Water!!!

This morning began beautifully. The first thing I saw, of course, was Sheba and we had a love fest on the floor. I love her like I loved Leon. I could happily spend every second of her life beside her. And then I come into the living room and there are Fred and Ethel. They don’t want me; they want food.

The miracle of F & E is that they never bite or scratch. I can even reach into the chaise to pull whoever’s in it out, and I don’t get a single mark on me.

And then comes a shower and, for the first time, I know I can relax about water because I can go out and pull on a coat hangar to get more (see below).

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I called the highest rated water service agency in Nanaimo last Monday. Jason called back and left a message that was so charming I fantasized about marrying him for an hour. He said he’d call back. I could hardly wait but he didn’t. I called back and he assured me he’d help me and that John would come, if not Wednesday afternoon, then Thursday morning.

John never came so I called another service on Vancouver Island yesterday morning; I’m running out of water again, and quickly. Rick, who answered, told me to call Al here on Gabriola and that if I couldn’t reach Al, to call him back. Al has a bad back. He told me to call Rod. Rod took five minutes to fine a pencil but he said he’d come at 1:30.

Rod arrived at two-thirty, directly from the Physiotherapist so he could hardly walk — let alone climb a ladder. So I went up and I started toggling with the floater switch (like you see in a toilet) and voilà, water from the well began tumbling into the cistern. So we learned that the well works and that it’s the switch that’s broken. That’s a huge relief.

Now, instead of stuck off, the switch was stuck on so I ran the risk of drying out the well and burning out the pump so I used a coat hangar to jury rig a way to turn the water on and off. Now, every few hours, I go out and climb the ladder to the top of the tank and use the coat hanger to manually add more water from the well to the cistern. I’ll do this until the new switch is installed. Finally, a solution is at hand and I know what the problem is.

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The new trusses are going in the studio; the ceiling will be eleven feet high. Eleven feet!

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Fred is a treat. He may not be cuddly but he sure is social. He sleeps with Sheba and has taken to perching on my desk while I work. The photo above is of him taken during one of the many lovely sunny breaks on another record-breaking warm day, yesterday In the afternoon he found the treats that he and Sheba and Ethel like and he pulled the package out of the closet and dragged it to Sheba who promptly started chewing at it to open it.

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While Darrell works in the studio, I continued to remove old venetian blinds and their fittings from the windows yesterday so that all the detritus can go to the dump with the construction waste. A psychopath installed them: One window had eight metal support brackets and each one had two or four screws and he used screws of differing sizes and heads. With almost every screw, I had to change heads on the screwdriver — even plates with just two screws had different heads. Mr. Bliss’s tranquility quashed. But at last all the ugly blinds and their hardware are down.

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Yesterday morning I had to pin the stuffing flap on the underside of my chaise longue closed. I used ten pins because Ethel opens the zipper climbs inside and makes a nest in the stuffing and she pushes out the stuffing she doesn’t want onto the floor.

That lasted mere hours. They took all the pins off and got inside again so now I have pinned a small blanket to the underside of the chaise! Bengals! (I love them.)

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Right beside me on my desk is a pamphlet from the Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN) which funds GIRO — that’s the GIRO who’s volunteer humiliated and insulted me for leaving Styrofoam there, all bundled and identified — and this is what it says on the pamphlet:  “The region has several Drop-Off Depots that accept plastic bags and overwrap, foam (Styrofoam), containers, etc. etc.”

So I called them and the RDN officer said to take it back to GIRO and tell them they have to accept it. I’m in the middle of a garbage war.

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I walk like an old man. I did not have hip pain like this before the onset of C-PTSD but since it hit, I have stopped long walking. Around here, I’ve been working a fair bit of every day — mild work but all physical — and that may be the cause. Whatever it is, it’s sure slowed me down.