Four Steps to Dealing With Discomfort

How do you calm yourself? Most of us cannot magically (or otherwise) retreat to a rock in a lovely green lake where solitude and peace can envelope us.

Oh, we can go on "retreat" but life is still out there when we return. Real solitude is hard to come by for the average person, and even worse, stress and solitude rarely simply drop conveniently into the same time slot, so that you can use your hour of solitude to deal with stress.

Now it gets personal. I'm not calling the feeling "stress", but irritation, which is a stepping stone to resentment, which rapidly devolves to stress and even anger.

I woke up with a migraine. The right half of my head was entertaining the percussion section of the Boston Symphony. Even with my eyes closed I could see an artery pulsing in my right eye. The cats were pummeling the bedroom door and squalling. I wanted to go back to sleep but my close personal friend, Ms. Bladder, said "No I don't believe we will be doing that."

As I opened the bedroom door and stumbled out the cats raced for their respective food dishes and waited, all appetite and expectation. Both their dishes have dried and crusted food from last night caked around the edges, where kitty mouths have trouble reaching.

With my bladder screeching, NOW NOW, NOW I scraped the bowls out into the garbage, washed each with the brush and soap, rinsed them, and opened the fridge to find no cat food. Off to the pantry, where I got a can for each (one eats only tuna, one eats only chicken). The cats wound around my feet, the older one nuzzling me, the little one threatening to tear my legs off. I fed each one, and headed for the bathroom, noting that my husband was in his chair in the living room, oblivious, playing a computer game.

The irritation I woke with turned to resentment. He's waiting for his coffee. He's waiting for me to make it, pour it, sweeten it, put in the cream and cinnamon in it and carry it to him. Yesterday he held the cup and waved his arms around while he complained about some ad which irritated him on the TV, and in the process he slopped coffee all over the floor. I tossed him a towel to pick it up with and while he was picking the one puddle of coffee off the floor with his left hand he spilled more coffee with his right, because he hadn't put the cup down. The floor is now a great bloody mess, and I know mopping it later will give me another migraine. Thinking about it now resentment begins to stir… 

At once I realize that I need to calm down:  

1) I reassured myself that this will pass. The migraine (and the irritation which accompanies my migraines) will respond to the medication I took moments earlier. I just need to be patient and avoid expressing my irritation until the pills take effect. (I am not always successful at this. It takes a good deal of work.)

2)  I remind myself that my husband is perfectly willing to make the coffee but he makes it too weak for my taste. I make it strong and dilute his with a bit of hot water, so I prefer to make it myself. So I cannot justify my irritation that he has not made coffee.  (Makes "loco" sign around own ear here.)  And accidents happen, with coffee and other things. You don't upset yourself by attaching blame to accidents, you simply clean them up and go on.

3) While I cannot meditate for an hour, I can drop into a single moment of silence which serves to calm me.  And while the feeling of irritation remains, it does not need to be acted on, or imposed on others.

4) I take responsibility: While it's important not to let others destroy my inner peace, it's just as important to take control of my own feelings and not let them destroy my inner peace. Speaking in irritation only increases the level of irritation, and creates anger and discord. Controlling one's speech muscles and speaking to others in peaceful and positive ways increases your feelings of well-being and happiness.

Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace

The Dalai Lama has said, " Do not let the behaviour of others destroy your inner peace."

That's great advice, but how does one put it into practice? What are the actual mental "tools" used to maintain inner peace in less-than-peaceful situations?

I hate conflict. I just want everyone to be nice and get along. I also sit on the condo board for our building, which has 186 units. People come in a steady stream to my door with questions and problems, this leaks, that's broken, a light needs replacing in a stairwell. Sometimes they simply come because they want to talk  and that's okay too.

But there's one woman who is often at my door. She is loud, aggressive, and frequently gets into arguments with other owners because she's always poking her nose where it has no business being. I cringe when I hear her knock on my door. Sometimes it is a building issue that she feels is a looming emergency, like a loose eaves trough or a mark on the carpet. If I do not put my foot down and absolutely refuse I will be dragged to examine this threat, as if it were a two-alarm fire.

Usually she is reporting on someone else's "unacceptable" behaviour, like propping their door open on a hot day (she does not approve), or "warning" me that she saw a Black person come into the building! Since we have several immigrant African families who live in the building she has to remain on extreme alert at all times. I have made my views on her racism clear, and as soon as she brings race, ethnicity or religion into it I terminate the conversation.

