May 23, 2013

It’s 10am, Thursday, May 23, and it feels as if it’s about 2pm.  I got up at 5:30 to drive to the Kelowna airport to pick up Barbara who is having a nap now because she woke at 4am in Calgary in order to catch a plan here at 6am Mountain time.  I bought a Tim Horton’s coffee in the airport to drink while I waited for her plane to arrive and then had more coffee and breakfast with her once we got home.  The caffeine combined with the excitement of seeing Barb and sharing some stories has me too wired to sleep even though it’s a grey day, perfect for an afternoon nap, but then it is only 10am.

The cedars, roses, irises and new plum and hazelnut trees in the garden are sucking up the heavy rains we’ve had over the last 2 days.  I’m happy for that, but wish the weather were better for showing Barb the countryside.

I think that I’m leveling off after ‘the thrill of the new’ when it comes to living in Vernon.  The twice lately that I’ve come back after being away, I’ve felt at home, but also a tad flat.  I’m used to living alone in my little home, but now I face the continuation of this life without the stimulation of adjusting to change and novelty.  In my continuing discovery of myself, I’m increasingly realizing that I’m more of a sprinter than a distance runner.  I’m fast out of the gate but not good in the long stretch.  Or maybe it’s just that the wee routine I had developed was broken by about 6 weeks away, and if I get back to it I will feel less restless.  I’ve seen my good buddies, Mo and John and gone on a couple of hikes since I’ve been back, and I’ve finally got back to classes with a couple of my Korean students again.  Yesterday, I went to the Rec. Centre to meet Lucia for the first time in weeks.  The swimming was really good for my arm.  I’ve been doing the physiotherapy religiously morning and evening to keep the right shoulder from freezing, but until the axillary nerve grows back, which I hope it will, I have no deltoid muscle so I can’t lift the arm at all by itself.  However, in the water I was able to do the breaststroke and a back- stroke that I made up to accommodate my gimpy arm.   I did them with no real strength but well enough to complete some slow lengths.  This swimming combined with a sauna and steam bath made me feel much better than I had when I dragged myself out of bed at 7 and forced myself to drive to the Rec. Centre.  Lucia and I always go to Starbucks for coffee and a chat/ language class afterwards.  By the end of all that, I was in top shape.  I think I’m becoming a coffaholic.  Now I have Barb visiting for a few days.  How much stimulation do I need?

Jay sent me this picture.  He added the comment, "Let's hope mid September is not peak season."

Eunjung, when she was over for dinner on Wednesday, using the magnetic words that Barb and Terry gave me to write comments on Jay's picture on my fridge.

An early poppy in my garden

Sharing the first gin and tonic of the season with Mo on her deck.

A wedding, 2 drives and a theft

Forgive me friends for I haven’t written; it’s 13 days since my last blog.  As a long lapsed member of the United Church of Canada, I have never had to worry about confessions, but it seems like a long time since I last sat down to write, and that expression popped out of some movie memory and onto the page.  This is the day that dad goes home from the hospital.  I haven’t phoned yet to see how they’re doing; I will wait until I think they’re settled in their chairs about to watch the news on tv, with a shared Presbyterian beer and some celery with Imperial cheese before I call.  I know that then they’ll be close to a phone so neither one will have to rush to answer and risk falling in the attempt.

I’m back in Vernon after spending a week in Calgary with Jo, going to Devlin Steers’ wedding and traveling in the Rockies with Barb and Faye.  I return to the blogosphere on the same day as Chris Hadfield re-enters the atmosphere.  I heard on tv last night that one of the adjustments that he will have to make is to the fact that you can’t just let go of things here on earth and have them float around near by waiting for you to pick them up again.  Things fall on earth.  We in Vernon were made aware of that this Friday when a flying car called Maverick, with an aircraft engine and fabric wing, crashed in a school playing field.  No one was seriously hurt, but the story must have legs because Linda Sanborn heard about it in Ottawa. 

I had a really good visit with Jo.  Our opinions on many subjects are different, but we’ve known each other since grade 8 and value our friendship more than our positions on matters of politics and economics, so when we approach a wall, we get off our hobby horses and walk down another path that’s less contentious. 

I’m very happy that I ‘held the date’ for Katherine and Devlin’s wedding.  It seems like ages since I was first asked to do that, so that by the time I walked into The Ranchman’s Club in Calgary for the reception on Saturday night and ran into Barbara, I was reminded of the poem, ‘The Titanic’, by E. J. Pratt, in which he details the long forming of the iceberg and making of the ship leading up to their fateful collision.  Every aspect of the wedding was the successful result of careful preparation, love and attention to detail.  The weather was even perfect for the outdoor ceremony.  It continued to be so for the four days that Barbara, Faye and I drove around Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper.   We had a great time together.  Driving them to the Calgary airport was fine, but if we had been about 20 minutes later, we would have been stuck in traffic.  As I drove back to Jo’s, there were very few cars going in my direction, but those heading to the airport were at a complete standstill for kilometers.

I drove home, again in fine weather, on Friday.  I’m happy to be back, unpacked and not having to drive for a while.  I went to tea with Mo and her mom on Saturday and on a Mothers’ Day hike with the VOC where I saw Mo and John and my other friends.  Later that day, I had a good Skype with Jay.    The only down side of my return has been the discovery that Ron Noganosh’s copper shield in the form of a screaming face with rear view mirror eyes that I had hung in the open porch in the front of the house had been stolen.  I loved it and was a fool to put it where I did.  I didn’t think it would be stolen.  I just didn’t think.  Too late, I realized that it was made of copper and probably stolen because of that.  I went to the RCMP this morning to report it.  A lovely young officer took careful notes, and I’m sure he’ll do his best, but I don’t have much hope of ever getting it back.   

