Caroline, Irene, Tom and Dick

The little house is feeling more and more like home as the summer moves into fall.  Bill and Matti, Lindsay and Cleo have all spent a night here.  The Smiths stayed for a few days, and this past week, Caroline visited on her way home from Whitehorse.  We began with a shot of tequila and toasted Mela who was the absent third in the tequila shot triumvirate.  Caroline was reminded of food her grandmother who was originally from Cebu used to make her when she was young as she read the book, The Heart of Philippine Cuisine, that Jay and May had sent me. We shopped for ingredients and made a couple of the recipes.  It was the best food to come out of my kitchen so far, but it didn’t keep me from backsliding to grilled cheese sandwiches and raw veg. with a yogurt dip 2 days after she left.  However, I still have some sticky rice and won ton wrappers and am waiting for her to send me the recipe to make the mixture to put in the fried won tons.  She showed me how to roll sushi, and I also learned the secret of ton katsu, so although the rut is deep, there is variety beyond it if I can just move my wheels.  Perhaps when Bill and Paula visit near the end of Sept. I will be inspired to leave the comfort of cheddar cheese. 

Caroline and I drove and walked to Jade and Juniper beaches on Lake Okanagan and had a swim and picnic.  One day we went with Tom and Dick, my Tom Tom GPS and the voice I’ve chosen, Richard, on a wine tasting tour.  The boys were amazingly good, gave us a few laughs and didn’t lead us down any garden paths that we didn’t already want to go down.  Our first tasting was at the farthest point south, Kettle Valley Winery in Naramata.  We tasted 2 whites, 2 reds and a fortified wine.  They were good and we each bought a Gewürztraminer.  The woman we talked with was the owner, so we learned a lot about their process; seemed to be scrupulous in their work.  The next place was between Penticton and Kelowna on the opposite shore of Lake Okanagan.  I chose it for it’s Spanish name, Bonitas Winery.  Again we talked with the owners, tasted 4 wines and bought one.  At this point Caroline wisely suggested we stay for lunch.  The last winery we went to was Mission Hill.  I hadn’t been there since Jim and I went with the family about 20 years ago.  It has changed.  The setting is as magnificent as I remembered, but the bell tower, buildings and gardens are much more elaborate.  The sculptures of a French artist, Nathalie Decoster, are on display around the grounds this season.  We had a good time wandering among them.  I was thinking that I had probably tasted enough wine, and that was a good thing because the Mission Hill tasting was more expensive than the others and their wines were beyond our budgets.  Caroline left on Wednesday morning and flew into the storms of the east, which held her up for 4 hours in Toronto.

It’s been a week of news and weather, the death of Jack Layton, the end of the HST in BC, the almost end of Gadhafi and Hurricane Irene.  When I finish this, I will have TV dinner and watch what I have on the PVR.  I bought the ‘Globe and Mail’ to read about Jack and I want to hear what Steven Lewis has to say at the funeral.  Heaven knows how BC will compete with Ont. without the HST, only Allah knows where Gadhafi is and Irene must have hit the coast of N. Carolina by now.

Caroline at the Kettle Valley Winery

The outdoor restaurant at Bonitas Winery

Caroline and the bell tower at Mission Valley Winery

One of Nathalie Decosta's sculptures at the Mission Valley Winery.  The circle is an old ring that held together the staves of a wine barrel

This Thursday's bike along Buchanan Road at the base of the hills east of Vernon

I can't interpret this cover photo.  I understand the cane leaning against his empty seat in the House, but what's the hand doing?

Life laughs on

It’s 11:35 on Sat. morning, and I’ve just finished listening to ‘This is That’ with Peter Oldring (?) and Pat Kelly on CBC Radio 1.  I have to say again that it is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever heard.  You can also find it on CBC online and on Itunes, I think.

Last Sunday’s hike was another good one.  We went to Vista Pass at the southern end of the Pinnacles, a chain of peaks between Lake Okanagan and the Arrow Lakes.  I got home just in time to shower and go to Marie and George’s house for a concert.  George is a pianist and has lots of musician friends who like to play at his home because it has high ceilings and he has a very good piano.  It was wonderful looking out the windows over the dry hills and the lake as music filled the room.