Tonight she knocked on the door in an explosive mood (no pun intended). A resident in one of the ground floor units had guests, and they set off some small fireworks. From her level of hysteria I thought he had done this right on the patio beneath her unit's balcony, but with closer questioning I learned that the fireworks had been taken across the parking lot and set off over the railroad tracks at least 100 feet away. There's a marsh between the tracks and the parking lot, which is a good 75 ft wide. With the flooding and the nightly rains we've had for the last six weeks the grass is waterlogged. You couldn't set fire to it with a blowtorch.

But nonetheless she challenged the two men with their children when they came back, telling them they couldn't set off fireworks, that they were going to burn the building down and in general giving them what-for. One of them told her to go back inside and mind her own business. She lit into him and unpleasant words were exchanged.

After all this she came banging on my door, wanting me to come and tell the men off, or perhaps chain them up and beat them, or what…. it was never clear exactly what I was supposed to do, except "be an expert in the city by-laws about fireworks".

So she launched into me, and the general uselessness of the condo board and then moved on to the classic nobody-loves-me-I hate-everybody tirade. I hugged her and told her I was sorry she was having such a hard time, but she stomped off down the hall waving her arms, crying, swearing and fuming.

I came in feeling like I'd been chewed up and spat out by a bear. I sat here with my heart pounding, sick to my stomach with anxiety. After a few minutes I thought this is stupid. Why should I let her problems dealing with other people her make me feel like this? So I did the following:

1) I acknowledged my anger at her for being so irrational and difficult to deal with

2) I acknowledged my fear that I may sometimes say the wrong things to her

3) Recognize that my initial reaction was to be upset, but it was essentially just a feeling and feelings come and go and are harmless

4) I drew a clear boundary between my emotions and hers and said to myself, I am not going to feel her emotions. This doesn't mean I don't have compassion for her. I wish she was able to deal with people more easily but she is absolutely convinced that she is the world's authority on everything, and she comes at anyone who disagrees like a pit bull.

5) Recognize that *I* decide how I react to her and in this case I decided that her argument and tantrum are not going to disturb my inner peace.

Once I recognized I was experiencing all this unpleasantness I used the tools I have learned over the years to interrupt my own cycle of negativity. The "escape" happened much more quickly than I was able to write it down.  

KIVA Loan for July 2013

Our July KIVA loan goes to Erica Yamileth, a 27-year-old woman who lives in Comayagua Honduras. She has a great future as she is ambitious and a hard worker. She is an entrepreneur, shopkeeper and farmer. She is married with two children who are in school. Erica has completed primary education up to the sixth grade.

Together with her husband Erica grows corn, beans and rice as well as having a small grocery store which she keeps stocked with basic needs for her customers.

One of the challenges she faces in growing her crops is the high prices of agricultural equipment and supplies which promote the growth, quality and health of the plants. The inability to buy these necessary supplies reduces the yield of their fields, and reduces the profits which are left and the family does not benefit from Erica and her husband's hard work as much as they should.

Erica has asked for a loan which she will use to buy agricultural supplies for her crops, hoping this will give them a better harvest, a bigger yield of their crops and better profits. With increased profits she hopes to save enough to make some necessary improvements to her house, including whitewashing, which will prevent damp in the walls, and laying a tiled floor.

But the couple's real dream is to offer their children everything they need to enable them to graduate with university degrees which will give them better opportunities in the future.

We are happy to be able to lend a helping hand to Erica and her husband as they work toward a brighter future for their family.

I invite you to try a KIVA loan for free! Because we are long time lenders (Erica is the 49th person we have loaned $25-50) KIVA has extended this invitation. An anonymous donor is underwriting loans made by friends of lenders. By following this link you can make a free $25 KIVA loan, and we get $25 to loan to someone else like Erica. Now, who else has offered you free no-strings attached money? Please help us out by following the link and making a KIVA loan for free!   

On which side of my door did you place your umbrella?

I have a problem that a lot of people have. I sort of amble mindlessly along, mentally chewing over an event that happened 40 or 50 years in the past, or worrying about where the energy is going to come from to shop tomorrow.

Meanwhile the day slides by and by the time I'm ready to fold up and go to bed I wonder, "Where'd the day go?" And I stop and realize that I've been asleep (or more accurately mindless) much of the day.  My life is sliding through my fingers moment by moment and I'm not even aware of much of it.

There was a young monk who wanted to study with a widely revered teacher. He knew this teacher only accepted the most promising students so he studied the texts, memorized wise sayings and practiced looking impressively serene. Finally he gained an appointment for an interview with the master.

