Aged but not deceased

Rosalie has been making sourdough bread and the first one she did was delicious. However, she didn’t want to make another for me as it was a lot of work pulling it and her wrists would get sore. So I suggested she put it in her bread-making machine and set it on ‘pull my dough’ and the result would be that I would get my dough pulled every hour and end up with a well-pulled dough and her wrists wouldn’t get sore.

Well, I thought it was funny.

When we have company I’m not allowed to use the “guest towel” but have to use the towel set aside just for me. I feel so special.

The news the other day suggested that we should no longer have seniors discounts. Some people agree and some disagree. I absolutely agree that we should. Rosalie and I can get by without it but we take advantage of it as much as possible as it helps. I think of what a help it would have been to my Mum when I was little and she didn’t have much income.

Just one example, think of a senior whose kids on the mainland just had a baby and she has to pay $16 on the ferry each way to go see them. That money would put a lot of food on her table. I know, the kids could pay but maybe they are in the same boat. Anyway, it was just an example of how senior discounts help.

Seniors helped to build this country, should get respect and a little extra once in a while. So there! Soon I’ll shut up about it, but first:

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Parents today give their kids the most peculiar names. There is Frant Zappa’s Moon and Dweezil Zappa, Elon Musk’s Strider and Azure with Zilis, X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl, and Techno; and many more, as he has eleven living children with three different women.

What happened to George or Sheila, Tom or Elizabeth? I was at the Doctor’s office the other day and liked their dogs’ names much more than modern ones.

Way more civilized; I particularly like Carrot.

While in Mexico we met a lady with a kid named Axel. As we had been in the pub and had a few, we saw the funny side of this and decided that as he was named after a car part we would do the same for our kids (??) We had already decided that we would like Ocho for our firstborn so would follow that up with Gearbox, I think the next one should be Stixshift or Carbraeter-Turn Signal and for a girl Blinker-Flueed.

As the Melaque party is getting close and I’m feeling a lot better, I have been catching up on a few jobs. I had to re-paint the deck but first decided to power wash the skylights. Rosalie of course, gave me my first instruction “DO NOT GET ON THE ROOF”. A few minutes later I heard “WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP THERE”! She scared me so much that I almost fell off, and then I panicked and said, “It was a gust of wind.” I don’t think she believed me. But I live on, barely.

We had a nice evening with Jim and Ylda a while ago. We discussed when Jim was younger and all the men in his life who helped him along the way. It struck me that I didn’t have any of that and how it affected my life.

I don’t want the following to be about feeling sorry for myself. I’m not whining either because there are a lot more people who grew up like me and who have it way worse than me. I did okay!

But for me the story is interesting, so here goes.

I left school on a Friday at age fifteen. I started work on the following Monday at a large grocery store.

Our school “career advisers” found the job for me and that was it. I had little or no say. It was normal that when you left school you got a regular job or an apprenticeship. Either way, you were expected to pay toward your keep. I was raised by a single Mum so my wage was important to help her with the household expenses. So I started work.

I didn’t think beyond that, as my Mum was single and my Dad left home when I was eight. My Mum was fifty-eight when I left school. It didn’t occur to me to try for an apprenticeship and there was no one to push me in that direction.

The silly thing about this is, if the “career advisors” had looked at my school records they would have seen that I was excellent at wood and metalwork. So I wonder why they didn’t steer me into an apprenticeship. It could have changed everything.

My three brothers had left home earlier to get away from our Dad’s abuse. Our family was ostracised by the rest of the clan because of it, so I only saw an uncle or aunt occasionally, maybe once a year. Then my brothers all got married so I grew up with no male guidance.

If you were a poor kid in our school system you were ignored and not expected to go anywhere in the world. I think they equated poor financially with poor intelligence.

So life went on and I went from job to job but always working. Eventually, I moved to Nottingham, met my first wife, had my daughter and emigrated.

When I arrived in Canada, I carried on as usual as I didn’t know then that I could have gotten an apprenticeship even at the age of twenty-four. As far as I knew, once I left school, that was my only chance.

I didn’t stay at one company for more than about five years before I quit and went somewhere else. I have no idea why I bounced around like that (probably my quick temper however I was only fired once). Anyway, I was always working.

I’ve mostly been in the burglar alarm industry so my greatest claim to fame is when I was installation manager with a staff of fifty and a three million dollar operating budget. That only ended after a personality clash with my boss; it wasn’t because of my quick temper though.

I have little regrets about how my life turned out. While sitting that evening with Rosalie, Jim and Ylda, as well as the previous day with Peter and Suzie, I realized that I wouldn’t change moments like that with friends for any amount of money.

As I’ve said before, while sipping a margarita on the beach in Melaque “How the hell did a welfare kid like me get to be in this beautiful place?”

