As I type this, Jay, May and the girls are probably waking on the morning of their move.  Jay and May’s brother will be doing the heavy lifting, May will be running around finishing up the paper work and the girls will go home from school to a new apartment.  I hope it’s not as hot in Incheon as it is here today.  I enjoyed a slow morning finishing the Saturday ‘Globe and Mail’ over coffee.  I get it from Mo and John most Sunday nights when I’m there for dinner.  I was at the library when it opened at 10 to have the first of two classes there with Lucia’s kids.  I walked around downtown doing some shopping from noon until about 1:30 and came directly back to the cool dark house to spend the rest of the afternoon.  I’ve been hiking and biking with Mo and John lately; we meet at 8 and are home by noon.  It’s best to be either in doors or in the water between 12 and 6.  I water the cedars every other evening, open the windows when the sun goes down and turn on my new fan in whichever room I am.  I usually keep it running all night and turn it off in the morning, shut the windows when I get up and the blinds as the sun moves into the west.  It cools down to about 15c at night, so with this routine, the house stays comfortable. 

Last night the Vernon Film Club showed, ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist.’  I liked it.  The sets and sound track shifted back and forth from the glass offices and cool deals of Wall Street to the chaos and color of the streets and tea shops of Lahore.  The characters were also torn between these extremes.  The main character, Changez, was played very well by a British actor and rap singer whom I had never seen before, Riz Ahmed.  All the acting was good; the story was gripping and not without nuance.  I’d give it two thumbs up.  Hell, now that I can do it again, I’d give it two arms up. The preview was for a movie with Forest Whittaker called ‘The Butler’, which I will definitely go to.

Moving from movies to the more mundane, tomorrow I get a new toilet.  I’ve put up with my reluctant flusher for as long as I can.  Kristin, the woman who did most of the renovating of this house before Jim and I bought it has helped me with a few things lately, and tomorrow she will replace the toilet that hasn’t flushed properly since I moved in.  I can’t wait.  Even a retired person has enough to do without having to wait after flushing to make sure she doesn’t have to flush again.

Yesterday when I arrived home from biking and going to the market, there was a message from RBC saying that the $500.00 Can. in Korean won and $1,000.00 Can. in Chinese renminbi that I had ordered last week had arrived, so I walked downtown to pick them up.  They are now stashed in my secret hiding place awaiting the end of August, as am I.

Me standing in front of a corn field in the hat and dress I bought last year in Korea.  Jay thought the dress was corny, a house dress.  Perhaps it is.  I hadn't realized how bow legged it makes me look.

One of the mountain bikers in the competition that was going on at Silver Star when we hiked there last Sunday.

Burke Boyce and his bear.

Visit to Victoria

It’s Sunday, July 21, and I’m sitting on a bench in the shade of a tamarisk tree looking out to sea from the tip of the Turkey Head Walkway in Oak Bay.  A crow nearby is cawing and pulling apart something he’s found in the garbage can.  I don’t have my glasses on because I want to see what I’m typing, but it appears to be a whole plastic bag full of stuff.  He’s tearing at it with his beak and flinging white bits around in all directions.  In the distance is a rocky point and beyond that a few white sails dot the dark blue, rippled water.  The horizon is mist.  It’s the first day since I arrived in Victoria a week ago that the snow- topped Olympic Mountains have not been visible from here.  The weather has been wonderful.  I’ve had coffee every morning with Barbara and Terry, twice outside, once at the table and chairs in the garden off the basement suite where I stay and once on the deck above.  Coffee and a chat with them eases me into a day with the aged Ps, who are putting up a good fight, but it is a struggle.  Mom is the same as Jupiter was when he got old, full of youthful enthusiasm for short periods each day, usually before and during meals.  Dad is much more grim.  He’s happy to see me and always wants mom to have a good time but every move is difficult for him to make and he pushes his walker into his room to lie down many times a day.  He’s so thin that his bum hurts if he sits too long, so he’s happiest flat out on the bed, eyes shut, mouth open and breathing heavily.  His mind is inclined to wander, but mom won’t let it stray far; she calls him back to the concerns of the moment and because she’s genuinely helpless in many circumstances, requires him to do or say things. 

