift over. The next day he manoeuvered the pallet down to the bottom of the hill for me. When I asked him how much I owed him, he said, "Well I didn't do much, you know." And finally, he said it would be $10. A good neighbour is a priceless gift.

That evening, Tammy and Carlos came for dinner. By the time they arrived I had managed to get 16 boxes into the porch. I had also discovered a better system. I could avoid carrying individual boxes down the stairs by using the sled and letting it careen down the slope to the gravel with its load of three boxes. That left only 30 feet to carry each one.

The three of us worked together and I got another few boxes stacked before my back gave out and Tammy sent me indoors. I retired to the kitchen to finish preparing the chicken dinner. They, god bless good friends with strong backs, finished carrying in the rest of the boxes. By the time they got to the end, the boxes had been feeding on their strength and now weighed 100 pounds each. How can I thank you, Tammy and Carlos? A chicken dinner is small recompense.

I am going to have to re-think my wood situation in the future. I need a system that will work without destroying backs. We can't do this every year.

As for the rest of this weekend, I am going to treat my back gently. I will busy myself with domestic duties instead of attempting jobs better suited to muscular young men. I will feed plants and maybe bring the lavender in to join the rosemary and parsley.

Maybe I will finally make the duvet cover I bought sheets for last year. Ever since Kenya decided that she likes to join me in bed at 5 a.m. my laundry has increased. It is her heavy shed time, and also the time when tenacious seeds with barbs hitchhike on her coat. Everything: hair, sand, and burrs, seems to end up between my sheets. I don't want to forbid her access to the bed because I get my soundest sleep of the night once she joins me.

It looks like a wonderful weekend for walks with the dog. A good weekend to relax at the lake.

Ever since the porcupine incident I take Kenya outside rather than letting her out, and as a result, I am discovering the night again.

This morning before light I took her out to pee and thought again how much I like darkness out here by the lake. Maybe we will spend some time this weekend exploring by flashlight.

Emptied Out

This will be a scattered post, I am afraid. Part catch-up ... part rumination.

My first response to the big news --- the global financial crisis --- was to remind myself that I had almost nothing invested anyway; that I had resigned myself to the fact that my RRSPs looked small on paper and much smaller when I cashed them in. Then I checked and discovered that they hadn't lost a cent. I had told the banker when I withdrew the last lot that I would likely have to cash in the rest very soon and he said I should secure the balance --- so I did.


I am not a gambler and, I have discovered, not greedy. Oh, like everyone else, if an opportunity to make money falls into my lap I will not refuse. But I don't care enough about things beyond the basic necessities and few pleasures to want much money.

This "failing" has hobbled me over the years. I didn't work hard enough to sell my novel. I was easily discouraged. I didn't see any need to sell my teaching and administrative skills so I gave them away to teachers and children in developing countries. I have no regrets about my volunteer work overseas, but I do wish that I had not aborted Explosion. It deserved to be read, especially by young people in Nova Scotia.

My failure to value money has also served me well when times have got tougher. When I first retired I determined to discover how to live well on less, and every time there has been a down turn in my own finances, I have adopted the viewpoint that once your basic needs are met you can enjoy things that cost little or nothing.

And that, I believe, is what many people will have to realize now. It's not such a bad lesson to have to learn. Sure beats throwing oneself out a skyscraper window.

And now for the catch-up news:

1. Kenya is well again.

2. She had a visitor in her outside water bowl yesterday.

3. Life with Tango was fun except for his forays into forbidden foods.

4. It was good to see Marta and Henry on the weekend and Sarah and Remi on Wednesday. We ate well on both occasions.

5. My trip to town on Thursday was more tiring than fun but I stopped at Tammy's on the way home for a cup of tea that bolstered me for the final leg of the journey. I really hate shopping, especially in sub/urban stores where everyone is faceless. Here in Wakefield a shopping trip is a social occasion.

6. I started working on the tiles for the tub surround during Friday's pottery class. They flow like the landscape of these hills.

7. When I got home I made a batch of spaghetti sauce and took a couple of meals over to Barry who just got home from Toronto after having his knees replaced. Everyone on the lake is feeding him just now, and he likes the visits as much as the food since he faces eight housebound weeks.

Today I am going to a Thanksgiving dinner feast at Erin's. Her brother is smoking a turkey. Tomorrow afternoon I will go to a concert at the Black Sheep where her house guest, Danny Everett from Texas, will be performing.

On Monday I will just relax and remember Thanksgiving weekend two years ago when I broke and dislocated my finger hiking with dogs on a ridge when the weather was fantastic and the leaves as magnificent as they are this weekend. That accident changed my life quite radically and I changed as a result. It wasn't just the pain and time spent having surgeries and undergoing therapy. I lost my self assurance and my faith in our medical system. Two things I in which I had had unshakable confidence were revealed as fragile.

One of Carol Shields' characters, Daisy in The Stone Diaries, believes that "old people are better off obsessed than emptied out." I keep hoping to find something that will grab me by the throat so that I go back to being an old woman who is obsessed. I am tired of feeling emptied out.

Hot Flashes

I have been researching how to get my luxuriantly leafed poinsettia to bloom for Christmas, enjoying the antics of Kenya and Tango, baking banana bread, simmering autumnal soups, potting up rosemary plants for the winter, putting away deck chairs and solar lamps, starting up my heating which will jump my hydro bills tenfold (now if only I could get my income to do the same), watching the fall colours take over, and wondering when the nine Merganser ducks on the lake will head south. (They have survived surprisingly well this season. Usually by now the original brood of a dozen is down to two or three.)