On Monday I went to the early showing of the film club movie.  This week it was ‘Beginners’ by Mike Mills.  It was well done but hard to watch at times because it made me think of Jim’s valiant struggle.  Christopher Plumber played an older man who discovered he was dying of lung cancer not too long after his wife had died and he had come out as gay.  He played the role really well and so did his lover (Goran Visjnic).  He was exuberantly trying to do all the things he’d missed in life at the same time that he was dying.  The parallel story of his son’s (Ewan McGregor) tortured attempt to start a relationship with an actress (Melanie Laurant) was sometimes cute, especially when the dog was around but so self involved it bordered on boring.  The importance placed on being with loving family, friends, strangers and even dogs was a valid one, I thought.  So many people I know are living this.  It’s much more worth pursuing than the ‘bucket list’ of ‘must see places’ and ‘must do things’ that gets so much attention these days.

I’ve got a great doctor thanks to my physiotherapist.  Soon I’ll see an optometrist, Doug Irwin from Thunder Bay.  I’m getting hooked up to the medical community.  I also am going to go on the outdoors club bike week in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in Sept.  I’d heard people talking about it, that the rides would be beautiful and mostly flat, and wanted to go.  But I thought that the groups had been formed.  And they had, but one couple cancelled and my friend, Priscilla, heard about it.  She asked me if I would like to go with her and I said, ‘Yes.”  I have a life, or at least the beginnings of one here in Vernon.

I will be leaving soon to pick up Caroline at Kelowna airport.  I can’t wait to see her.

The view from Vista Pass

Me with the Pinnacles in the background

An old picture of Jay and Blake that Don sent me this week

Another of Don's pictures of the boys

August 13, 2011

Tom Tom works.  He got me to the Gray Monks Winery without a hitch.  But my home address is not on his map.  I live on a 3-block section of 26^th Street in Vernon that is cut off from the rest of that street and not included in the GPS map system.  I have to set the destination and drive out of the driveway on to 32^nd Street before Tom picks me up.  Going home I have to either remember the route, which I can usually manage, or punch in a nearby address or intersection.  If I ever have to resort to the latter option, I should probably call a care home immediately upon entering the house.  When Caroline gets here next Sat., we will go to the Gray Monks and then let Tom take us to some destinations.

This morning I continued my developing tradition of buying a Globe and going to a café to read it.  I went to the Bean Scene for the 2^nd consecutive Sat. and sat outside in the shade on a soft chair, sipping a double Americano, munching a raspberry and white chocolate scone and trying to pass myself off as a perfectly contented local.  But it’s hard to concentrate, even on an interesting, well-written article, when all around you are people in colorful spandex outfits speaking in loud voices of the hikes they’ve just returned from and the hills they’ve descended on mountain bikes earlier that morning.  It was 10:30 for heaven’s sake.  The Bean Scene is definitely the café to be and be seen in, but next week I think I’ll try the one just a block away that seems to attract a less tightly dressed crowd.

Last Sunday’s hike on Mount Revelstoke was great.  It was a long day but not difficult, and the scenery and smell of fresh mountain air reminded me of the hikes I took in the Rockies when I worked for the Brewster Bus Co. in Lake Louise.  There was snow around once we reached a certain height, and it had melted from the meadows so recently that the wild flowers were hardly out.   

On Wed. night I rode my bike to Kin Beach on Lake Okanagan around 4:30 to attend the Vernon Outdoors Club annual picnic.  I swam in the lake for the first time. The temperature of the water was fine, but the bottom was a bit skuzzy.  We played some games and shared food until the wind began to freshen, at which time I looked up and saw some dark clouds approaching.  I couple I had been having a good conversation with offered to drive me home, but I decided I could ride.  And I did, but about 15 min. after I got home lightening flashed, thunder banged and the rain began to fall.  It went on for a long time.  I stood on the front porch and watched until I realized it wasn’t going to stop for quite a while.  Even I, from Thunder Bay, was impressed.  It was all the news the next day, the biggest thunderstorm in living memory in the Okanagan.   

Eva Lake in Mount Revelstoke National Park

   