Yesterday, Barbara and Terry took us out for lunch at Swan’s in downtown Victoria.  They had asked us to their place at Christmas and then not been able to have us there because Barbara had a horrible flu, so they made up for it with Christmas in July.  Barbara brought a china Santa to decorate the table and Christmas crackers to pull.  The whole affair was festive and mom and dad loved it.  Swan’s is on a busy street corner near the harbor, so they were able to see for themselves what they had watched on t.v. the night before, the hoards of tourists, tour buses and cars that fill downtown Victoria on this its busiest summer in quite a few years.  They don’t get out of Oak Bay much now and miss the action.  Dad also enjoys a good beer and he had quite a few during my stay, at restaurants and at home drinking the beer Terry had made and given to us.  After the lunch we drove home along the water and saw many of the old cars that are here for a show this weekend.   For dinner, dad and I had eggs in the nest and mom enjoyed the last half of the Reuban sandwich she had ordered for lunch.  For dessert we finished the fat, juicy cherries that I had brought from Vernon.  The whole day was perfect; today wasn’t.  They wanted to have their usual Tim  Horton’s Sunday breakfast, not in Tim’s, which is dark and deserted on Sunday mornings, but on a bench at Willows Beach.  Mom and I went into a nearby Tim’s and brought the breakfast back to dad who waited in the car.  Then we drove to Willows.  When we got there, I had to drive and stop and slow down and stop and move on again as they debated/argued about which bench we should choose.  I made the mistake of entering in at one point and got snapped at.  Finally, we settled on a bench that was wood, not concrete, and facing out to sea but away from the sun.  The day was cool and cloudy and dad hadn’t worn a sweater, so after all the time taken choosing the perfect perch, we ate and left quite quickly.  Mom, not wanting to let any chance for fun escape her, suggested that we drive downtown again and then home along Dallas Road, as we had so successfully done yesterday.  We did that, but only to discover that not only can you not step into the same river twice, you can’t even take the same drive on two consecutive days.  This time many of the downtown streets were blocked off for special summer busker shows, art walks and antique car rallies, so the traffic was horrendous.  We were stuck in it and couldn’t get out for half an hour.  When we finally got home, dad pushed his walker into the bedroom and was flat out on the bed before I could turn on the oven and put the stew in.

This break by the ocean has been refreshing.  I’ll drive back to mom and dad’s to find them refreshed too, I hope, and eager to Skype with Jay at 5:30.  Seeing him and talking with him all the way from Korea always fills them with childlike wonder, me too.

I’m now on the ferry to Vancouver.  The Skype with Jay was all that mom and dad had hoped it would be.  I was surprised at how calm mom was.  She listened to Jay and added her comments as if he were in the room with us.  Dad was very happy to talk with Jay for a while, but he can’t sit for long so left us to continue while he wheeled his way back to his room for a lie down.  It was sad to leave them on Sunday night.  The last couple of partings have felt as if they might be the last for at least one of them, but so far they have carried on.

Barbara and Terry having coffee with me in their back yard, just outside the/my suite.

The gang celebrating Christmas in July at Swan's, near the water in Victoria

A new sculpture that caught my eye as I walked around downtown Victoria one morning

The Oak Bay Marina, near mom and dad's place

Heat

Again it’s a hot Tuesday in the Okanagan, but not hot enough to keep us inside this week.  One of the women I bike with lives in Armstrong, a small town north east of Vernon.  We met at her place about 8:45am this morning because her car has broken down so she couldn’t join us anywhere else.  We biked from there.  As usual we did about 35 km on rolling back roads.  My arm has improved so much that I’m sure I could handle more difficult rides now, but I really enjoy the company of this group of women and I don’t have to get myself strong for the fall bike trip this year because it’s in Sept., when I will be in Korea.  Armstrong is in a beautiful wide valley.  The roads are paved and roll through fields of corn, hay, grains I don’t know the names of, market gardens and even huge herb gardens.  At one point, the smell of oregano combined with that of the clover on the side of the road to create a perfume that made me want to breath deeply and never stop.  Of course we passed through other less pleasant country smells too, especially at the point where a farmer was spraying liquid manure on his fields using an irrigation sprinkler that shot the putrid yellowish stuff in a vast circle.