On the morning of his interview it was raining heavily. The young monk set out for the teacher's house carrying his umbrella. When he reached the teacher's house he removed his muddy shoes, closed his umbrella, adjusted his robes and rang the bell.

Once inside he sat where the attendant indicated and waited. After a while the teacher came in. The young monk jumped to his feet.

"So you want to study with me?" the teacher asked, looking out the window at the falling rain. "Have you prepared yourself? Are you ready to learn what I have to teach?"

"Oh yes," the young monk answered, "I have studied very hard."

"On which side of my door did you place your umbrella?" the teacher asked.

The young monk's thoughts flew back to the moment when he closed his umbrella and leaned it on the wall beside the door. He could not remember, his thoughts had not been on the umbrella, but only with the interview before him. "I do not remember," he said, "is where I placed my umbrella of importance?"

"Until you wake up and learn to pay absolute attention to every moment and what it holds I cannot teach you anything," the teacher answered.

The young monk went away and began learning to discipline his mind. It was seven years before he was capable of living entirely in the moment. But when he approached the teacher the second time, he was welcomed. He knew he had placed his umbrella on the right side of the door because he was awake when he did it.  

 This story came to mind a few days ago because I had taken my keys from their usual place  while getting ready to go out. I put them somewhere and then couldn't find them.

We looked at each other and, as so often is the case, we shared the same thought, and asked each other the same question. "On which side of the door did you place your umbrella?"

Try Not to Catch the Eye of the T-Rex

Yesterday was one of those perfect days, warm, but not hot. Endless blue sky lifting from the horizon. Ian is off work this week, so I asked if we could go to Drumheller and visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology. We'd been down when it first opened in 1985, but I was longing for a repeat visit.

So, about 11:30 yesterday morning we were on our way in my little red car, which had never seen a highway, and must have been confused by the lack of a fence of shops on either side of the road. Instead we rode through rolling fields of canola, patched with fields of wheat planted in precise rows your eye could follow as easily as lines stitched on leather. 

We stopped for lunch in Drumheller, whose outskirts sport all the bustle and big box stores and restaurants you see in any Canadian city, but whose older downtown with 1920s buildings was practically deserted. Craft shops, galleries, all the mom 'n pop shops that serve any tourist-centred town. 

The location of the Museum seems to be a secret. A single sign pointing vaguely that way --> was it. You drove down a neighbourhood street lined with houses on the edge of dilapidation, crossed bridges, wandered down an unmarked stretch of deserted road. I was convinced we were lost. Ian had been there several times and was confident that there was a museum at the end of this particular long and winding row. Of course he was right. There finally was a sign: 3.5 kms, 2.5 kms, turn-off ahead! 

They've hidden the thing down in the gully, which unbuilt-in looks like this, which is Horseshoe Canyon on the way to Drum. Glacial run-off and the Red Deer river have carved a deep rift in the land, and it's out of the sides of these pyramids of silt and rock that dinosaur bones erode. 

Inside the museum you step back in time, layer by layer. As we walked through the exhibits Ian remarked how the vertebrates were built to a basic plan, spine, ribcage, limbs, neck and skull, but what an astonishing variety of forms life has taken on that basic plan. 

The Dimetrodons were not dinosaurs but a pelycocsaur, and were probably more closely related to us than to the dinosaurs. They appeared in the late Paleozoic Era, about 280 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs evolved. Dimetrodon died out during in the Permian extinction 245 million years ago. 

Dimetrodon had mammal-like characteristics. They lived mainly in swampy areas. Unlike their fellow non-finned pelycosaurs, they warmed up early after sunrise, and cooled off more efficiently during the heat of the day. This efficient thermoregulation along with their large and powerful jaws gave them the advantage and allowed them to be the dominant carnivore of the era. 

An ancient alligator-like critter named Eryops also lived during the Permian period (roughly 270 million years ago), long before the dinosaurs evolved. It was an amphibian (related to today's frogs, newts and salamanders) and one of the larger animals of the era, about five feet long. Like many of today's frogs it lived in swamps, but unlike today's frogs it had lots of teeth! This meat-eater had a stout body with very wide ribs, a strong spine, four short, strong legs, a short tail, and a wide, elongated skull with many sharp teeth in strong jaws.

From slow and lumbering giants who ate plants and relied on sheer size for protection, to the massive and obviously predatory T-Rex this "zoo" of the long-since vanished is mind-boggling. From lumbering giants whose limbs dwarf today's human, to creatures who you'd find it hard to see without a magnifying glass the evolution of the forms of life on this planet as we know it today are almost incomprehensible. 