Devlin and Katherine

Barbara and Faye in the Rockies

Where the glacier at the Columbia Icefield was when I was 2 compared to where it is now, in the distance.

The scene Barb, Faye and I contemplated as we had our evening drink on the balcony of our hotel room in Banff

A rental van in a parking lot in Banff.  On the back was painted, " Life is like a bowl of soup; you only get blown if you're hot."

Mo's mum, me and Mo having tea

The first hike of my return from Victoria with the VOC, overlooking Lake Okanagan

Me on the Mothers' Day hike up Sugarloaf

The Hat Trick

I’ve been back in Vernon for a week.  The little house was well taken care of by Mo and Priscilla, and Donna had collected a big bag of ‘Morning Stars’ that went immediately into the recycle and mail that was mostly junk.  I drove to Kelowna on Tuesday morning to have the car summarized at the Mazda dealership there and then have lunch and a good visit with Bert and Peggy.  Wednesday I went to see the neurologist, a serious young man who spent a long time looking at ultra sound images of my right shoulder and arm.  I could actually see the white line of the nerve, where there was a nerve, not as exciting as making out the dim image of the child in your womb, but technically impressive none-the-less.  I liked him because he was thorough and admitted to not having all the answers.  In fact he had no answers, so we will wait and I will see him again in a month.  Aside from continuing to do the exercises that the physiotherapist gave me to keep the arm from freezing while I wait for up to 6 months for the nerve to repair itself, he mentioned that there is a surgeon in Vancouver who does an operation to repair the axillary nerve.  HOWEVER, he uses a nerve from the foot.  That gave me pause.  If I’m going to have to make a choice among my limbs, I think I would prefer to have 2 legs and 1 arm rather than 2 arms and 1 foot.

I hope that I wakened this morning, Wednesday, May 1, workers’ day, to a fresh start.  It’s sunny, and I’ve been for a walk on the Grey Canal with Marie, so perhaps my hat trick of difficulties is behind me.  On Monday, March 11, I dislocated my right shoulder, on Sunday, March 24, dad fell and broke his hip and yesterday I succumbed to a scam.  I made the mistake of turning on the computer before I’d washed my face and had coffee and breakfast.  When I tried to unpack my e-mails, I couldn’t.  A glitch that had been in my system for about 2 years, that I had always overridden, seemed to have finally bucked me off.  I couldn’t open my G-mail account.  I panicked.  It’s my lifeline to friends and relatives.  I googled Google tech support, found the name of a company on contract to them, phoned that company, in India of course, and began to discuss my dilemma with a salesman whose day I must have made.  Not having thought about the situation, let alone discussed it with anyone, I was vulnerable and took this guy to be my friendly helper, when, nice as he may have been, he was a salesman.  He had a service I needed, reconnect my g-mail account, as well as products, Spyware and Malware and god knows what otherware, I didn’t.  After listening to more of his pitch than I should have, I paid $300.00 dollars for the Full Monty.  AND I did it all on my Mastercard.  As soon as the money changed hands, he and then other technicians in India began moving the cursor of my laptop around for hours.  It’s spookier than watching the 3 cornered stool move on a Ouiji Board.  It took a long time because I had never fully erased any of my e-mails; there were almost 8,000 of them to put back up.  As soon as that was over and the mystery ware installed or not, I took my laptop to the local Mac store and found out for free how to really delete.  I probably should have gone to them in the first place.  Now I have the cleanest in box in Canada.  Can that be taken a few ways?  

I felt fine for a while, and then I began to wonder about the Mastercard information that I had so thoughtlessly divulged to ‘whomever’.  Just about that time I went on Skype to talk with Jay.  He began by telling me about a weird e-mail he had received in my name.  That reminded me that the salesman had mentioned Jay’s hotmail account at one point, thinking it was a second account of mine.  PANIC!  Jay thought that I should cancel my Mastercard, and I agreed.  Then we decided that I should look into my web banking, even though he had heard somewhere that TD Easy Web was very secure.  After a bit more serious discussion, Jay suggested that I not send money to any young person who phones or e-mails me saying that he/she is somehow related to me and is stranded in the Congo.  I laughed and laughed and felt more grounded than I had all day.  We ended our Skype a bit earlier than usual so that I could call Mastercard and TD, but I felt I’d come through relatively unharmed.  Losing $300.00 and waiting a week for a new Mastercard doesn’t hurt as much as a dislocation, and I’ve learned to be more wary of scams, I hope, to say nothing of how to really delete e-mails.  And my g-mail account no longer has the irritating message popping up every time I open it. 

One thing about living alone after having been married for almost 40 years with someone with whom you could share ideas, even if you didn’t always agree, is that you aren’t able to express yourself in words before you act, and that can be dangerous.  I often think best in dialogue.  As I discussed this with Mo last night on the phone, she assured me that I could phone her any time about such things.  In future I will stick to Jim’s rule about not doing anything business-like when you’re tired and I will talk with Jay, Mo or some sane friend or relative before I give out all my Mastercard information.

The main street of Vernon on the first hot summer day.  It's cooler now.

The VOC on the last Sunday hike on East Vernon Hills.  The snow-covered Monashees are in the distance

A view over Vernon of Terrace Mountain, taken from the Black Rock

A view of Incheon that Jay got while hiking near where he lives.  We took these pictures at almost the same time.  The season and blossoms are similar, but the cities are very different