I have also been enduring hot flashes that create hot spots in my bed that make me think of running my hand over the ironing board after ironing cottons. They keep me awake for an hour each time even though my body cools down after a few minutes. During the day they trick me into thinking my house is warm, so there are some benefits. Maybe there is some way to use them to heat the radiant floor.

What I have not been doing is writing. I find that any irregular but frequent intrusions on my peace destroy my ability to think for any length of time. These suffusions are destroying brain cells as well, I am certain.

One of my children gave me a book by Susun Weed back in 1992 when I was 52 and could have been expected to need guidance through menopause. I didn't expect to need it at 68 ... but the symptoms I endured for a year at 60, and sent into abeyance with HRT are back in full force.

Weed's crone says, "....your Menopausal Change lets loose lightning-like hot flashes and waves of energy that free your feelings and stir your spirit....strong energies will move within you...allow those hot flashes and sleepless nights to guide you into metamorphosis and initiation."

Weed goes on to say that our society, with its emphasis on youth, its denigration of old people, especially women, who become even more powerless, even more invisible in old age, does not give us the support and acceptance when we become menopausal that is afforded in other societies. We are supposed to go through the change invisibly. I think that may be changing as women make jokes about the flashes and sweats, as women are more open about such things.

I hope Susun Weed is right, that this is a passage through fireworks into something better, and that I have the energy left to enjoy it.

Hodge Podge

I have been busy for the past while, too busy to blog. Well ... not really too busy. More like too foggy to blog. Everything has seemed an effort. Maybe the weather? Maybe I am under it?

At any rate, today I am trying to get my life back on track, and that means blogging first thing.

Kenya continues to take her meds morning and night and is allowed out only under close supervision. That means more walks each day. Maybe that's why I am too tired to blog.

On Friday morning, I went to my second pottery class and loved it. After the first one where I produced several unrecognizable blobs I thought I might quit, but this one allowed me to forget everything and just let myself relax into the clay. I cleaned and burnished several of the blobs and began work on a coil dish. I doubt if these classes are to blame for my failure to blog.

It has been a more social week than usual, so perhaps that would account for my inertia. On Thursday Daughter #2 came for dinner with her new beau, and I invited friends on the lake who were moving the next day to join us.

Remi spent Friday with Kenya and me so that he wouldn't be underfoot during the move.

Saturday was the 40th anniversary reunion for Philemon Wright where I taught for 22 years.

On Sunday Pat and Mike came to do jobs around the house that would have been done incompetently or not at all. Now my towel holders in the bathroom work, I have wooden blinds installed in the den, and a shelf hangs securely in the front hall. When they come, they always bring skills, tools and irreverent laughter. Pat has been able to make me giggle since he was fifteen and in my grade ten English class.

Maybe I am simply exhausted because I am sleeping so little at night.

I spoke with a group of sixtyish teachers at the reunion. I mentioned not sleeping and they chorused. Oh, hell, who sleeps? If you put all the sleepless hours menopausal women spend tossing and turning to work on the economy and everything else, millions of women hours could be put to good use.

That reunion was an experience. One teacher greeted me with a question, "What books are you reading?" One of those questions you dread. Not it would have mattered what I answered because it was merely a springboard from which he could launch into a book review he'd prepared specially for this event. I expect he greeted all English teachers with this question. I escaped to the wine table.

An English teacher I knew well for most of my career greeted me with the news that she had just returned from a trip to Stratford. Only $650 and that included three plays, so really a deal. I found it hard to be enthusiastic, and mentioned that Stratford had lost a great deal of money this year, perhaps because $650 for three plays was likely beyond the reach of most people ... like me. She hurried away.

I met the first principal I worked with, now in his eighties. His memory was first rate; he gave me a large wet kiss in greeting, and told me he'd done me a favour once and had said he'd take a kiss for payment some time. Then he laughed and said it was a good thing he hadn't collected while we were working together.

Near him sat the school nurse who now uses a cane. She retired just a couple of year ago when the hip made it impossible to work. I think she is about the same age as the principal, and, like him, she still has all her wits about her.

One of the retired school librarians said he hadn't used his brain since he retired nearly fifteen years ago and is a much happier man as a result.

A very dear old friend, a phys ed teacher who has bone cancer and is in constant pain, said they'd discovered a lesion in the skull, and he likely would become even less articulate soon. I suggested that perhaps it would just make his conversations a little airier. I wonder if I would be able to joke if I were in his situation. Would I even bother to make the effort to come to something like this reunion?

This week I will be looking after a neighbour's cat and will have Tango, one of my favourite dogs, boarding for four or five days. I will attend another pottery class, and Marta and Henry may come for the weekend. It is shaping up to be a good week. And now I am off for the first of the day's dog walks.

Back to Reality

I am beginning to settle in.

At first everything felt alien and I dashed from one job to another in the manner of hummingbirds or dragonflies, but faster, more erratically, like the skittering water bugs Kenya loves so much. Everything I touched led to another detour, another convoluted path. No task was simple. I had to perform three others before I could attack that one. I felt a bit like my granddaughter who informed me as she tidied her room that she needed me to stay with her " because I always became distracted, Oma."