Since I’ve not been feeling so good lately, I had to ask Rosalie to drive as I still feel too wobbly. I’ve missed three beer days in a row so it must be serious. She is taking excellent care of me though.

At first, I was feeling a bit down about not driving but after a while, I thought it was a great time for some payback—a promotion from driver to back seat driver.

I have learned to say things like “Watch your speed! ” or “You’re in the wrong lane! ” One of my favourites is “Don’t park there, the one next to it is six feet closer to the store!” She used to grin at my comments but lately, it’s turned into a snarl. And of course “I wouldn’t have gone this way, my way is much shorter.”

Sometimes she does listen to my directions as we both know that she has no sense of direction. Instead of going from point A to point B, she tends to go from point A to point Q to point B. Fortunately, I haven’t lost her yet so that’s a good thing.

With this wobblyness has come the dreaded no alcohol edict. So Rosalie now gets her own back on me. She’ll stroll into the house and come out with a glass of tequila. Then she gives me a wink, looks me right in the eye, takes a sip and sighs like a contented cat. Then she says “Wow that was smooth, too bad you can’t have some.” When it’s gone she likes to kiss me just to give me a whiff of what I’m missing. (Double entendre not intended.) Then she goes inside again coming out with a cold glass of wine dripping with condensation. Oh, she’s so mean! I have often done the same thing to her when she’s off booze so I guess I earned the payback.

I know this is mostly fantasy on my part, but we’ve managed to keep our sense of humour going through the last few weeks. I hope that’s one thing we never lose.

After my brush with emergency last week, I had to carry it over to this week.

Before I left emergency, they told me to go and see my Doctor about my high blood pressure. They also prescribed some nitro just in case. A shout-out to the first person to try nitro I imagine them saying ” This tastes bad but my heart feels much…” Boom-splatter! Ah, those pioneers.

I made an appointment for Monday. My doctor’s locum was a cute young lady who was very thorough. Rosalie reminded me that she had better not be too thorough. She booked an echocardiogram (the Doctor not Rosalie) and sent a requisition for more blood work. She also added to my BP pills.

On Wednesday my BP seemed to be worsening so I booked another appointment for Thursday (Why always Thursdays, don’t they know it’s beer day?)

I was reassured that if my PB didn’t stay between 150-180 over 80 for too long, I would be fine and she added to my list for blood work. Then she dropped the bombshell that nobody wants to hear, no more alcohol!

She asked how much I drank; I told her one a day; and thought I meant two a day. She said I could have one a week; I thought that meant two a week. If I’m only having one a week, I’m planning on having one huge one and lasting it over seven days. Great plan, I like it!

She also said that I needed more potassium, yummy!

After all I went through in Emergency, I still have to do a stress test, an echocardiogram, two more ultrasounds, more blood work and a follow-up with my own Doctor, as well as fighting off the urge to have a glass of wine.

No wonder the health care system is having troubles, I think I’m breaking the bank all by myself.

Rosalie and I were in Nanaimo for me to get an ultrasound on my leg. We arrived an hour early so we went for a Timmy’s.

Back at the clinic in the waiting room, I started to feel more dizzy than usual in fact, I thought I might pass out. I cancelled the appointment as it wasn’t that important and Rosalie drove me to Emergency. 

I explained my symptoms at check-in and they told me my BP was 192 over 90. They gave me an ECG and sent me to the waiting room. After an hour and a half a nurse took my BP again, and now it was 222 over 92. 

She then took me to a room and I was prepped for the main event…the doctor. They put in an intravenous thingy and after a bit of a wait, the Doctor showed up. 

He asked a gazillion questions, did his usual poking and prodding and then gave me an ultrasound of my heart and lungs. He then pretty much pronounced me healthy except for the BP. 

Just to be sure, he sent me for another X-ray, a second ECG and a whole lot more blood tests.

They also did another BP test and it was still way too high.

In the meantime, Rosalie took off for a haircut. Then I foolishly suggested that she go to Peter and Suzie’s as I might be a while. 

So she took donuts with her and they sat eating and drinking wine, while I was suffering in Emergency drinking water. Worse than that, they started texting about the fun they were having. 

I was so bored, that I wrote this while waiting for my blood results. It wasn’t too bad, I had a nice lounger to sit in at least.

The Doctor came and told me that all was okay but they still didn’t have an answer so I needed to go for a CT scan as I may have a clot on my lung. So now I had to wait for the results and whatever that may bring. After an hour they came back negative!

So, after seven hours in emergency, three ECGs, one ultrasound, about six BP cuffs, one X-ray, one CT scan, a series of blood tests and two doctors…they still didn’t have an answer. My BP was still 222/92

Before I was discharged the Doctor did one more PB test and it came up as 231/95. Then he told me that he had set up an appointment to get a stress test. And of course, the test was on the same day that Rosalie had an appointment in Victoria. Anyhow, we worked it out and now I wait.