August 2011

Jay survived the deluge in Korea.  He said that although some parts of the subway system were flooded and people lost their lives, he was only struck be heavy rain and continuing humid heat.  I checked the weather in Seoul this morning in ‘The Globe and Mail’ and appreciated the difference between there and Vernon at a glance.  Here the daytime temp. is between 30c. and 28c., as it is in Seoul, but here, it’s dry and drops to about 11c. at night, so I haven’t had to use the air conditioning.  I open the windows around 8pm and close them when I get up in the morning, but in Seoul it’s humid and the temp. doesn’t drop much at night.  It’s 11 a.m. now, and I’m hiding from the sun.  I bought a ‘Globe’ and went to The Bean Scene, a popular coffee shop in greater downtown Vernon to read it as I ate a bagel and drank a double Americano.  Later I intend to give the Tom Tom GPS that I bought yesterday on sale at Canadian Tire a road test.  I decided to make the purchase, after almost 2 years of thinking about it, which is an average amount of time for me to contemplate parting with about $130.00, because I saw how much Matti and Lindsay’s helped them on their trip here.  Also Canadian Tire had them on sale this week.  I bought it and drove home, only to find I couldn’t even figure out how to install it on the dash.  I didn’t want to break it, so I returned to CT and worked up the nerve to ask the guy at the auto shop cash to help me.  He immediately began manhandling the thing in a way that gave me the fantods, came out to the car and popped it on the windshield.  He told me not to leave the actual unit in the car in this heat because in might fry some aspect of it, so it’s in the house now sitting on a shelf in the sunroom, daring me to try it. Will I muster the courage?  Tune in next week to find out.

Last Sunday’s hike up the Sun Peaks hill near Kamloops was a good one.  We took the tow to the top and hiked up from there, through wonderful Alpine meadows to the summit of Mount Tod.  Not at all a difficult climb, but lovely country and a long view.  I discovered that the name of the ski area was changed from Mount Tod to Sun Peaks when the Japanese became financially involved in it’s development because the word ‘tod’ sounds like the Japanese word for death and they didn’t think that that was an auspicious name for a ski hill.  I biked on Wed. and Thurs. this week and have finally come to the conclusion that my bike is not the problem.  I’m just not as fit as these people and I don’t think I ever will be.  The good part is that they’re very accommodating and I can leave a ride when I want.  They make sure I know the way back.  On Thurs., Priscilla turned back early too and came with me for an iced tea on the back deck.  That’s more my speed. 

I have lots of exercises to do for my shoulder.  That’s one thing about physiotherapy; it works, but not without effort.  I continue to like my therapist.  He’s a straightforward, funny New Zealander.  And he found me a GP, a woman he knows.  I phoned her office after my last session of physiotherapy and have an appointment for Aug. 17.

Living alone necessitates more conscious planning and effort day to day than I was used to when Jim and I were together.  He did a lot of that, and I was more the facilitator.  Now I have to decide what to do and get myself there to do it.  Usually, things go well. But I am still alone at home.  That’s fine too most of the time, but there is a lot of time.  It is often a luxury to have nobody to please but yourself, but it’s hard to get used to not being part of a couple.  Jim and I spent a lot of time doing things more-or-less by ourselves, but each was always aware that another person who loved them, except when you drive them crazy, and even then, was within calling or touching distance.  But I did have 38 years with the man I loved, so I know I was very lucky and still am. 

An Alpine meadow on the way up Mount Tod

White Sitka Vallarian?, which has a wonderful smell, almost like jasmine, and red Indian Paintbrush

The view from the top of Mount Tod

The bikers at the Kal Lake Lookout.  Priscilla is on the right.  I look like a tourist who just wanted to be in the picture.

The sunroom showing Jay with his pike at the Martin's farm, the door outside to the deck and yard and dad's triptych of the model ships he made.

Visits

Archie and Marilyn Smith visited for two nights on their way back to Wakefield.  It was good to see them and chat over wine and dinner about life on the river and after.  We walked along BX Creek, looked at the falls and drove to Silver Star for lunch.  Archie helped me with some jobs that I’ve needed a man to do for a long time, like trying again to figure out why the toilet flushes erratically.  He had an idea, which he confirmed on Google, that it might be a blockage in the stench pipe.  The suggested solution was to go on the roof with the garden hose, shove it down the pipe and turn on the water to flush out whatever was there.  I got out my new ladder, which Arch coveted, and we climbed up on the roof.  I was excited to see what it was like.  It looks good.  The pipe had a small wasp nest in it, so I went to my bedroom to get the wasp spray Marg had told me every woman living alone should have by her bed.  I have never had occasion to use it yet and that’s just as well because Arch discovered that before you get the first 20 foot spray, you have to remove something that I would never have had time to remove if an attacker were heading for me unless he was using a walker.  After removing the nest, we turned on the water and let it run a while. The trick seemed to work while the Smiths were here, but although better it remains a reluctant flusher at times.  The other thing that was evident with 3 people living in the place was that all the doors squeaked.  The Smiths needed some stuff from Canadian Tire, so we went together, and I bought 2 other essential things for a house, WD 40 and duct tape. Now there are no more creaky hinges.  So the Smith’s visit was enjoyable and helpful.