Part of the problem was that it was hot and sunny and I didn't want to waste swimming and kayaking weather, but I was also being driven by the knowledge that winter was coming and I had to get the porch weatherproofed and ready to receive my supply of wood. I had to arrange with the plumber and electrician to install the boiler and set up the generator. I was also worried about the piled-up bills I needed to figure out and pay. I also had to stock up on food, make wine and go to a medical appointment at the Riverside.

Thursday night Kenya was driven by anxiety attacks that sent her onto my bed, and off again, and took her downstairs and outdoors. When I finally figured out that her craziness was caused by the wind and closed all the windows, she settled down and went to sleep for the night. It took me a little longer to get back to sleep.

When you consider the places I have spent all my nights for two months and compare them to my own supremely comfortable bed here at the lake, it is surprising that I have been more prone to insomnia here than anywhere else. I have slept in motel rooms, guest rooms, on an eight year old's bed, on a sponge on the floor, and in a tent. In many of the places I had to adjust to foreign noises like traffic or aircraft or ATVs, and, in one, the screeches of raccoons making lusty love or war a few feet from my bed. And yet, everywhere, I slept the sleep of the innocent.

On the one hand I feel more peaceful and at home here than anywhere I have been this summer, but everywhere I stayed I was part of a family unit and could relax my guard at night, safe in the knowledge that I was not alone. Perhaps, too, I was comforted by the knowledge that my life and its responsibilities were on hold until I returned home; that there was no point in worrying about such things as preparing for winter or fussing about financial concerns beyond my control, so I could push them aside.

I have also been doing a lot of thinking about my close neighbour who has been diagnosed with cancer and is very ill. Her first surgery was unsuccessful and she faces a battle with chemo and radiation before they will try again.

In fact I have been more concerned about her health than about my own. I had a biopsy done yesterday. It was a painful procedure, and not pleasant, but, despite the serious manner of the specialist, not fear inspiring. I seem to live in a kind of bubble regarding cancer. I think I am so sure I will be killed by heart attack or stroke like everyone on my mother's side, or by something going wrong with my digestive system like my father and my oma, that I can't even imagine that it will be cancer that gets me.

And besides, I am not afraid of dying. For a very long time I have contemplated the inevitable with equanimity. Of course it has always been in the abstract. I am not so sure that I would cope as well with the information that I had a cancer that required months of chemo and radiation; and that my chances of survival were only 30% if I subjected myself to the pain, weakness and nausea associated with the treatment. I can't even imagine facing all of that alone up here in the woods living my hermit's life with my dog.

At any rate, I am now back in the real world. My nomadic summer is behind me and my life at the hermitage resumes.

I need to settle in a bit more before I can write about my long vacation from life. I put 6000 kilometres on my little old car, and subjected Kenya to more experiences than she was comfortable coping with, but I discovered things I would never have learned staying here at the lake where we are both comfortable.

On Trusting Instinct

Yesterday I was reminded, once again, to trust my instincts, to listen to the little voice that tries so hard to tell me something is not right, to really listen to my sixth sense.

My relationship with my dog operates best when we both listen to our instincts. Kenya knows if I am serious or just playing, relaxed or upset, and I generally recognize her moods and health by her behaviour. We communicate easily. As a result, most of the time we get along without friction.

It always takes a day or so for me to reach a comfortable level of understanding with someone else's dog, but that is usually all it takes. It takes longer to reach the level of intuitive empathy I have with Kenya, so I rely on her to help me with the dogs I board.

Dogs don't like humans who are cruel ... and they seem to know pretty quickly which humans to trust. They recognize danger very quickly. Their noses tell them. I am not sure what tells me these things ... my sixth sense, I think ... and I have to learn to listen to the signals that sense is sending me. I too often ignore those niggling doubts.

Yesterday Kenya suddenly behaved very strangely. She began pawing at the window and screeching. She refused to stop when I told her to. She wouldn't play with Remi. Everything she did constituted aberrant behaviour for her.

Instead of asking myself why she was behaving so strangely, I got really ticked off and yelled insults at her. She bounced out of my way but didn't stop.

Then Remi appeared, blood on his leg. It was his paw. He had cut it badly on glass or something. As soon as Sarah and I began to tend to Remi's wound, Kenya returned to her normal calm state.

Why did I assume that her behaviour meant she had suddenly gone crazy and become disobedient?

Why didn't I realize immediately that she was trying to tell me something important?

I have to learn to trust the two most instinctual things in my life: my dog and my own sixth sense. Maybe Kenya will help me learn to do that.

It seems to me that I have entered a phase of my life in which I am discovering a great many things I need to know in order to be happy. I wonder if everyone is bombarded in the last decade or two of her life with these new insights. Or is only those of us who led terribly busy lives when we were younger, never taking the time to stop and breathe in our environment and really experience life?

Is it because age has finally slowed me down enough to pause and reflect that I am discovering how much I still need to learn? Or is it because I have found the place in which I can be at peace in order to think? Or is it because my closest companion is now Kenya, who naturally lives instinctively?

An Utterly Peaceful Day

Yesterday was one of those perfect days, a day when the air feels invisibly light against your skin; a day in which things are in balance and there is no pressure. I had fun with Kenya and spoke briefly to two neighbours, but it was a day when everything I needed was all within me and my place.

It helped that the weather was perfect and the bugs unobtrusive. One storm rumbled about behind dark clouds but moved out without dropping any of its precipitation.

