054 SUMMERTIME, CABIN TIME

A year ago at this time I would have already been at the lake for the summer.  I would have listened to the BC Lions game on the transistor radio, and missed the end of the game when the signal faded after 9:00 PM.  Instead I am still at home and watched the game on the big screen ultra HD TV.  It was not a great game, but the Lions won, which is all that counts.

I love it at the lake and have been going there ever since 1969.  I have only missed a couple of years in that time.  Two years in 1996 and 1997 after the ex and I separated and I couldn’t afford to go and 2011 when Dad was in critical condition in hospital.  Even so, last year towards the end d of the summer I had decided to cut back a bit on lake time.

The reasons behind it were that I spend approximately 12 weeks at the lake.  In that time, Renee visited for 4 days in July and another week in August.  Tamara hasn’t been up in 5 years.  Caitlin has not been up in 3 years and neither one has even seen the new dock I built.  Karl has been up for a 3-day weekend two years ago and a 2-day weekend last year.  So essentially the rest of the time I spend it alone.

I have a TV, a DVD player and my DVD collection, but you can only watch so many movies.  I engage in my pursuit of wildlife photography.  But again, it is tough spending that much time alone.  I have the neighbours to visit with, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome and I certainly don’t want to bother them when they have all of their guests visiting.  So I had decided to cut back the time this year.  Maybe go up for a week and come home for a week, whatever worked.

Unfortunately, the decision was taken out of my hands this year.  The first was the big move.  Since going toe the lake is almost like moving, with the amount of stuff I have to take, it was really hard to get motivated to “move” again.  The other more important reasons where injuries.

I fractured my wrist in two places for the second time in three years.  Despite several weeks of physio and the fact it is healed, it still bothers me and would limit what I could do at the lake.  The second and more importantly is my back.  It has flared up so badly that moving around was difficult and in fact it played a large part in my decision to move out of the house.  This is a long term injury that has gotten worse over the years.

Finally, I got some therapy, called Spinal Decompression and it is working wonders.  I don’t want to interrupt the treatment by leaving now and possibly screwing my back up even worse.  So, here I am at home when I am usually at the lake.  I don’t really mind though and maybe taking a year off will make me appreciate it more next year.  It worked after missing 2011.

Anyway, after missing many years at the lake, my sister has decided to use it again and we decided that I would take June and July and she would take August and September.  So, by the time my physio treatments are done, it will be late into July and leave no time to head up, unless I go for a week or a long weekend or something.

As it sits, I am quite happy staying here.  Now if the weather would start to cooperate it would be better.  Late yesterday afternoon, the sun finally came back and it looks like today is going to be a nice day.  Could summer finally be upon us?  Good thing I got the air conditioner, now maybe I will have a real reason to use it.

053 PARTY TIME

Even though my birthday was May 31 and Father’s Day is not until June 19, and throw in trying to coordinate a Housewarming Party, we chose June 11 to combine all three celebrations into one.  Between me having friends over and the schedules of all three kids, this was the day that worked best for the celebrations.  My cousin Beth and her beau Denny were able to come as well, which made it a great time.

Initially we were going to have a big housewarming party and invite everyone at once, but we decided to break it up into several smaller celebrations.  This was Beth’s first time here as it was for my daughter Tamara.  It’s tough for her to get here as she doesn’t drive and taking a bus from Surrey is a long arduous journey, even though it’s essentially just across the Fraser River.  In this case she was able to catch a ride with cousin Beth.

Everyone began arriving at 1:00 PM and various treats were brought to augment my supply.  Beth brought some tasty shrimp wraps and ironically Caitlin was going to bring the identical ones but at the last minute changed her mind and brought her special meatballs.  Karl brought Spinach Dip with Sourdough Bread.

Tamara’s boyfriend Stephen could not come because he was working.  Caitlin’s boyfriend Trevor could not come because he was at an event with his Dad, but Karl brought his girlfriend Lisette.  So when all was said and done we had 8 people here.  The plan was to have a BBQ and make use of the deck, but the weather didn’t cooperate and we had a chilly damp day.  If this had been done at the old place, I never would have been able to accommodate that many people.  Everyone fit fine here though.

Eight though, would probably be the limit as it was a little crowded, but it all worked out.  I provided burgers, hot dogs and Bavarian Smokies for dinner and then at 5:00 in the morning I made my first ever potato salad.  Earlier in the week I made 50 peanut butter cookies on Wednesday, 80 Milk chocolate chip cookies on Thursday and on Friday made a scratch bake Angel Food cake.  The chocolate drizzle was done early Saturday morning.

We had lots of visiting and touring of the house, for all to see.  Everyone had their fill of food and when it came time for presents, Beth and Denny gave me an awesome platter, which will be great when I finally make a roast beef or a turkey.  I didn’t have a serving platter before now.  The kids got together and bought me a Fitbit which works great.

