Slow Lazy Daze

Thursday was a calm, slow day. I rose at 4:30 and it was very, very dark, so I knew we had overcast sky. It was good news because it meant that my watering yesterday would be light. It was incredibly warm because the clouds came in early in the evening to insulate us. It’s the same this morning. It’s cloudy and 18°.

Her Highness and I went for our morning walk at 8:30. The air was still, so it felt warmer than it had for the previous several days when the temperature was the same, but we had a constant gentle wind. Our walk was quiet and wonderful. I love getting up early. I feel like I have the world to myself.

The rest of the day, I was very lazy. I napped a couple of time and did some reading. There were chores to do, but I didn’t feel like doing yard work. My responsibilities were limited to spot watering. The highlight of my day was eating blueberries while I was watering. I have a modest crop this year—every second year I get a huge crop, and the years between are slight.

I didn’t watch a movie last night. That was a first in a long, long time. I read a lot and kept taking Her Highness outside because she has the runs, probably from eating poop on our morning walk. Sigh.

This morning began on a very sour note. Her Highness had an accident in the hallway. There’s nothing like rising to an unpleasant smell in the air and having to do serious cleaning up at 4:00 am. 

I Zoom with Aidan today. He has homework for me to do. And I will water all the garden beds. I must also water at Pete and Ali’s. I have watering duties there for the coming ten days. 

These endless days of solitude keep me stable. I enjoy not hearing myself speak poorly and I rarely have a seizure, but it’s beginning to get to me a little being alone all the time. I don’t feel bored, and I don’t know what it feels like to be lonely. I don’t think I’m lonely because I have my beloved pets. I think the routine nature of my life is getting to me.

Steve is due here in twelve days. That will bring a dramatic change to my life at Pinecone Park. We go to Mahle House the day after he arrives. That will be a blast. It’s what we do every year together.

Slow Times at P. P.

I was out at 6:30 to water my garden beds. It took exactly two hours. I was inside, back at my desk at 8:30, and I’m delighted that I have found a way to water that makes it easy and a joy. I love watering in the early morning. I have the entire day free this way. Yesterday, I did some transplanting that I’ve long wanted to do, and some pruning of my ferns.

At 9:30, we met our friends to walk a trail I like very much. I am loving our weather. It is sunny every day but not hot. There are some clouds in the sky that give the garden short reprieves from the intense heat of the sun. But we have been getting gentle breezes every day that help keep the temperatures in the mid-twenties. 

We had a wonderfully mild and dry Winter. We had no snow and I only wore my rain gear twice all through Fall, Winter and Spring, and now we’re enjoying a wonderfully mild Summer. The District of Nanaimo has just released a report saying that our local aquifer is down 49% from last year. 

Mid-day, my watch started vibrating. It was an incoming phone call, and I was able to talk to Dr. Dorscheid from my watch. I had forgotten our Zoom appointment, so I chatted with him with difficulty on my watch as I moved indoors to switch to a video chat with him.

I am stopping one of my puffers, but I will have a prescription that enables me to get Spiriva if I feel that I need it. Dr. D. wants to be safe. He feels I should stay on the Symbicort for another year, just to be safe, and I’m fine with that. 

I had some hammock time and I read after lunch. I went over to Pete and Ali’s to chat with Pete about what I’m to do while they are away for ten days, but he wasn’t home. Instead, Her Highness and I went to the Elder Cedar grove to walk that trail. Then we came home for me to have a spa while Sheba joined the cats in the bedroom to sleep.

Our evening was the usual.

It’s thickly overcast this morning, but there is no rain in the forecast. We’ll walk a couple of times today, and I’ll read. It’ll be just another dull (but safe) day for us at Pinecone Park.

Fountain Refresh

Tuesday began with a spa. It’s only in the low twenties during the afternoons, and in the mid-teens at night. I’m always feeling chilled in this house in the early mornings, so I love getting into the spa. And now I am submerging my arm. It’s just lovely being in the tub at 5:00, long before any neighbours are up and at a time when silence reigns.

I didn’t feel pressed because the garden beds were all watered thoroughly on Monday, so I took my time doing domestic chores and going down rabbit holes on the Internet until it was time to walk with Her Highness.

When we got back, it was time for chores. I decided to start with seeing if I could increase the water circulation of the fountain, and it went perfectly. I’m thrilled to see the proper flow rate restored, and the birds are thrilled too! They’ve been bathing all afternoon, so I ordered a bird bath to put close to the fountain so that the birds have more options. The one that I’ve ordered has a solar powered fountain.

I found a flea on my hand, so I went to the vet’s here on Gabe who are closing next week to get flea control medications for all three pets. Plus, I arranged for them to send my pets’ records to Mahalo Veterinary in Nanaimo where I will be going henceforth. Then I took Her Highness to walk in the 707, but she wasn’t having it. I guess it was too hot for her, so we came home.