Any attempt to list the highlights will make us all (myself included) wonder how that could constitute a perfect day. After all not much happened between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.

I used to be a Type A person who had to accomplish three days' work every single day. I almost never took holidays, even when I thought I was doing so. A day without work, without accomplishing something, was a day wasted. One of the blessings bestowed upon me by ageing has been the ability to enjoy leisure time.

What I did on my perfect day:

1. ... walked around the lake with Kenya to try to take more photos of nesting turtles. I didn't see any adult turtle mommies, but saw three nests of shell fragments and hope that means the turtles hatched. I also spoke to Rosemary who was gardening and we walked over to see the hydro pole that had burst into flames when the tree fell on the wires on Friday.

2. ... wrote a Father's Day piece for my blog and answered emails.

3. ... hung the hanging basket of petunias Erin brought for me yesterday.

4. ... moved all the pieces of the raised garden down to the spot I wanted to use for a garden this year, put them together in a half-assed fashion and poured in the soil I had brought down from the car. I started with the wheelbarrow and then hefted each one onto my shoulders and moved them singly down the last flight of steps.

5. ... exhausted and sweating, I took a break and went swimming with Kenya. We swam to a neighbour's cottage and I spoke briefly to them from the water.

6. ... still not ready to go back up to do the planting, I went out for a kayak ride with Kenya alternately swimming alongside and scrambling along the shore.

7. ... planted tomatoes.

8. ... re-potted the peace lily and took it inside. (It was getting sunburned outside)

9. ... had a sandwich and apple juice lunch down on the deck, read my book and threw sticks for Kenya.

10. ... had an afternoon nap.

11. ... brushed Kenya and bagged her undercoat hair for Rosemary's garden (it discourages groundhogs and raccoons)

12. ... made a pasta salad and barbecued ham slice dinner for myself, listened to Sara McLaughlan, and ate dinner with a very nice Italian wine.

13. ... curled up on the couch with Kenya and watched The Painted Veil.

14. ... took a lovely leisurely bath scented with some kind of evergreen, maybe balsam.

15. ... and went to bed where I slept soundly the entire night.

It was a wonderful day.

A Scorcher

I like bitter cold better than intense heat. When I am cold I can dress more warmly, put another log on the fire, and eat hearty soul and body warming food. And I can stay indoors. When it is hot I can almost not drag my weary bones around to do what must be done. Decency dictates a limit to the number of clothes I can remove, and I don't want to use the oven even to bake bread.

Also once the weather gets hot, my hermitage is no longer as secluded. I have to share my private road. And the dogs do not understand. All winter they have been letting me know if anything untoward has been happening. They don't go off the property unless I am with them but they are aware of any movement in the empty houses.

Because I have Remi this very hot weekend, and because my cottage neighbours are on the lake, I can't even take Kenya and just swim my troubles away. Remi is a sociable dog and he will visit the neighbours, and then I will have to worry about whether he is bothering them.

Kenya gets upset if she thinks their house might be being burgled, but she goes right home if they tell her to, and her visits are more in the nature of duty calls than social visits, so she would rather play with me and a stick than visit anyone else.

And, since they still need exercise, it means I must take more frequent walks ... and endure the heat, humidity and bugs.

I will be glad when the neighbours leave and/or Remi goes home. Then Kenya and I can return to our normal patterns of going out when we want to, swimming when it is hot, and generally doing as we please.

So far today I have taken the dogs for a long walk, made bread, helped Rowboat Flo move some things up the hill for a garage sale, and followed a fail proof recipe for mayonnaise which refused to emulsify, and I am worn out. And I still have to cut up and cook the batch of rhubarb Flo gave me yesterday, and walk the dogs at least once more.

But I may just go for a swim alone and take a nap first. It's that kind of day.

Random Thoughts

Arrow and I talked yesterday on her 8th birthday ... she was quite definite ... she was still 7 till the magic hour of her escape from the womb. As we talked, she was surrounded by helium filled balloons and had a blue one attached to her toe.

Gabriel picked up Zeke who didn't bother to leave Kenya's food dish to greet him. I think he realized that his fears had been for nought as he stroked Kenya's head while we talked. Zeke was out in the porch rummaging about, quite unconcerned about going home with his person. The dogs were calm.

Both Gabriel and Debra were enthusiastic about Stephen Lewis' speech at the Bishop's convocation on Saturday. Gabriel was one of the graduates, and Debra had gone to be with her daughter. Debra was the guest minister at the UUC yesterday. I hadn't been to a service there for a very long time. I am glad I went. She spoke about unexpected pilgrimages when we travel, literally into the world and figuratively into ourselves, keeping ourselves open to experiences that can open our hearts and encourage us to live our lives more purposely. It made me think about my own "pilgrimage" this summer.

Not sure what today will bring. The lake is very misty this morning, and the sun has not started to burn it away. I'd like to plant the beef steak tomatoes, lavender, mint, thyme, and rosemary ... but likely won't get everything done as planting here requires dog proofing every site. But I can start.

That is one of the changes that has taken place in me. I used to feel the need to get things done RIGHT NOW. Lately I am comfortable with the idea that I can do a little today and a little more tomorrow. It likely has something to do with the enormity of the tasks surrounding me and the realization that I am just one small almost 68 year old woman. It is not patience so much as an understanding of what is possible.

It's all a numbers game ...

On June 3 I will be 68 years old.