 Miriam and I are going to go for a swim at Jane’s again later today.  The water in Lake Okanagan is really warm; Jane didn’t think so last week, but Miriam and I swam for quite a long time.  The only time you felt cold water was if you dove deep. 

I walked down to the Town Theatre last evening to watch ‘Love is all you need’ with Pierce Brosnan.  He was certainly better in it than he was in ‘Mama Mia’.  I looked up the movie when I got home and discovered that the title in Danish is ‘The Bald Hairdresser’.   The actress, Trine Dyrholm who played the hairdresser was excellent, and the two titles together give an idea of the jumble of romantic jocoseriousness to expect.

The lazy, hazy, not much of the crazy left, days of summer are here.  I look forward to visiting mom, dad, Barbara and Terry next week in Victoria.

Otter Lake near Armstrong

Otter Lake

Resting under a willow on the shore of Otter Lake

Summer

Now it’s hot in the Okanagan.  But as with the rain, not as catastrophic as in southern Alberta, so with the heat, not as fierce as in California.  However, the humidity here on Canada Day was unusually high and made the 35 degrees feel drippingly hot.  Around 10:30am, I walked over to Polson Park to listen to the music and wander among the food and entertainment stands.  Fortunately, I ran into my friend Noreen who was there with her son and his family, sitting under a tree on a big blanket.  I joined them and at least escaped the sun.  There were lots of people there, almost all dressed in red and white.  Even the mayor, a rather sober seeming man was wearing a floppy red and white Cat in the Hat thing on his head.  As always, the ladies from the Philippines were, serving small spring rolls redolent of garlic and tender pork skewers, so lunch was no problem.  Noreen came back to my place later in the afternoon, and then I drove her to her son’s.  By the time I had dug a trench to keep the water around the cedars, watered them and had dinner, I didn’t have the energy to walk to the fireworks at the military camp, so I watched tennis at Wimbledon on tv and stood on the front porch talking with my neighbor Donna as the firecrackers boomed.  We could see all the high ones very well.

This morning on the radio I heard one of the announcers admitting that she felt guilty about the fact that she and her husband didn’t like to turn on the air conditioning.  She said that they used fans for as long as they could.  The other announcer ridiculed her.  I wanted to call her up and tell her that she should stop feeling guilty.  I’m so brazen about it that I’ve elevated the not using of air conditioning to a virtue.  However, when I tried this argument out in Korea last May, in a futile effort to convince Jay’s girls not to use the air in the place we stayed at near Seoraksan Nationl Park, Jay pulled me aside to reason with me.  His argument was that the girls come from a blisteringly hot place where those who can use air conditioning do use it and would be institutionalized as mentally deficient if they didn’t.  I had to accept this and shut up.  Today I encountered a similar argument from my friend Miriam who comes from Ireland where they didn’t even have central heating in her youth.  She firmly believes that if you can turn a switch and be comfortable, you should.  I had the windows open all night last night and am carrying on without air.  It’s still comfortably cool in the house, but if I can’t sleep tonight, maybe I will flip the switch.  We cancelled our Tuesday morning hike today because of the heat. Miriam and I are going to go swimming at Jane’s on Lake Okanagan this afternoon.  Jane says that most adults don’t seem to be going in beyond their knees, but I think I’ll be able to take it because the Gatineau River was considered too cold for swimming in by a lot of people and I liked it.  It’s summer and the hills will soon be dry and camel colored again.

Kids going wild to the music of 'Cod Gone Wild'

'Cod Gone Wild' plays lively Irish music.  None of them is Irish, although they introduced the only obviously Oriental one as Irish.

The much more sober Scots contribution to the music of Canada Day.