Me, at the end of the day!

Thanks to Rosalie, Peter and Suzie for providing entertainment to keep my spirits up.

There is a slight chance that someone may come onto our Spidey site when we don’t want them to. So I had to think up a deterrent. Rosalie and I were driving slowly across to Neil and Diane’s site when I had an amazing idea. The problem was that the next day we both forgot what the amazing idea was. Eventually, we collectively remembered and the game was afoot.

I am going to put up a sign saying “Beware, seniors in speedos”. Now that’s scary! Can you imagine what it was like opening a tube of Pillsbury dough and all the stuff tried its best to escape? Can you imagine all the bits oozing in different directions? That’s what it would look like with us: truly scary. Even better, we could put up photos. This wouldn’t work though as we couldn’t take them as we would both end up rolling around laughing. From now on I will refer to them as Speedoughs, a much more appropriate name.

Some people wear them on the beach in Melaque. A few of the youngsters are nice to look at but when an eighty-year-old 200-pounder comes rolling along it’s time to close your eyes and order another margarita just to help with the shock. Then you pray they don’t come into the restaurant where you are, at least, until after you’ve eaten.

We were sitting on the deck the other evening just minding our own business and reading our books, when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. It was a huge spider sitting alongside me on my chair cushion. I flicked it quickly off and after the screaming and jumping up and down ended, (me, not the spider) I marvelled and at the same time cringed that I actually touched it.

Have you noticed that all the spiders I encounter are huge? Well, they aren’t but when I see them they most certainly are.

The scariest thing is that I didn’t see it lying dead so I was up all night knowing that it was limping around somewhere plotting revenge.

What is it with me and spiders? I think they know I don’t like them so they seek me out for their own warped pleasure. It doesn’t seem to matter if they lose a leg or two. Perhaps they send the new young guy out as an initiation rite knowing that he will grow his legs back; that is if I don’t get Rosalie to deal with him first.

Rosalie is my saviour from spiders. Her problem is that she likes to pick them up and gently drop them outside where they head right back into the house looking for me. In the meantime, I’m jumping up and down yelling “KILL IT. KILL IT” but she just won’t listen.

Me, after a spider encounter

If I’m alone and I get to sneak up on one, my best weapon is the vacuum cleaner. I imagine I can hear the little suckers yelling as they get beaten to death bouncing off the side of the hose. And all the time I’m giggling maniacally but looking over my shoulder just in case.

Our storage unit was an untidy mess so when the storage company had a collective garage sale we decided to join up to see if we could get rid of some of our junk.

The sale started at 9 am but we were advised they would be open at 7 am. I thought this was a bit early so we left home at 7 and got there at about 7:30. This is a disgusting time of the day to be moving about. We should have been sitting comfortably at home sipping tea and lamenting the fact that our investments had slipped again.

However, the table was put up and all our junk was laid out for people to look at and ignore. Then it was time to sit in the cold breeze and wait for the first sucker customer to come by. We didn’t do too badly, the object wasn’t so much to make money as to clear space in the lock-up.

A lot of people came at 9 am but after an hour it started to slow down. I suggested to Rosalie that we wait until 11 and then if it hadn’t got better to call it a day. Eleven came around and seeing as neither of us had wanted to be there in the first place, we had a good excuse to get back to our tea.

I pulled the car in and started to load. Just as we were finishing a whole crowd of people arrived so we missed out on yet more sales. Oh well! there was always the tea.

The side story to this is, that while I lived in England I used to collect coins. I was a numismatist, ooh how posh! Actually, I was very amateur as I didn’t have the money to do it seriously.

Anyway, while cleaning the locker I came across a hoard of my coins for the umpteenth time and decided that after 55 years I couldn’t ignore them any longer and would have to do something about them, so we took them home. But before I could hide them again Rosalie caught me and said that I had to do something with them.

There were dozens of them so where to start? I opened up a decimal set and found out that it was worth about $100 and I had three of them. Now I started to take an interest.

The first thing to do was to check each one to see if it had any value and if not toss it aside for further processing. Some are Canadian, some are USA but the majority are from the UK.

1972 Proof decimal set.

A lot of the UK coins are pre-decimal and I found it a little odd to be throwing money away that I used to work so hard for as a kid. Most of the coins were worthless but some, after 55 years, had added some value.

The good thing is that even if the decimal coins have no collectable value, we can always spend them if we ever go back to England. The Canadian and US dollars can still be spent so not all is lost.

So my quest for that very rare coin continues, in the meantime, I will content myself with trying to sell some on eBay for a few bucks; wish me luck.

I’ve been feeling a little under the weather lately and after my last annual check-up had a series of blood tests. The results showed that my blood was out of whack. I expected a call from my Doctor but so far haven’t got one, so I decided to get some info from Mrs Google.