I read the Sunday ‘Morning Star’ on Tuesday after the Smiths left and discovered that on Wed. night the touring mural celebrating the Canadians who died in Afghanistan would be at the cadet camp in Vernon.  Wed. was a busy day.  I biked with some women to Ellison Provincial Park Beach, about 40 km round trip, with a couple of hills I had to break down and walk up.  And at night I walked to the cadet camp for the 6:30 ceremony.  It was very moving, especially as there were a couple of hundred cadets there whose presence seemed to have an effect on all the speakers.  A breeze came up as the evening progressed, so the flag flew over the huge van that housed the mural.  When it was unveiled, the sight was impressive.  I had arrived early and spoken to the artist without knowing who he was.  He has rendered each face in a lifelike way and his commitment to the project is admirable.

Matti, Lindsay, Cleo and their dog Jack arrived on Friday and stayed the night.  They left about an hour ago for Kelowna where they will go to a wedding on Sunday.  It was wonderful to see them all, but especially Cleo.  She’s a beautiful, long-limbed baby with big, bright eyes and chubby cheeks.  She was very happy and loved to lie on a blanket on the floor stretching, rolling and pulling other blankets over her face.  She had a bit of a digestive problem that made her fussy at times, but that seemed to be clearing up as they left.  We went for some walks around town, enjoyed the warm breezes on the back porch and had good chats.  Having visits from friends and family is helping me to feel more at home in Vernon.  And I think the hot, dry days of summer are finally upon us.  I hope it’s not too hot tomorrow when the outdoors club goes to Kamloops to hike around Sun Peaks. 

I’m looking forward to talking with Jay on Mon. on Skype, as I always am, but this time especially because I heard on the news last week about heavy rain in Korea.  They showed pictures from Seoul and elsewhere of rushing water from what they said was the most rain in such a short time in about 100 years.  Climate change seems to be a constant.  

A few of the cadets hydrate before the show

The artist talking with the commander of the camp before the show

The mural unveiled

Cleo playing with her dad and blankets

Cleo and Matti on the floor

Lindsay, Cleo and Matti on the back porch

Filipino Fiesta 2011

Monday was like Christmas.  I Skyped with Jay at 6 in the morning and opened the big box of treats that he and May had sent me from Korea and the Philippines.  It was full of snacks and salsas, a book about the cooking and culture of the Philippines and clothes, 2 ‘ajama’ (grandma) hats to keep my face from the sun, a diaphanous white blouse and a bright shawl covered in orange and yellow suns.   I’m a lucky mom.

  My shins are still marred with dark scabs from biking, but this has been one of my most sedentary weeks.  I think the body needed a break.  It’s Sunday and I didn’t even go on the hike today.  It was supposed to be in the mountains near Revelstoke, but again was cancelled because of deep snow on the trails.  The email from the man who was going to lead the thing informing us that it was called off and that we were invited to join him on what he described as an unappealing alternative, was so convincing that I opted not to go for the first time since I joined the club.  My new physiotherapist would approve.  He’s a funny man with a New Zealand accent, I think, who seems to be a good physio.  He told me in the course of my initial treatment that in his 5 years in Vernon he’s come to the opinion that it has a very militant population of would be athletes between the ages of 55 and 75.  We had a laugh sharing stories about our encounters with such people.  He told me that a patient he’d had this week, a man of about 58, was so desperate to have his back problems cured and over with quickly so that he could return to mountain biking that he screamed and accused him of being a quack with no capacity to independently diagnose a problem just because he had said essentially the same thing the man’s doctor had, that this was a serious back problem that would not be resolved in a week.  I told him of the tartars I’d met in the Vernon outdoors club, some of whom are at least 75.  I was glad I was wearing long pants and that he was only looking at my shoulder so that he didn’t see my barked shins that reveal my efforts to join the group of aged jocks.  I’m now following a regimen of easy exercises for the rotator cuff, which I hope will work because Dr. Jones says that unless the patient is really in pain and inconvenience because of rotator cuff injury, they don’t operate after age 65.  I already don’t have much pain, and I have good movement but very little strength.  I went on two moderate bike rides this week.  One around the area of Coldstream, beautiful country that once was a huge ranch, and one to a beach on Lake Okanagan where I sat on the shore and read. 