Imagine! I never thought I would live past 57, the age when my mother's second heart attack killed her. I feel as if I have been granted an extra 11 years of happiness. It has also been 11 years since I retired.

Who knows? Maybe I will be really lucky and live till I am 86 as my dad did. He too retired at 57 and had almost 30 years of retirement.

Marta is coming for a barbecue and Tammy is going to try to join us ... and I will invite Sarah as well. Are there any other women who would like to join us? Susan? Erin? Our ages will span 5 decades.

I used to think of 68 as very very old ... almost 70 ... and that was ancient ... but once you get there you discover as you did when you were 30 (or 40 or 50 or 60) that you are still young; that the woman inside the sagging body still has a life. Things fall apart as the African writer, Chinua Achebe, says, but life continues, and with it, hope and opportunities for happiness.

Relative Poverty

Marta and I spoke about poverty the other day. She felt that only the really down and out, the hopeless, were actually poor. No one could argue with her that real poverty is different from what many people mean when they say they are broke or poor or feeling desperate about money.

My money worries are miniscule compared to those of someone who has nothing ... someone living on welfare ... a refugee anywhere in the world, but especially one living in one of the camps. My financial state is nothing like the poverty in which almost all Africans and Indians whether from the sub-continent or displaced here in the Americas live. I do not have to worry about starving to death or dying of one of the many poverty-related diseases that plague the really poor.

But concerns about money cause me anxiety.

It is not that I have nothing; it that I own something I value and do not want to lose it.

I have embarked on a project that will give me a home until I can no longer live here by the lake, a home which will in turn, provide security when I am really old and something for my children to inherit when I die. This project is swallowing huge amounts of money, way more than I expected it to ... not because I wanted to create a mansion but because of problems over which I had no control ... building problems caused by the landscape and by the builders I chose. Nature can be hard but at least you can't blame anyone. Human ineptitude and dishonesty are something else. They cause stress. So does wondering where you can find the money to fix the mistakes or complete the essential parts of the job left unfinished.

My pension provides enough to live carefully and when I look after dogs I can afford some luxuries. If the house does not devour more of what is left of my savings than I am prepared to spend this summer, I can manage ... at least until my car dies ... or unless some terrible calamity befalls me.

I am not going to go hungry or cold, but I might lose my home, and with it a good bit of the savings I have invested in it, because it will take time to recoup that investment. If that happened I would have to find affordable housing. If I were in the city I would not need a car. If I were in the country I could have dogs.

It usually helps me to look at worst case scenarios.

This time, however, the worst case scenario not only means I will lose the house on the lake I love, but it will have meant that I have spent a year living homeless, and another year living with construction going on around me and dealing with the problems of building. Over two years of my life have been invested as well as the money — invested in a dream that is still not fulfilled. I am still living in an unfinished house on an unfinished lot. In the past two years I have also spent a lot of money unnecessarily on moving costs, and on transfering my life to Quebec.

The past two years have aged me. I am not as well as I was before all this started.

So yes, I have more than someone who is truly poor, but trying to hang onto it is diminishing me and making me feel poor.

A Very Rainy Monday Morning ...

A good weekend! Productive and fun.

Still some debris to deal with but the deck is now almost completely clear so my view of the lake is unimpeded, at least if I lift my eyes a bit!

On Sunday I had a lovely time with Lois, Tammy, Carlos, Marta and all the dogs. We ate and drank well, told stories ... and laughed lots. I hope Tammy and Lois will send me photos because I didn't take any.

Marta and Henry slept over. I am discovering that having someone here at night helps me find the peace of mind to sleep better. I dreamed dreams of old friends and lovers in new situations, and my blood pressure dropped to healthy levels despite have drunk a good bit of wine.

I have been monitoring my blood pressure carefully lately and find that only mental stress and anxiety cause it to rise. Wine has nothing but positive effects on it. My doctor, an abstainer and a Muslim, would like me to follow the 1,7,2 rule. Two drinks a day maximum; 7 drinks a week maximum. In other words do not drink more than a glass of wine every day with dinner or drink two glasses of wine every second day. I like drinking wine daily and I feel deprived if I must stop after one glass. I like the second, and occasionally the third, glass. I associate wine with relaxing at the end of the day, and I usually pour the first glass around 5 p.m. and sip it as I prepare dinner. Dr. Mellick (whom I really like) says that the research is showing that the blood pressure of women is lowered by the first glass of red wine and then raised by subsequent glasses. My research is not bearing this out. My blood pressure is highest during the day when I am most likely to be under stress, and lowest once I begin to relax over wine.

I will be going in to the Ottawa Hospital's Cardiac Diagnostic Centre again on June 13. This time they will do a myoview scan as well as the treadmill. It is nuclear medicine and they will inject radioactive dye and watch the progress of blood to the heart while resting and while stressing the heart through exercise. If there are any blockages they should be able to detect them. Apparently heart X-rays are not always accurate indicators for women because their breast tissue shadows things so that they get false positives more often. That is when the myoview is a more precise tool.

Today and tomorrow I will be walking Remi with Kenya and I am looking forward to it, especially if the rain lets up. For someone who is being monitored for two potentially lethal conditions, I am feeling remarkably healthy and fit.

Yikes! I am becoming my father ...

"If you have a positive thought your body actually goes into a positive vibration, you actually attract everything that resonates with that vibration."