The hundreds, if not thousands, of generations it must have taken to produce the exquisitely frilled protective head shield of the Chasmosaurus span a time scale we cannot even begin to wrap our heads around. Natural selection, generation after generation, of animals who survived long enough to breed because they had a protective covering on that most vulnerable of places, the connection between spine and skull. With time the shield became ever larger, ever more imposing. They were big to begin with, rather like an enormous plated rhino, 5-8 m (16-26 feet) long and could weigh 3.5 tons. From finding fossils with preserved skin we know they were covered with bumpy, faceted projections. They laid eggs and raised their young while living in herds, like many larger mammals do today. 

The Stegosaurus was another big creature of the era, with an impressive row of alternating bony plates that ran the length of its spine. It grew up to 8-9 meters (30 feet) long and almost 3 meters tall (9 feet). However its brain was only the size of a walnut so it couldn't have been the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The rear legs were longer and straighter than the front, which sprawled to the sides. As you can see from the skeleton, its skull was long and narrow and was carried close to the ground. The plates were made of a spongy type of bone which was filled with blood vessels, so they may have been used as a sort of temperature regulating mechanism, or they may have been there to attract a mate. (Oh baby! I do like the look of your plates!) The spikes at the end of the tail were probably protective. Stegosaurus may not have been smart but they were strong and getting hit in the head with those spikes would have ruined most predator's day. 

We walked around and compared the pelvis and shallow hip sockets of the big plant eaters to the wash-tub size hip sockets of the predatory T-Rex. The plant eaters barely had hip sockets. It's obvious from the structure of the pelvis, hip and femur that their legs had a limited range of motion forward or backward, and speed would have hardly been possible. On the other hand the T-rex had a pelvis, hips and legs built for running. The femurs were bowed in opposition to the force the enormous muscles of the legs must have exerted on them when they ran. 

I'd never noticed this before but the T-rex has a retractable spur on its back feet, just like the spur on a rooster. If you've ever seen a rooster go after a cat or dog who has gotten into the hen yard, you can visualize how those spurs were used. The rooster doesn't have the advantage of a mouthful of teeth the size of a man's forearm, or forearms to grasp his unfortunate victim, but those spurs can still eviscerate a cat or small dog. Yeech, I don't even want to think of it. 

They say T-rex hunted in packs. I think I'd just have my heart attack and die before they reached me. There were parts of the Museum we didn't see because I have my limits, and some really neat areas were so difficult to photograph that I didn't get pictures. But it was a great day, not just because of the museum, but also because I got to spend several uninterrupted hours with my oldest son. If you get the chance, go see the museum. It's fabulous. It'll make you think. A motto on a pillar as you exit the building says, "The only constant is change."

Zen Blooms in Fits and Starts

TRAIN IN THE THREE DIFFICULTIES
The three difficulties are:

 
1. to recognize your neurosis as neurosis, 
 
2. then not to do the habitual thing, but
 to do something different to interrupt
 the neurotic habit, and 
  
3. to make this practice a way of life.

Yesterday I was as neurotic as I get. I held a pity-party for one, threw the confetti and blew the paper horn. I wallowed in my misery, and then, having puked up my feelings on paper, I got up and vacuumed the wooly floor, cleaned off the counter, ran the dishwasher and made a decent meal for dinner.

And while I would love to understand the neurobiology of all this build-up of angst-pie, in my case it simply comes down to two elements. Pain and low serum potassium. Once I realized this and decided I was tired of feeling like crap I took a couple of pain pills and a dose of potassium. In about an hour my foul mood improved by 100% and I got up and enjoyed the rest of the day. 

Today I woke with a migraine, my body's customary response to vacuuming. However, pain pills with breakfast, along with a cup of strong coffee has pushed the perimeter back to barely noticeable.

The day began overcast and cool, but about 11:00 am the clouds cleared and it is gorgeous out there. I took my camera out to my garden in front for pictures. Gardening may be my "guilty" pleasure, but it's also nourishment to my soul.

The sedum mat I planted at the base of the tall stone in the zen garden has exceeded my wildest expectations. The sedums are blooming, tiny, pin-head (and smaller) sized blossoms that are breathtaking in their diversity of form and colour.

The hostas on the shady side of the walk are blooming, the stalks of lily-shaped flowers are lovely - translucent, but they hang like bells and it's very difficult to photograph them from underneath. The white astilbe continues to bloom while the pink ones have faded to green.

The rose bushes out front have just about finished their first flush of blooms. I need to take the shears out and deadhead them and the sage, to encourage a second flush of bloom. The mini-roses I planted last year are thriving and the ones in the tree well near the driveway have produced some gorgeous pink blossoms. 