I still read the local paper, ‘The Morning Star’ which is delivered free 3 times a week and is wastefully full of fliers.  But I’ve found some deals on things I need to get settled and also learned of local events by doing so.  This time it was the Philosophers’ Café on Thursday night that caught my eye.  It was held in a woman’s home, but she told me that it had originally been started in a local café that went under.  There were about 30 people there, and I enjoyed it.  Two men spoke about their pilgrimages, one walked for 2 months around the small island of Shikoku off Japan on a circular, Buddhist pilgrimage with his son, and the two of them went together on the Camino de Santiago.  Both spoke insightfully and presented slide shows that had very apt sound tracks. 

On Saturday, I worked with Vernon’s version of David Glover, a gregarious Yorkshire man a friend told me about who is a jack- of- all- trades.  It was great.  We hung all the pictures I’ve been moving from one spot on the floor to another for a couple of months. Then at 5 I dressed up and went to the Filipino Fiesta 2011 at the Vernon Rec. Centre.  It was fun.  I met a woman who’s a volunteer clown.  She also was there alone, so we ate and watched the show together.  The food was spectacular, full of what the book I got from Jay and May would describe as ‘umami’, which I think means bring- your- mouth-to life flavor.  Everyone was dressed up, and the entertainment was just that, whether very good or merely a valiant effort, it was entertaining.

Cougar Canyon without a single cougar.

Filipino women, brightly dressed and hard working.  Mercy, in pink, is the woman I met at the Immigrant Services Office.  She sold me the ticket.

Women of a certain age doing the Itik-Itik dance which has something to do with ducks, I think.  The fiesta queen and princesses are in the background.

Young men doing the dance of heroes which commemorates the killing of Ferdinand Magellan

Women doing the Philippine National Dance, the Tinikling.  It's like a cross between skipping Double Dutch and the sword dance of the Scots.  They hop and skip delicately over and between sticks that are being rhythmically banged together.  It looks exhausting and dangerous enough to appeal to the Vernon Outdoors Club.  But their costumes are much more beautiful than my hiking gear.

Women having a good time dancing to pop tunes from the 60s and 70s

The weather

The unusual weather of this la nina year continues.  Again because of the slow melt in the mountains, the hike tomorrow has been changed from Twin Lakes in the Monashees to a place lower down and closer to Vernon, Cougar Canyon.  The name sounds intimidating, but locals say that although there can be cougars in the area you rarely see them.  From the top, you look out over what used to be called Rattlesnake Point because there are rattlesnakes there, but it has recently been renamed Turtle’s Head Point, probably by the tourist bureau.  What’s in a name?  I had some of my best walks in Ottawa around Mud Lake.  However, you can’t fight the weather.  It’s about 4:15pm now and dark.  I’ve turned the lights on, the wind is up, thunder is booming and large drops of rain are tapping on the sidewalks.  I just checked the weather report, and it looks as if tomorrow should be fine but next week we’ll have more rain.  The sunny Okanagan it’s not.  And Ottawa and Winnipeg are melting in the thirties with nothing but sun in the forecast.  I was afraid Vernon would be too hot, and I still go biking in the morning to escape the heat, as I did today, but instead I’m beating the rain.  It was the same on Wednesday morning when I biked around Vernon with a few other women and returned home to rain in the afternoon.  I learned a lot about how to get around on a bike on that ride.  As I said last week, the bike paths are erratic here, but these women know how to link them up.  As a result, I decided to commit myself to biking for groceries, etc. and bought ‘panniers’ and a rear view mirror.  I’m getting geared up.  Speaking of which, and before I leave this quintessentially Canadian topic, I have to say that Blake and Tracy’s motorcycle honeymoon sounds like a hot one.  They rode right into the oven as they headed for Texas.  I’ve enjoyed tracing their route, but not envied them the extreme heat.

Living alone and having to do things I’ve never done before continues to be a learning experience.  My favorite picture of Jim is one in which he’s wearing a cap, like the one he was wearing when I first saw him, and his eyes are sparkling.  I recently remembered that the reason they were is that he was delighting in my ineptitude as I tried to get everything set to take the picture.  I used to get angry when he did that, but increasingly I’m learning to admit that I’m often distracted and clumsy and the only way to face it is to laugh.  My shins are covered with scabs from practically falling off the bike, and putting the panniers and mirror on was quite entertaining/frustrating.  I’m a hard worker and quite capable, but if there’s a wrong way to do something or a wrong direction to take, I’ll do it and/or take it. 

Vernon and Swan Lake as seen from Ravine Edge, last Sunday's hike

Two members of the club enjoying lunch

Shooting stars on the path

Violets on the path