Of Wheels and Wings

I've finally gotten a photo of that lovely shirt sent by Laura.


Thanks, Laura! Now I can think of Beth even more often...

Snow

Snow. Fluffy, white stuff, floating down in big, wet flakes, looking endearingly like a Dickensian postcard.

Or sitting in huge, immobile 1.5-metre- high windrows, piled by graders on the side of the road, or more likely on the sidewalk so the traffic has room to navigate on slippery streets.

There's a sidewalk under this mess. And there's a curb cut under the windrow; the truck's stopped just on the edge of the crosswalk. May the gods have mercy on anyone who has to go anywhere in a wheelchair, but without the aid of a car. Or even get to a car with a wheelchair or cane...


Snow, falling so hard that visibility is under 500 metres, and the 50 km/hr wind is whipping it into drifts across doorways that you have to shovel almost constantly to be able to exit the building for little things like work and groceries...

Snow. 80 cm deep drifts in the park, inviting snowshoers and cross-country skiers, trudging or gliding happily through winter's early dusk.

Or sitting in half-metre deep drifts on people's front lawns, if they haven't piled it up to head height as they cleared their driveways.

This sidewalk was cleared recently. The snow, cut very neatly by a snowthrower, is about 50 cm deep.



Snow can make it awkward to sit at bus stops.



It can look picturesque, even in the biting cold, when it's blanketing pillars in attractive layers. The snow on this lamp has melted just a little, but the layers are visible, I think. I hope.




Of course, snow exists best when it's cold. And it was cold trying to take these photos with a digital camera 9 hours ago. The camera batteries got so cold I had to change them for a pair I had in an inside pocket. And my hand got so cold I couldn't feel the end of the thumb, since the camera had to come out of the mitt to be useful.

Regina was the coldest spot on earth about a week ago; our temperature was -42C, with the breeze causing a wind chill of -52. It then proceeded to warm up, until 41 hours later, it was -0.8C.

It has gotten colder again, and the wind chill is in the -35 range again. Sound carries differently in the cold, and water freezes quite quickly. I'll have to try throwing a cup of boiling water into the air, and see if it causes a cloud. If I can do that on the weekend, I'll try to post a video of it.

I looked into Kate J's blog a couple of days ago, and was inspired to get my camera in gear again. Thanks Kate! And since I also have one of those ever-so-cool t-shirts she's showing off, I should get a photo of that too.

Meanwhile, I have to negotiate that sidewalk tomorrow to get to work. Thank goodness all that snow is being cleared away as I write, with the assistance of semi-trailer dump trucks and snowthrowers mounted on front-end loaders. Of course, the graders moving the snow to the center of the streets will leave a smooth, slippery path for me. There's a reason I use cross-country or trekking poles to walk here: it's 4 wheel drive for feet!

Loss

Would you believe I'm glad my mother is dead? Sounds hard-hearted, doens't it? But there's a bit of logic, warped and twisted, maybe, but logic.

My mother died in September, 2007; just over a year ago. She had Alzheimers, had been diagnosed in 2001, but for several years before that, she was acting strangely. I'm sure she was slipping even in 1996 or so. But for six years, we (not she, of course) knew that her brain was being stolen, by something that we couldn't stop. The doctor wanted her on medication, and she refused to take it because "there's nothing wrong with me!" Yeah, right, mom...

Dad looked after Mom for six years, and went mostly deaf because when Mom wanted to watch TV, you could hear it half a block away; but when she didn't want it on, even the quiestest volume was too loud for her. So Dad had to endure a noise level that left him wearing hearing aids, or not watch the thng at all. But he didn't abandon her to a care facility.

In August 2007, they started talking about moving to a senior's home; Dad was getting ready to admit that he simply couldn't deal with finding the milk in the oven, the toast rack in the garbage, and the tea - well, he never did find that...

Then, on the Labour Day weekend, Mom had a stroke. She had another in the ambulance, we're thinking, and at the emergency ward, the doctor had the joy of explaining that while they could mop up the pool of blood, they couldn't prevent what he called a second stroke; and the likelihood of a further stroke was high within twenty-four hours, and nearly a certainty within a week. She could still squeeze one hand in the emergency ward.

So Mom was moved, with consciousness slipping, into a ward for a day or two until she could be moved to the other Regina hospital, to the palliative care unit. She probably had a third stroke that night as she was being hooked up to the monitors in the ward. Her blood pressure was up again to over 235 over some insane number that I've forgotten. And she slipped into complete unresponsiveness.