It seems as though I’m anemic. To what degree, I don’t know. Also is there something else I don’t know about? I bought some iron pills and folic acid and started to take those. But, am I taking enough or taking too much?

After ten days I still hadn’t heard from my Doctor and still didn’t feel too good so I called his office. They said that they would pass the message on but I still haven’t heard.

I’m not worried as I know it’s not life-threatening. However, I still don’t feel well and would like some answers. I understand that Doctors are extremely busy these days but what do you do if you feel ill? I would already have to wait a month just to get a phone consultation. I went to the clinic in Parksville and the wait there was over two hours.

While talking to the guys on beer day, one of them said that I should take my results to the pharmacy and see if they could help. Bill, (not that Bill the other one) told us that he has used Rocket Doctor with great results. It seems that they have access to your medical records so they can order X-rays, blood work, referrals to specialists, renew prescriptions etc.

So, if I haven’t heard from my Doctor by Monday, I will go to the pharmacy first and if that doesn’t work I will make an appointment with Rocket Doctor.

This is an online service started in Toronto and paid for by BC Med or other provincial plans. It’s also available in the USA but they have to be billed for services. Check it out, it looks like an ideal solution to some of our lesser health problems.

What is it with this weather?

At Spidey, we were at a presentation one Saturday night and it was so cold we had to wear our winter coats. The following Thursday we were in shorts and sandals, and five days later back to jackets and long sleeves. WTF. (Winter time forever.)

It’s the wind that makes it worse. We were sitting on the deck enjoying a drink and watching out for vicious frogs when the wind suddenly blew up and drove us in. Now I had to sit through more episodes of Bridgerton as there are no more hockey games on.

There’s me waiting to don my shorts and sandals to show off my knobbly knees and nicely trimmed toenails and all it does is still be winter. Rosalie’s Dad used to call me chicken legs when he saw me in shorts. Other than that he was a nice guy.

I know that in a few weeks, there will be complaints that it’s too hot, but not from me. A month ago I wanted to book our flight back to Mexico, then Rosalie reminded me that I would be missing a lot more beer days so I shivered and shut up.

Back in the days of sailing ships, canon balls were stacked on a brass grid called a monkey. When the weather got too cold the monkey contracted and the balls rolled off. So we got the saying, “It’s cold enough to freeze the ball off a brass monkey.”

I went to the doc for my annual maintenance check and after some blood work, he said that I was still alive but needed lots of TLC. (unfortunately, Rosalie didn’t fall for that one.) My blood is a little out of wack like the rest of me, but I’ll be fine after an oil change. It seems that I’m a bit anemic so I got some iron pills and some folic acid to make me all better again.

I’ve been cutting down on alcohol (Okay, go on, laugh. I can take it.) So I wanted a substitute and started to look at low-alcohol beer. The prices though, are crazy except for the ones with high sugar content. The more expensive ones are a lot better than I expected. I also got some Diet Coke which I only drink moderately because apparently, it makes your teeth fall out.

So now I get to drink warmed-up Coke to stop me from shivering. Oy Vey!

Rosalie and I are going into the rock painting business as we recently found it very rewarding.

Spidey had a rock painting competition and Rosalie decided to enter it. She wanted to enter the 0 to 18 age bracket but I convinced her that that wouldn’t be fair, so she entered the 18 and up group. She didn’t know what the prize was but all the rocks entered were to be displayed around the park.

She painted a bunch of rocks that Peter and Suzie had given her but soon ran out of those, so we got resupplied at the beach.

She entered four of her rocks and didn’t expect to hear anything more. She told me the prize was a bag of peanuts and an uncooked brussels sprout. But, behold and lo, a lady showed up and presented her with a gift card for $50. She won! I was so proud of her. It was for Boston Pizza so, at last, we can eat again! (I do like brussels sprouts though.)

Her rock would be displayed close to our site, but they have to glue them down or they get stolen. Rosalie said she would be honoured if someone thought hers was good enough to be taken. Maybe it has as we haven’t found any of hers yet.

In other news! It was Suzi’s birthday a while back and five of us went to The Rocking Horse pub in Nanoose to celebrate. We were an eclectic bunch representing five countries. Suzie from Hungry, Peter from Australia, Walter from Belgium, Rosalie from Canada and me from England. The funny part was that our meals were all English—fish and chips, steak and mushroom pie.

I have been growing seedlings for my hydroponic setup and have a growing box with a grow light. I check it every morning and water as necessary. The other morning I opened up the box and saw what I thought was a plastic frog. It turned out to be real. I called Rosalie to come take a look and we took photos and named it Herman or Hermoine. I left it where it was to see if it was there the next day. We have no idea how it got there as the box is on a table with only a hole at the back for the electrical cables to go through.

He looks innocent but is really mean

The next morning I opened the box and the darn thing tried to attack me. Now we have to watch where we walk so we don’t squish him.