(sent to me courtesy of Insight of the Day to which I subscribe)

It reminds me of Dad's little books of homilies for living a happier, more successful life ... you know ... the kind that Amway salesmen promote ... Dale Carnegie stuff.

But the really scary thing is that I believe this! I believe that happiness begets happiness.

I have found since I retired and began wearing glasses that people smile more at me. I figure I probably smile more myself, and I likely look less threatening than I used to. Now I am simply a little old bespectacled smiling lady. I exude no sex appeal, no power, just bemused niceness.

I like pronoia (the antidote to paranoia), Rob Brezny's philosophy, although I do balk when it gets too saccharine.

I like being around positive people and walk away from complainers.

Dad used to get headaches when I would lecture him about socialism and the evils of American imperialism. I get headaches just remembering all those wasted hours and days and weeks, yes, years, of trying to convince people that they should boycott Kraft products, Dare cookies and lettuce harvested by Mexican slaves for their capitalist masters.

We were smarter, I think, but we looked just as foolish handing out pamphlets outside grocery stores as that lone guy I saw on Bank Street the other day. He was haranguing passersby about God.

We were right and time has proven us so, but no one wanted to listen, so it was foolish to try to convince them. All those other old Wafflers are probably just like their parents now too ... complacent ... trying to shut out the doomsayers even though they know they are right.

But it isn't just this longing for peace in my valley. It is also how and where I choose to live. Dad chose a place in the mountains of the Eastern Townships where he could be free to enjoy nature. He lived for a while with a partner, but was happiest when he became a hermit again ... a hermit with one good friend.

I don't think he disliked people any more than I do. He liked to interact on a superficial level with the neighbours and tradespeople he encountered every day, but he liked going home to his hermitage. He called his place Shangri-La.

I like knowing I am part of a community and I value my friends, but I like living alone with Kenya. A hermit enjoys a freedom that is not possible when you live with most people.

I look at happy couples who seem like two halves of a whole while remaining fully themselves as well. There aren't that many, or at least I haven't seen that many. Some days I think it would be nice to find someone to share this life, but I am not sure I could begin that long process of becoming part of a comfortable couple again.

Some Thoughts on Death

No ... this is not going to be a morbid post.

But death has been something I have been thinking about lately for a number of reasons ... but thinking about it peacefully ... with equanimity rather than fear.

Our family is going to celebrate what would have been my father's 100th birthday in June. He died in 1995, and we will celebrate his life in the small village where he lived much of his life, and where he is buried.

I am dealing with estate questions just now, so the practicalities of my dying are on my mind.

And Anne-Marie's party tonight has been another trigger.

But the other things that have got me thinking are a couple of books about death for people who are not expecting to have an everlasting life. The religious have the comfort of their belief that they will continue into the hereafter; the rest of us cannot take comfort in a life after death.

One of the books begins with the words: "I don't believe in God, but I miss him", and the other describes what comes after death in a very comforting way despite the fact there he expects nothingness after death, as I do. Both books are about not being afraid of death despite living in a culture that fears the very idea. Especially frightening for most people is the concept that we lead brief flickering lives that die out to disappear forever.

In the mid-seventies at university I had a professor I adored ... oh not in any romantic way ... but he was my hero and I worshipped his ideas. He talked about the difference among British, American and Canadian writers, and a large part of the difference had to do with the idea of the importance of the individual. Because Canadian writers have been influenced by both of the other traditions, it is not surprising that we hold beliefs that are an amalgam of the two. As in most other things, we seem to reach a compromise position; in this case between believing the individual has no importance or that he is all important.

Robin Mathews believed that a novel like Who Has Seen the Wind showed the extremes in the reprobate, the Old Ben, and in the rigidly upright townsfolk who were his antithesis, but that Digby, the school teacher, represented the Canadian viewpoint. Digby was a good tough man ... good and tough. He stood up for himself and others. He lived a morally upright life. He was neither anarchic nor rigidly bound by tradition, and he lived his life for the good of himself and other people. He tried to make his small world a better place.

This thread weaves itself throughout Canadian literature. The most important thing that people leave behind them when they die is not wealth or prestige or plaques on buildings, but ripples that continue forever.

The writer of the second book on death, is Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who often quotes a philosopher, Epicurus. Yalom says, "Rippling refers to the fact that each us creates — often without conscious intent or knowledge —concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations."

So Digby left his influence on Brian, on the Young Ben, on generations of students, and even on the Old Ben and the Mrs. Abercrombies of the town.

Everyone who is a parent will surely touch her children and their children, but all of us leave those ripples whether we are genetically close to people or not.

We all conduct our personal, business and community lives in ways that affect others.

Most of us are just little frogs in little ponds and we make small ripples throughout our lives. Most of us will die without having invented penicillin or caused a genocide, but all of us have done good and bad things that have affected and influenced others in smaller ways.

As I get closer to the end of my life I try to remember the good ripples and hope there were more of them that the bad ones, not just because I want to be remembered as a good woman, but, more importantly, because I hope I have made this world a better place than I found it. It doesn't matter whether anyone can remember which of us had what influence. What really matters is whether things got a little better because we were here.

And that is remarkably comforting.

I wish my father had been more comfortable with the idea of dying than he was. He did a lot of things wrong as a parent, but I see his good ripples all the time in myself, my children and my grandchildren, and I wish he had gone to his death comforted by that knowledge.

May 17th ...