Mom died 5 days later without regaining consciousness. Dad was with her almost the entire time, and my brother and I spent as much time as we could there, too.

We all cried, but I found myself sorta grateful that she died of a stroke, because she was spared the long, slow descent in the particular hell that is Alzheimers. Even my father admitted a few hours after we left her in the hospital for the last time that he felt strangely relieved. The method of Mom's passing was kind, compared to what she had to look forward to.

I miss Mom, but I have shed very few tears; I knew 7 years ago that I was going to lose her even before she died, so I did my grieving some time back.

And why am I saying this? I say it because some people have a little more trouble than I do when relatives die. And for those people, there are grievance counsellors.

If you've lost a loved one, and it's affecting your life and/or your work, please talk to a counsellor. You can find them through a palliative care unit of the nearest hospital, or through your employer's Employee Assistance Program. If you're grieving and can't handle it, seek help. Please.

Thank you.

And I apologize if this is a bit disjointed. I should know better than to stay late at work and try to type coherently.

Love and hugs!

Remembrance Day

I love books. I’m also a wannabe calligrapher. Recently, I ordered the book “Foundations of Calligraphy” by Sheila Waters (from John Neal Bookseller). That book arrived on November 10, and I opened it at random, only to be instantly reminded of my dear online friend, Beth. Beth is a bibliophile, and is selling off her collection to pay for medical expenses. To lose one’s beloved books hurts; I know it does.

So what reminded me of her? - nay, brought me to tears, is more like it. It was a quote from John Conrad, beautifully lettered by the author, Ms. Waters: “Of all the inanimate objects, of all men’s creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning towards error. But most of all they resemble us in their precarious hold on life.”

I just don’t know what to say after that.

Maybe I do. It’s the end of Remembrance Day as I type; a day to remember all the people, usually young, who have died for our freedom. Or because of the stupidity of military leaders. So I’ll close for today, and I’ll think for a few minutes now about how the last army to conquer Afghanistan was commanded by Alexander the Great. For over two thousand years since, nobody has been able to defeat the Afghans. I don't see anyone succeeding in the foreseeable future, either.

Postcards

Elizabeth at Screw Bronze wants to send people postcards. She's feeling terrible, and still wants to make other's lives better; that's what Beth does, though. The worse she feels, the more she cares about others.

So if you happen upon this entry, and you would like to receive a postcard from someone who wants to send postcards anywhere in the world, or if you know someone whose day might be brightened by receiving a postcard in the mail, please go to Beth's Postcard Project page here, and send her an email with your snail mail address. Or your friend's.

And if you're reading this, Beth, I just have to say that I'm in awe at the range of cards on your project site. I hope you find a use for the cards I sent you!

Since I can't currently comment to Beth directly, I'll wish you all what I wish her at least every hour in my thoughts and most days on her comments pages: Love, Zen hugs, and positive thoughts.

Self-reference

The silly bunnies at Blogspot have gone and played with the comments boxes. I tried replying to Dawn's last comment, and got nowhere. I tried commenting to Beth, and got nowhere, I think.

I also couldn't change the font of the last post after I changed it by accident to something disgusting.

I think technology hates me tonight.

More to the point, I think Blogspot needs to make sure the comments feature is working properly. Other bloggers have noted the problem in the help section, so I'll assume it's not just me.

Bicycles again

You will remember that I bought a propane stove in July, and carried it home on the bicycle. Well, the piezo-electric starter on the darn thing failed on the second one pound tank during the first weekend of use. I took it to the local service people, only to find that they didn't believe it was malfunctioning. I told them to check it again, and they called three weeks later to say it was ready. I checked it before taking it home, and it STILL wasn't fixed. So they tried again; this time, after a couple of weeks, they called to say that it was ready, and had been replaced, since it couldn't be fixed.

I went last weekend to pick up the new stove, but the repair folks were closed for Thanksgiving.

Today I finally got the new stove. And I brought home by bicycle, with what will probably be one of the last rides of the season. I didn't bother taking photos of the bicycle this time, since it looked the same as when I first bought it in July. Of course, here are yellow and brown leaves around the yard now.

It's autumn now, and soon it will be winter. We won't be using the stove before next summer, but at least it's finally repaired.