Summer 2013

 The transition from spring to summer was a wet one, but on Friday, June 21 the clouds broke in the late afternoon, the sun set brightly and the full moon shone for a while.  We've had more rain since, but the sun is coming out now.   I’m back to biking, with a smaller group doing less strenuous rides.  It’s fun, and I’m going to celebrate by biking over to the store where I bought my bike and getting a pack that sits on a rack above the back tire.  I want to use my bike more for shopping and riding around town.  Vernon, like a lot of places, I imagine, is in a prolonged period of tension between those who want to encourage the development of bikeways and the real use of bikes in town for riding to school and work and those who don’t want the width of roads altered in any way that might either make it more difficult for them to manoeuvre their big trucks and SUVs or raise their municipal taxes.  Almost every edition of the local newspaper, ‘The Morning Star’, has a letter to the editor on this topic, some of them quite heated.  It reminds me of the Great Giant Tiger Debate in Wakefield.  Like Joni, I’ve looked from both sides now and really don’t know at all but feel drawn to the pro bike argument here because it seems that at least inside a small town you don’t need big vehicles, even if you do need them in this vast country sometimes.  Vernon could have thought ahead a bit and left more of its waterfront and hills as public property.  It’s time to make its downtown more pedestrian and bike friendly.

We’ve had a lot of rain in the last 2 weeks.  I went to a small but great concert on Mon. night. Because of the rain, it was held in a 2 car garage instead of outside in the yard.  If you ever get a chance to listen to ‘dave lang & the twin otters’, take it.  I even bought their hand made cd entitled ‘champagne breakfast’.  We also had rain on yesterday’s hike, but it didn’t dampen our spirits much.  We haven’t had flooding like Alberta, but the Okanagan hills are green instead of their usual camel hair color.  My cedar hedge likes it.

I went to Dr. Inkpen, the neurologist this morning.  He stuck a needle attached to a monitor into my deltoid muscle, and we actually heard it working.  At least that’s what he said we were hearing.  It just sounded like static to me, but I was eager to believe him and will now always associate the sound of static with muscles working.  I’m a long way from being a body builder but very happy that at least the nerve has repaired itself.  Now all I have to do is exercise: muscles, to get them back into whatever shape they can attain and caution, so as not to dislocate any more joints and stretch any more nerves.

Russel Earnshaw, one of the funniest women in  the VOC, using the radio.  It was a rainy day, but it's never dull when she's around.  I took the picture because she and Jane and their gear were such bright colours on an otherwise dull day.

    

June 17, 2013

I turned 67 today.  Fortunately turning doesn’t demand too much energy because when I got out of bed this morning, I was in no mood to leap.  However, my right arm was able to reach up and pull on the cord to raise the blind and that’s more than it’s done in 3 months.  On Wed., June 12, three months and one day after I dislocated the shoulder, I was surprised to find my hand above my head.  Eunjung and I were preparing dinner, and she said or did something funny, which is not unusual for her.  I threw my hands in the air, and they both actually went.  We looked at each other in surprise, and she raised her arms to give me a high five, MILAGRO!  Well, maybe not.  I thought so for about a day, but then realized that what had probably happened was that my bicep which is getting quite developed thanks to the physiotherapy I’m doing had probably done the heavy lifting, not the atrophied deltoid.  There are still a lot of moves I can’t make, and I don’t have a deltoid that can be seen, just a skinny arm with a bump of a bicep that’s about the size of a dinner roll, but quite hard.  Thanks to Jay, I now know where the ‘lats’ are and that I don’t have any of those either.  The triceps are the other muscles I’ve been working.  But, I might have 2 working arms again soon.  I exercised some uncharacteristic common sense on the hike on Sunday and decided not to go down into the area of broken volcanic rock and columnar basalt.  I had done it last year and remembered as I approached that it was difficult to get solid footing there.  I’m going to exercise (that seems to be the word of the day) that kind of restraint more often because I want to continue being able to do what needs to be done when living alone. 