May 17th: I was married 51 years ago today. I was 16.

May 17th: Tonight I will be going with Tammy and Carlos to say a final good bye to Anne- Marie, a wonderfully vibrant woman who lived surrounded by art and friends, and died too soon. Tonight's party will be a celebration of a life well lived.

May 17th: Marie confirmed that the photo of Linda in my blog entry a few days ago ( A Morning Fresh with Possibility ) is indeed the Linda who is being helped by Layla's Gala funds. I was hoping it was. She seemed in the short time I spent in her company a couple of years ago to be a peaceful strong young woman.

Yesterday I worked hard physically all day ... vaccuuming, washing all the floors, transplanting lilies ... Kenya and I went to bed at 7. Except for a phone call from Kerry and a couple of times that I listened to the loons and the whipporwill, I slept almost 12 hours. They too seemed more at peace last night.

The second roofer is coming this morning to examine the roof.

And so my day begins.

What doesn't kill you keeps you young ...

Another brilliant day on the lake.

Yesterday I found the green ladder that enables us to get down to the lake from the deck. It is very ugly and very heavy. I made it when we built the deck. Last spring I found it leaning against a tree down at the other end of the lake and I had to get Tammy to help me hoist it onto the roof rack to get it home. I was very glad I found it before it had got too far this spring.

It was hovering next door, kissing their dock which has fallen to pieces.

Kenya and I made our way through the undergrowth to the old dock where I stood in the water and attached a yellow rope to one of the rungs.

So far, everything had been simple, but now the hard part began.

I had to make my way back along the shoreline keeping the rope on the lake side of the trees as I dragged the ladder along toward home. In manicured countryside, this might have been easy, but Pike Lake's shoreline and forest are largely untouched tangles of brush and trees whose root systems are half in the lake and half on shore. This can make grabbing a small tree to avoid falling in the lake a little hazardous, as some of the smaller ones are not rooted at all.

By the time I had moved the ladder about 30 feet I decided that I needed to bring the kayak over to complete the journey. Too many of the trees were just too difficult to make my way around or too big to manoeuvre a rope around. The one I gave up on was impossible to circle with my arms and the lake at that point was too deep for rubber boots and too cold for bare feet.

I tied the yellow rope to a tree and Kenya and I made our way back home. I picked up kindling as I went and Kenya tried to take fallen trees with her. When that proved bothersome she tried to steal my sticks. Have I told you Kenya doesn't share sticks? Well, neither do I. We argued all the way home.

I climbed on the table in the porch and got the kayak paddle down off the rafters. The thought that I might fall and break something crossed my mind briefly. Men have these thoughts and act on them; I just have them and ignore them. After all, how would a small hermit woman manage to accomplish anything, if she paid attention to such thoughts?

I was tired by now so I decided to make it my mission to take the kayak to recue the ladder the next morning.

Several years ago when I was much younger, and Tyren was a year old ... 15 years ago ... Kerry and I took the canoe to rescue The Royal Bob, our floating dock. We couldn't leave Tyren, so all three of us got into the old yellow canoe.

It is an ungainly thing that is almost untippable but also almost impossible to steer with one paddler. We bought it when Kerry and Rob were old enough to want to play in a canoe, but too young to handle anything less stable.

Off we went, zipping along to the populated end of the lake, both of us paddling, Tyren happily ensconced between Kerry's legs, his little red life jacket making him look quite seaworthy.

I tied the yellow rope to the raft and we began to paddle home. Paddle, paddle, THUMP! Paddle, paddle, THUMP!

Each time we were thumped we'd have to get up steam again and retrace the last few paddle strokes that we had lost when the raft hit and pulled us backwards.

Tyren began to wail, and every time the the raft hit us, he shrieked. Kerry had to stop paddling.

It took a very long time to get the raft home.

I trust today's adventure with a ladder, a very tippy kayak, and May-cold water will be easier. But I am now almost 68. The last trip occurred when I was 53 and not alone. If you don't hear from me, I am likely caught in undergrowth somewhere along the shore.

I am off on my next adventure.

Ultrasound Outing

This afternoon I had my ultrasound at the Gatineau Hospital. Yesterday a neighbour mentioned that they were having C Difficile problems there, but I had made the appointment and was unwilling to pay $150 at a private clinic, so I went ahead with the original plan.

Before I left I drank 6 cups of water. My bladder holds exactly 6 cups, I think. I parked the car and edged my way, every muscle tensed, to the office where I was to get my health card. Then I went to Radiologie and was told it would be 20 minutes. I said I wasn't sure I could wait 20 minutes because I had drunk a great deal of fluid. The receptionist smiled and told me to go to the big waiting room.

I moved from one chair to another. I tried reading but was unable to concentrate on my book. I did some people watching hoping to get my mind off the distended basketball being pinched by my skirt's waistband. A woman wearing tight black stovepipes and white pumps with black stiletto heels sat opposite me with her two children. Another threesome came in, the daughter in a wheel chair. The mother was one of those ambiguous people whose sexual identity has been blurred by drugs. I got up and moved again.

This time I went back to Radiologie, loosening the top button before I got up. I explained my predicament, told the older receptionist I would have to reschedule because I was in pain and could not wait to use the toilet. She suggested a small pee. Surprisingly I found I was able to oblige and the pressure lifted a little.