I decided to abandon the book I’m reading. It’s a Martin Walker book that I have read before. I have another book by him that I haven’t read, but I find myself uninterested in Bruno, the series’ central character, anymore. I have a strong ‘been there, done that’ feeling. I read his whole series quite a while back, and loved it, but reading him now feels like going backwards. Instead, I am reading Last Night at the Telegraph Club, a lauded book about a Chinese lesbian growing up in San Francisco.

Not just Martin Walker is boring me, television is boring me, so I watched a short movie and then got into bed at 8:00 to read for a long time. I lasted an hour. I turned off the light at 9:00 and went immediately to sleep. And this morning I slept in until 5:00! I haven’t slept that long in years.

Today I Zoom with Dr. Dorscheid, my asthma doctor, and I may be taken off my puffers. I am very attached to them. They have been a lifeline for decades and so I am not keen to leave them. Perhaps Dr. D. will give me a prescription for an emergency puffer, but I probably don’t need it. Tezspire is a miracle and it’s probably all I need. Still, I am finding the thought of life without my puffers rather scary.

I shall also water all the beds, and we shall walk a couple of time, but early so that Her Highness is not overheated. This morning it was thrilling to hear the fountain tinkling loudly this morning thanks to its increased flow. The little electric pump inside is still working perfectly. It is eight years old!!

A New Key Word

Monday was warmer than its’s been for a while. Sigh. Up at 4:00, I was able to do chores and water all the garden beds thoroughly before Her Highness and I went to meet our friends for a long forest walk together. When we came home, it soon was lunchtime, and then I had a brief soak in the sunshine before coming in to recover on my bed in the wonderfully cool house.

The fountain needs my attention, but I just wasn’t into doing anything at all. All I wanted to do was nothing except read. I had shopping to do, but it could wait. Like I said, nothing was what I wanted to do.

I idled my way through the day until mid-afternoon and then Sheba and I went for our afternoon walk in the Elder Cedar grove. It felt so, so good to walk without worrying about anything (like cakes) and not having to hurry on the walk. And when I got home, I got my family a new veterinarian. Our vet on Gabriola is closing, so I was very happy to find a vet in Nanaimo who will take us on. Today, I will arrange to have Sheba, Fred and Ethel’s records sent to the new vet. I’m relieved that’s done! 

•

I saw a cartoon online. I may have mentioned this before. A man bearing an enormous sack with the word, PAST, on its side. A man standing observing him says, “Why don’t you leave that behind.”

Dear cartoonist, fuck you! Don’t you think I wish I could. Should Jewish people leave the history of the holocaust behind? Okay, I’m sorry I said, ‘fuck you,’ but some people living with trauma can’t forget because the world is full of triggers for many of us with clinical diagnoses. 

Last night I had a frightening moment of insight. It shocked me, making me see my tired old story a different way and, as so often happens with me, it comes down to one word. This curse of my history.  

Then this happens: nervous breakdown and diagnoses of Complex PTSD and Functional Neurological Disorder. And then, that word, my N word: Neglected. It has really, terribly hurt me to be described that way, although it didn’t really mean too much to me at the time of diagnosis because I was dealing with constant seizures and extremely poor speech. I had to put off acceptance of all I had learned from Dr. S. and concentrate on adapting. 

The N word that keeps coming up in my head and I’ve struggled to understand why it hurt so much. I’d always called Don and Connie distant. I’d rarely seen them and I felt unwanted. And most of all, no one at either graduation. That killed me. And yet late, late in life hearing Dr. S. call me neglected gutted me.

I have an appointment coming up. I take notes between appointments of insights and thoughts for Dr. S. Last night I watched a movie about a brother fighting for custody of his sister from their mother. It hurt. It hurt to see the brother fighting so hard for his sister. It hurt to see someone wanting to protect someone so strongly. I wished someone had fought like that for me.

I got to thinking about that after the film ended, and out of the soup in my memory, through the lens of new understanding, I saw my story as being one of a child, a person, no one loved. And that really overwhelmed me, to understand myself that way. Unloved. Unwanted. 

Unloved. That had never occurred to me. Not ever. It explains a lot. I have greater understanding of myself, due to one word: Unloved. I suppose “unloved’ is just another way of saying the N word. This word, like the N word, has been added to my list of Key Words.

My Key Words:

Anxiety:

Psycho-neurological

Neglect

Unloved

Key words have all come from Dr. S. (except for ‘unloved’), and each of them has been uttered casually by her. She hasn’t ever said, ‘Now I want to talk about KEY WORD HERE.’ Just, as we are talking, she utters these words that open my mind to clearer understanding. When she has ssaid them, suddenly, for me, ‘the lights went on.’ Key words help me understand myself, and understanding myself, theoretically, helps me. Well, it has. So have drugs.

A great many people have helped me learn to like myself through their kindness and affection. All my life I’ve thought kindly, lovingly of Mr. Jackson, a childhood neighbour, and Aunt Audrey, Don’s sister. I have never missed Don and Connie, but I have missed Mr. J. and Aunt Audrey terrible all my life. All my life I’ve lived with regret that I couldn’t thank them for their kindness. They allowed me to believe that I was loveable.

Everybody has a story.