More of Same

Monday morning was a wet one, but wonderfully mild. We met our friends to walk in light rain, and then Her Highness and I went into the village to get some groceries and to pick up a prescription. Then we came home so Sheba could rest and I could putter until lunch. 

I Zoomed with Steve who left last night for New Zealand and Australia for a month. He turns 70 today, and as he does every time he enters a new decade, he goes off to an exotic location. On his 60^th, he went to Easter Island and on his 50^th, we went to South Africa together.

In the afternoon, I did work for SPACE. Aidan wanted me to develop some text for the project I’ve been hired to be part of, drawing the ideas from a STAMMA questionnaire about bad communication experiences experienced by stutterers. I’m proud and happy to be working on fixing problems that people who stutter have. 

A great many people who stutter (PWS) are ‘covert’ stutterers. Covert stutterers can pass as fluent speakers. They avoid words that cause them problems to achieve fluency. Being covert is not possible for me. I, and all severe stutterers, cannot hide our disfluency and it’s us who have the worst problems with AI generated voices and impatient clerks and customer service people.

Our afternoon walk was short because there was still light rain, but we’d had a good long morning walk. And then our we both enjoyed our regular evening routing together.

Today is warm and wet again. We’ll walk, I’ll Zoom with Aidan, I’ll read and tonight will be like every other Winter evening. It looks like the coming three days will be bright and dry for a change. We’re in for some good walking weather.

My Day

Sunday, My Day, began slowly. Fred ensured that I was up early. He was howling in the bedroom just after 4:30! I fed everyone and lit the fire and then I watched two of my favourite vloggers weekly post of videos about their renovation of the derelict homes they bought. Jude is renovating a cottage in north-eastern Scotland, and Martijn is renovating two old stone homes high in the Italian Alps.

I waited to walk Her Highness late so that after our walk we could go into the village to do some grocery shopping. When I was a kid, people around us shopped once a week. They did huge grocery runs at a time when I was eating vegetables out of tins. I didn’t really learn to cook until I moved in with Marie-Claude and Guy in Nice. Marie-Claude taught me recipes, and she taught me to shop daily so that everything cooked was fresh. That was in 1974-75, and my inclination to shop almost every day is still with me, some fifty years later. 

We went to walk the Ricki Ave. trail, but Sheba was limping and so I checked her feet and found a wound. We came home and I cleaned, medicated and wrapped her wound and then we went shopping. 

Not long after getting home, it was lunch time and then it was chaise time for me. I’m reading a Martin Walker crime novel. I read every book in his Bruno series, and this book I’m reading is his latest. It feels good to be back to reading about the Dordogne area again. Mr. Walker’s books are full of writing about food and I love that!

I revisited some old posts. I noticed that it took several days for me to not mention being scammed after the event. I could count the days it too for normalcy to return. I was shaken for about five days. And then I looked at posts following my breakdown on April 9, 2016. I didn’t stop writing about my speech and seizures for 3.5 years! My breakdown required on hell of an adjustment that is still going on, but it’s not my obsession anymore, it’s just something that continues to require adaptation. Re-reading the posts certainly put the scam in perspective. 

And guess what. I got another scam call. It was the same story as last time, only this time I hung up on the asshole by slamming my phone handle down on the disconnect button. It was especially inappropriate on My Day!

It was a timpanic awakening this morning. It is pouring rain out there, and it’s loud in the house, but I don’t care because it’s also 9° and it ain’t snow. It’s going to be a very mild week with afternoon temperatures reaching 13°. And it’s an easy week for me, uncluttered with obligations.

It's My Day

I didn’t light the fire until 8:30 yesterday. That’s how mild it is now. I dawdled through the morning and so by the time came for us to walk, it was raining hard, so I went back to dawdling hoping that it would lighten up so that we would be comfortable during our morning walk. Mornings are the best time for a long walk because my foot is not as painful after a night’s rest, and it makes it easy for Her Highness to rest through the early afternoon and our second walk.

We had to walk in the rain. It did not let up and there was no bright sky in the west to give us hope that it would. Our walk was short. We went to Rollo Park where there is a gravel walk that lets me keep my feet dry and Sheba roots about in the edge of the forest. She does her duties, and then we came home to chill a little before lunch. And then I read.

In the early afternoon the rain stopped, so Sheba and I went for a long walk in the wonderful warmth of the Pineapple Express that was blowing rainwater off the trees as we walked. When we got home, it was already starting to get dark even though it was only 15:30. Sheba rested and I read until it was our early dinner time. I feed the brood at 16:00 because we have breakfast at 5:00 and lunch at 11:00.

Last night was like every other night of the past four months.

And now it’s My Day again. Not that it means much anymore. Now that I don’t eat sweets, My Day is just another day, but I shall thoroughly enjoy it. We’ll walk this morning, likely in light rain, and we’ll hopefully take a longer walk in the afternoon if it isn’t pouring rain. Life is very, very good.

Warm Weather!

Thursday night we had rain like you wouldn’t believe, and when I got up yesterday morning, it was still pounding down. The raindrops were enormous and there was water pooling everywhere. We had to walk in it because Her Highness had an appointment at her beauty parlour at 9:00. Our walk was short, very short, but she did what she had to do, and then I took her to the salon.

I came home to Zoom with John and Bunny which is always a joy for me. I love them and for the first seven years that I lived here, every time I went to Vancouver, it was to see them, and it was expensive in terms of both time and money. Now we chat regularly to keep in touch until I return to Vancouver for a visit.

When I got into the car to fetch Sheba, I was out of gas. I could start the car but the message on my odometer said: “Urgent, this car will be out of gas in 2 kilometers.” I was late fetching Her Highness because I had to stop to get gas. She was very glad to see me, and I was delighted to be reunited, but Sara, the groomer, was grooming a massive, gentle, loving Bernese Mountain dog whom I could not resist. 

The remainder of the day was spent napping, eating and walking again in the rain. I reveled in my freedom to do as I pleased all day. I was devastated to read about the death of Catherine O’Hara. I had quite the load of tears fall. Only once before has the passing of a celebrity broken me: that was when Gilda Ratner died. The passing of two magnificent women gifted with incredible comedic chops hit me hard. I was surprised to find myself so sad over Gilda’s passing, but then I realized no one had made me laugh so hard and so often as her. It was the same with Catherine.  I’m so sorry for her loss and for her family and friends.

Last night was the usual, but I had a particularly long and deep sleep, and today I have no obligations at all. The entire day is mine. Heaven! 

I rose at 5:00 but didn’t light the fire until after 8:00. It is not cold in the house during this stretch of very mild Winter weather. It’s 10° this morning and mid-week this coming week, afternoon temperatures are predicted to be 14°! This is how to get through Winter!