I returned to the waiting room. Ten minutes went by and the fluids I had drunk earlier moved down to displace the ones I had released. The pain began again. I have been uncomfortable before but this was much worse than anything I ever experienced having an ultrasound when I was younger. Although I had a baby pushing down on my bladder then, I also had more elastic tissues. I gave up then. I went into the bathroom, peed, and told the receptionist I would definitely have to reschedule.

She suggested I drink more water. The technician arrived and said she could do it "the other way" with an empty bladder. The "other way" was not pleasant. In fact I was thinking I never wanted to even think about having sex again, when she announced that my bladder was not completely empty and I would have to return to the bathroom. I was sceptical but I toddled off obediently. Five minutes later a minuscule dribble leaked a few droplets into the bowl and I returned to the little room and the instrument of torture. More agony.

Then she called in the doctor who peered at the screen and pointed out something he was able to discern. He asked if my gynecologist had sent me. I said it was my GP. He said I would have to see a gynecologist and have another scan done.

I drove home feeling almost cheerful After all it was over and I was making this trip over the bumpy back roads on an empty bladder. CBC was interviewing Susan McMaster who has just written a memoir called The Gargoyle's Left Ear. I made a note to pick it up tomorrow when I go into Wakefield.

On Mountain Road I passed a field of cattle. A big white bull was mounting a cow. I felt considerable sympathy and remembered a poem I had written about the cows on that farm back when they were first introducing the Charolais strain into Canadian herds. My sympathies were with the young heifers then too.

Sacrificial Cows

I passed a herd of cattle,
lots of creamy white,
and remembered the first Charolais
in the Valley.

Aristocratic ...
French ...
imports ...
... big ...

but not as hardy
as the stocky shaggy
little animals raised in the Valley
who could winter out and thrive.

The first heifers
must have been terrified
by the enormous French bulls
at stud.

But of course they never saw
the source of the fluid
antiseptically introduced
into their vaginas,

never saw the bull they wanted to scream at
as they tried mightily
to expel those first
Charolais-Hereford calves

never saw the cause
as they were cut open
to save the new breed of calf,
larger, stronger than either parent.

So they screamed
at the farmers,
and the vets
they had trusted.

Snow turning to rain ...

Is that an improvement or what?

The day isn't starting off much better except that after a good night's sleep the 25 pound weight is off my chest, and I don't have to go to Cumberland for a medical appointment.

I do have to set up that ultrasound, call the electrician about the breakers that keep turning off the floor heating, deal with my bills (Quebec Hydro for this two month period was $530.44), and call Havoc's owner AGAIN.

I hope that the rain we are expecting doesn't require the bucket, bowl and bin brigade to be re- organized.

I should also tidy up the closets that I've torn apart in order to get at the leaks.

Maybe I will shovel away some of the snow and ice debris that has come off the roof, but that would require me to exert myself. I expect that walking Kenya a mile around the lake and back and spending 30 minutes walking and playing with Remi while we are over there will be all the exertion I can stand for today. It is way more exercise to do that workout in this weather because my road is an icy obstacle course, and Pike Lake Road is sometimes not much better but has larger muddier puddles when it is mild enough for rain. In good weather it is 70 minutes; these days it is more like an hour and a half.


On a brighter note here is a photo of one of the puppies in Erin's dog's litter ...

A not-so-good kind of day ...

Today I left here at 7:30 a.m. to go to a doctor's appointment. I mentioned the chest pains as well as the other unrelated symptoms that concerned me. She checked my blood pressure (high), and listened to my lungs (fine) and my heart (not fine ... some signs of arterial schlerosis). She was more concerned about the chest pains than the other symptoms, and sent me for a heart X-ray and an EKG and prescribed nitroglycerine spray. She also orderd an ultra sound for the other condition, and told me that both problems were of serious concern, but the priority had to be the possibility of a heart attack as that would kill me faster than uterine cancer. No ... she didn't actually use those words but that was her meaning.

Oh, she also told me not exert myself. The only way I can avoid that up here is to drop dead.

At the medical centre, I discovered that I had to pay for the EKG up front because Quebec doesn't cover it in Ontario, and that the ultra sound would have to be done in Quebec because they wouldn't reimburse it at all.

So I got the heart X-ray and the EKG, and headed back to Wakefield where I filled my prescription.

By now I was panicking because I was getting so close to the time when Peter Weeks would be inspecting my roof and its leakages (1:30).

I tore up Mountain Road and nearly slammed into a brown station wagon followed by a black truck with a ladder on it. I recognized the ladder. It was Tom's. We both stopped, and he told me that Peter had done his inspection and was the driver of that brown station wagon. Tom would come back to tighten some screws on the roof ... when it was safe.

A potential client came up to introduce me to his dog. Annie, the dog, turned out to be fifteen years old, terribly arthritic, and unable to cope with my hill. I felt very sympathetic, and wondered if I shouldn't offer her some of the nitro spray.

I called Peter. The news was not good. Mike had screwed up badly when insulating, installing the flashing and ventilating the roof. In addition the roof was a complicated one, and the mistakes would be hard to fix.

Then I tried to get hold of Havoc's owner whose letter and cheque have still not arrived after more than a week. She is still playing the message from February. I don't know exactly what game she is playing but I am determined not to let her get away scot-free. I can't afford to allow her to steal $300.

Kenya and I sat down and watched Betty Page ...

I wish I still had that kind of youthful innocence, vitality and exuberance. Maybe if I had, today would have felt like a better day.