The day after the party, I managed to get 10,687 steps in.  Monday not as many as I had physio on my back and I am supposed to walk Toby right afterwards to keep my back loose and then I must rest for the day, to let my back heal.  I have to avoid sitting for too long, so I crawled into bed, cranked on the air conditioner and cuddled up with Toby, where we fell asleep for 90 minutes.

The physio is already paying dividends as I can now walk up and down stairs normally.  Beforehand I could only do one step at a time.  I also could only bend over and touch my shins halfway between my knee and ankle.  Now I can bend over and touch the floor with my fingertips.  This is after only 5 Spinal Decompression treatments.  My physio is confident that we can get me pain free, very soon.

The day after treatment is a bit rough as well, since all the muscles that were used to being tense are forced to let go and as a result I’m pretty stiff and sore the next day.  It feels like I have had a workout, which is exactly the way I am supposed to feel according to physio.  At this rate, I might become the hockey player that I was only 2 years ago.  I can’t get much lower than only two goals, so it has to improve.

One thing that did happen, is that the smoke alarms kept going off, even when there were no appliances turned on.  One time it happened when we were all sitting in the living room eating.  I phoned the company today, and they are sending someone to check them tomorrow.  He’s pretty sure that it is a buildup of dust and told me that I am supposed to take them down and vacuum them once per month, which I was not aware of.

Anyway, it was a great day.  The last guest to leave was Caitlin at about 7:45 PM but that was only because she stayed behind to cut my hair for me.  I am so enjoying my new house; I cannot put into words how great it is.  It is amazing to have the room, the furniture and facilities to accommodate having people over.

052 DAMN, I'M HOT

It is June the 6^th and we are still 15 days away from the official start of summer.  But the last two days have been stiflingly hot.  It hasn’t just been the sunshine and high temperatures; it’s been the 46% humidity that completely saps your strength.  Combine that with the 33C temperature two days ago and the 32C yesterday and by the end of the day I was completely bagged.  Heck it was 22C when we started our morning walk at 8:30 AM and 25C when we returned an hour later.

Don’t get me wrong, I love sunny days, especially after the 4 solid months of rain and grey skies we endured this past winter.  The previous ten days or so was no picnic either.  There was so much rain, the plants in my hanging rail baskets couldn’t keep up.  Some are doing ok, but several of them don’t look like they are going to make it.

The problem here is that the baskets we bought have a plastic liner and there are absolutely no drainage holes.  I wanted to drill some holes in them originally, but my tools are still buried somewhere in the cavern known as my garage.  Even if I had found them, I would not have been able to use the tools anyway, as that is when my wrist was at its absolute worst.

Back to the weather though, today was a very pleasant 16C when I took Renee to the Westcoast Express at 6:00 AM and it was still 16C at 8:30 AM when I finished my physio appointment and Toby and I went for our morning walk.  That was extremely important as the cooler temperatures allowed toby to come with me to physio and wait in the truck.  Any warmer and I would have had to drive home from physio, drop Toby off and see if I could sneak away.  He does not like to be left home alone and I didn’t want him waking the neighbourhood with his howling.  Anyway, it worked out well and it is supposed to be chilly and rainy on Wednesday for my next appointment.

Sleeping last night was no picnic either.  Even lying in front of the fan blowing directly over us, the house was not cooling very fast overnight despite having all the windows open and the cooling temperatures outside.  I guess this means the house will retain its heat well in the winter months when we will be trying to heat it up.

It’s funny that this mini heat wave hit when it did as I ordered a water cooler and water deliveries last week, but it was due to arrive until today.  It did and it works and looks great.  More importantly I ordered a portable air conditioner from Sears last week but it doesn’t arrive until Wednesday.  I researched these well online and talking to people and the best rated unit is a Honeywell 14,000 BTU unit.

I searched everywhere for this unit in Canada and nobody carries it.  Not Rona, Canadian Tire, Staples, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, nobody.  I searched Amazon and they have it, but when I went to order it, I got all the way through to the payment stage when it told me it could not be shipped to my address, likely because it was in Canada.

Finally, I found the unit at Sears of all places.  There’s a Sears just up the street a bit but imagine my dismay when I discovered that they do not have the units physically in the store, but it had to be ordered online from Sears.  Well I did that and discovered it was on sale and I actually got it $150 cheaper, which is excellent.

So now I await my chance for cool air, and it will be installed in my bedroom Wednesday afternoon.  Meaning I will be having a nice cool sleep Wednesday night.  Of course, one looks at the weather forecast and it is calling for cool temperatures and rain on Wednesday.  Of course it is.  Oh well, at least I will be pre-loaded for the next mini or full on heatwave that is to come.

Most people I have talked to have told me their units are good for cooling their bedroom but not much further.  I’m hoping with this full power unit that it will cool the whole upstairs and if it works well, then I will get a second unit to cool the downstairs as well.  We shall see.  It’s important for me to be cool as I don’t tolerate heat really well.  It’s even more important to keep Toby cool.  My favourite kind of day is a bright sunny day where the temperature is below 0CF and there has been a fresh snow.  Granted we don’t see that in this area too often though.