Spring

My session at the library with the woman who volunteers to help seniors with tech difficulties was a success. We didn't solve the main issue with the blog, but working along with her on it and other things gave me a real boost. I'm less inhibited about trying things on the iPhone and iPad now. She only writes a blog when she goes on holiday, and she hasn't had one in over a year. She didn't know that the app she had used too had been dropped. We found one that looked good but you had to pay for it, a whopping $6.99. She showed me how to check the comments on the blog. She was impressed with the responses the designer gave to comments on it. And then our hour was up. We parted agreeing to buy and try it. We have since emailed each other about it. We both think it's almost as good as the old one. Allowing for the fact that I'm harder to turn around than a big rig, I should probably say it's as good. 

That success buoyed my spirits which had been a bit low since about two weeks after my return from Mexico. I had been so happy to get back on the snow and then I just felt punk, as my dad used to say. I wanted to sleep all the time. 

The boost I got from taking action on the tech. front combined with getting help from Jay, friends and the lawyer on the easements has brought me back to life. I'm too inclined to worry rather than act. Of course in spite of the fact that the lawyer and his assistant with whom I am working are really friendly and efficient, matters of the law take a long time. But now that I'm doing something and not just worrying, I'm actually having a few laughs. After our first friendly chat on the phone, Linda, the executor of the will, went back to her original tack, into what she took for a light breeze. She phoned again to ask if I liked blackberry jelly. I said I loved black currant jam but not being from BC, I wasn't sure if I'd ever tasted blackberry jelly. She said she had just made some and would bring me a couple of jars. Then she suggested that her husband could assemble a shed for me, to replace my 1/3 garage. Jay had just told me how flimsy those things are, so I changed the subject and asked her if her brother's full name was the one the lawyer had given me that day on the phone. She said it was and the tone of the talk moved a bit beyond jars of jam and plastic sheds from Walmart. I told her what my lawyer had suggested, and now she has gone to her lawyer who will arrange for the easements to be professionally evaluated and get in touch with my lawyer when that is done. Good lawyers are even better than fences when it comes to relationships between neighbours. I don't think the settlement will be huge but at least I won't feel like a lone, lorn widow who was taken advantage of because she didn't act. It would really have been my own fault because this woman would not have been a wolf had I not come across as a sheep at our first meeting. 

I have to keep reminding myself that one of the advantages of being alone is that you can learn from having to do things you otherwise wouldn't have to. 

Now I'm relaxing with a glass of wine after a day of making some changes required as we move into spring. After the first Friday hike of spring, I went on line to learn again what I had forgotten about how to inflate the tires on my ebike. That's done. Then I cleaned, vacuumed and changed the mats in the car and put the bike rack on it. 

The setting sun is illuminating the living room. I don't get a real sunset here, but the golden light that comes through the window makes me feel warm. The wine helps too. 

This is a bad photo of a good hike. Miriam and I are on theAnderson Ranch scouting the Goose Lake Ramble. The bones are of a cow that was killed two winters ago.  

The bones have a new home in the back yard. 

First World Problems

February was a cold month by Vernon standards and there was lots of snow in the hills, so I've done as much skiing after returning from Mexico as I did before leaving. Aside from that, I've been trying to resolve two 'issues': one concerning my blog and the other involving 

the easements connected to the bizarrely shaped property that this house sits on. 

When I first saw the plan of this property with its easements spreading out like long arms forming a 90%angle from the already rather tacked on rectangle of a parking area behind the main lot, I thought it was odd. But Jim discussed it with the lawyer and seemed satisfied that all was in order. Shortly after I moved in I took the sign "Jim's Eccentricity " that Gene had made for the sauna at our first house and attached it to the door of the 1/3 garage that constitutes one of the easements. 

Ten days ago, this and the other easement that extends from it onto 25th Street became an 'issue'. I don't usually use that word because it strikes me as being one of the many pc euphemisms that cloud our language and diminish clarity of thought. But I can't elevate the situation to the level of problem; although, perhaps it is what Jay would call a first world problem. At any rate, it's a bone I've been worrying since I answered a knock on the door one evening about ten days ago to be faced by a woman who introduced herself as the sister of John, the man who has lived alone in the house behind me since I moved in. She informed me that he had died and that she, as the executor of his estate, had lost two potential offers to purchase the property because of the easements against it. She said she had the legal papers in the car and would like to get them and discuss the matter with me. I hadn't even known John was dead and hadn't looked at our ownership papers since Jim died, so I didn't want to jump into a discussion of the eccentric easements there and then. We exchanged names and contact numbers and agreed to get in touch as soon as either of us had more information. 

My thoughts have been troubled by my ignorance of the matter and the vague fears that feed so readily on nothing. But I have also been taking action. I asked Jay what he thought when we Kakaotalked on his birthday. I felt much less anxious about the whole thing after that because we laughed about how weird we and all our friends thought the easements were, and he made some sane suggestions. Also, I was rereading Joseph Conrad's novel Nostromo at the time. It clearly illustrates the folly of excessive devotion to material interests. This also helped me to put things into perspective. And I had an appointment with the lawyer Jim and I had dealt with when we bought the house. He also got a laugh out of the easements and said that such things don't exist any more. But he's going to look into this one and make sure we get a fair settlement. And finally, I talked with Linda, John's sister and executor of his estate, this evening. We had an agreeable chat. She likes the woman who wants to buy their place. Things are looking up. 

 

Tomorrow morning at 11:00 I go to the library to meet the volunteer from Literary Junction who helps seniors with tech. problems. So by tomorrow afternoon my first world problems might be behind me. 

Jay’s chocolate birthday.  He told May not to bother baking a cake but that didn’t deter her from going to the heart of the matter, chocolate.  

Skiing at Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre last week, Priscilla, Jane, Erna, Lynne and me

Snowshoeing in duvets of snow in late February 

Final pictures of Mexico

I still don't have a blogging system that works as well as the one Google dropped, but I will try to stumble through the last of my pictures from Mexico.