I certainly don’t feel alone on this day.  I have very thoughtful friends and family.  Mo and John had a surprise birthday dinner for me on Friday evening and Mo gave me a picture of the Wakefield Covered Bridge that she painted from a photo she had taken when she and her mom visited Wakefield last fall.  I went to Bert and Peg’s last night for a birthday/Fathers’ Day dinner with them, Jules and Carol and Jean.  Today, Barbara Chase and Cathy Van de Vyvere phoned to wish me Happy Birthday, I received some birthday e-mails, mom and dad just called and sang the song, alternating lines as neither had the breath to do two consecutively and at 5:30 I will Skype with Jay.

Thinking about Wakefield reminds me that I heard on the CBC news the other night that Senator Lavigne has finally been sentenced to 6 months in jail for fraud and breach of trust.  It’s taken a long time, but the Faulkners must be happy that they pursued their case.

The recent interviews with Joni Mitchell have been another reminder of the past. I was interested to read in an article about her by Brad Wheeler in the ‘Globe and Mail’ on Saturday that it was while reading Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King on an airplane, that she was ‘moved’ to look at the clouds below her and immediately started writing ‘Both Sides, Now.’  I’ve always loved that song and I must have read that book just a while after she did.  I’ve thought of it often since, especially the refrain that frequently runs through Henderson’s mind, “I want, I want, I want.”  This has prompted me to get that book from the library and refresh my memory of it.  Maybe the recurring thoughts I’ve had about it have been wrong, maybe not.  Anyway, it gave me a kick to discover that a novel that I’ve thought about more than a lot of books I’ve read was the inspiration for one of my favorite songs.

Lichen on the cliffs at Shorts Creek Canyon Ridge and lake Okanagan in the distance

Penstamin on the same hike

A mini variety of plants on the volcanic basalt

Mom's 92nd birthday

This week I did all the planting I’m going to do for the season, and again I’m resting after a day’s work.  It’s too early for a drink, so I will write this and enjoy a glass of wine later while I listen to Korean cds.  I bought an Italian plum tree and some herbs early in the week and put them on the south side of the house near the tiny hazelnut tree I had purchased at the Tai Chi Club’s plant sale.  Today I went to a wonderful garden store in Coldstream and found out that contrary to what I had been told at the Swan Lake Garden Centre, a plum should have another plum near by.  Also, as mine is a European plum, it should be another European plum, not an Asian one, which was what I originally wanted.  So I now have a Green Gage Plum on the north side of the house to mate with the Italian one on the south.  I also bought two more tall grasses to fill in the spaces left after I removed the dead cedars.  My hedge is no longer gap toothed, but it certainly isn’t a perfect set of dentures.  If it were teeth, its picture would qualify for a place in ‘The Big Book of British Smiles’ that frightened Lisa Simpson into going to the orthodontist.  Of the original 24 six foot cedars that I bought in May 2011, 10 are now glorious seven foot statuesque trees, 9 are about six foot and stunted or bent in one way or another and 2 have been replaced by grasses that should grow to about eight feet high and three wide.  The Green Gage Plum will eventually take up the place where 3 cedars died, side by side.

It’s been quiet in the hood this week, so I’ve spent a few evenings in the back yard watching a couple of robins teach their little ones how to listen for worms, or whatever they do.  There are only 2 little fluffy grey students.  It’s fun to sit quietly listening to the rustle of their tiny feet in the dry leaves and the evening song of one of the adults perched on a fence post overseeing the lesson.

Mom turned 92 on June 7.  She’s 2 days older than Prince Philip and about 2 years younger than Nelson Mandela.  She seems to be doing marginally better than either of them is at the moment, but she’s frail and still suffering from the pain of post herpetic neuralgia almost every day.   She and dad continue to do their best, but they ‘don’t get around much anymore’.  They have managed to go for two drives, one to their favorite breakfast place, Tim Horton’s and one to Willows Beach, but dad can’t go far.  In spite of the fact that they live on the first floor, there are 4 steps between him and the front door, so he has to go down the elevator to the underground parking and then walk from there to the street.  They were hoping to go across to the Oak Bay Beach Hotel for lunch one day, but he was too tired by the time he got up from the garage to carry on.  He had to sit on his walker and rest before returning to the apartment.  Their main source of entertainment this week has been the French Open tennis.