So, here's the drill. It's a healing garden, in every way.

I Shudda Stay'd in Bed

Believe me I tried.  The sky was just beginning to lighten when Smokey patted me with five of his twenty or so claws and complained that he was hungry. I ignored him for as long as humanly possible, but I needed to pee anyway, and there's a pill I have to take early in the day. So I crawled out of bed and staggered, half-blind, toward the kitchen. My legs work like two of those rubber pencils from the jokes store first thing in the day, and my eyes would not open, so not only did I have no control over which direction I lurched, I couldn't open my eyes enough to see where I was going.

I was aided in this adventure by 20 pounds of complaining furball twining his way through my legs as if he were winding a Maypole. I caught a corner and grabbed it like a lover, waiting for my legs and brain to make more than a tenuous connection. 

Pill taken, and cat food spooned into respective dishes (Sal2 woke up, crawled off the bed and wanted his breakfast as well)  I headed for the bathroom. Smokey will not allow me to attend the ceremonies of the toilette unattended, and shouldered his way through the door just as I closed it. He put his front paws on my knees and gazed into my eyes. I felt like a half-empty bag of rice.

I did not want to bend over and pick up 20 pounds of cat from the floor for fear of subluxating a rib or three. The claws dug more deeply into my knees. He is not a jumper. I held my breath and reached for him, but he didn't want to be picked up under his front legs, so he stood down and leaned against me.

I scooped him into my lap, where he laid on his back and gazed at me with the rapt adoration described in romance novels. He patted my face and gently bit my eyebrows. My right hip rolled in the socket and sank under his weight. I can't handle his weight any longer so I rolled him off onto the floor, did the paperwork and washed my hands. He followed me back to the kitchen, where he  apparently now feels it's safe to eat the breakfast I'd given him earlier. 

I wanted to go back to sleep, but the cats were ready for a long conversation, quite possibly about quantum physics or comparative religions. I eyed the bedroom door. They know this game. They looked from me to the door. The little one has a slick coat, I could see his muscles shifting in anticipation of the run. They know that they can be back on the bed and feigning sleep before I even get to the door. I remembered the new container of catnip I bought yesterday while shopping and pulled it out. Their delighted distraction with the two small piles of 'nip I put on the kitchen floor gave me time to get into the bedroom and close the door.

The sun was shining through the slots in the blind when Smokey began his 10,000 steps routine, on the bedroom door. He's worn a track in the door, scratching to get in. Tony grumbled and cursed for a half hour or so and then got up and let the little bastards in. They had no intentions of sleeping. I was briefly awakened numerous times when I was used as a landing/launch pad as the cats chased each other off and on and around the bed. Some time later five claws patted my arm over and over, and I opened my eyes enough to see Smokey's turquoise eyes looking into mine.

Tony was gone, and the bedroom door was closed. Smokey wanted out of the bedroom, as he cannot be separated from his kitten! By this time I am ready to kill all three of them. I am not a morning person, even when I feel well and I do not feel well today so I am more like a "Don't wake me until 11:00 and don't talk to me until NOON!" person. I ran some necessary errands and grocery shopped yesterday. It was hot, I felt lousy and now I am exhausted and in pain from one end to the other.

Mama's Protector

Mike Tyson couldn't have felt worse after ten rounds. Despite being swept thoroughly yesterday my house looks like I'm running a contraband alpaca farm. It looks like there is wall-to-wall wool everywhere, but it's just Smokey's grey "down". I'm trying to clip him, but he will only tolerate four or five minutes of the clippers and there's a bear rug of hair to get through on that cat. I've never seen such a dense coat on an animal!  But he is such a sweet boy. He seems to have begun feeling like my protector. The kitten, playing with a straw this morning, tossed it in the air and in grabbing for it sunk his claws into my leg, peeling back a scimitar of skin. I yelped and Smokey ran in from the kitchen, all big eyes and concern, assessed the situation and then crawled into my lap to give me kisses, love nibbles and cuddles.

Lesson? Point? None. Just frustration at feeling like I have been mowed down by a steam roller, at never being able to catch up, or keep up, with all the tasks I need to do, when I look perfectly healthy. Because my strength and abilities vary so much from day to day people assume I'm untrustworthy or lazy. I feel guilt when I do anything I enjoy because I feel I should be using that energy to do something that needs doing, like scrub the tub or clean out the fridge.

On days like today I feel shame for being lazy and slothful, an idea drummed into my head by my mother and reinforced by accusations from sadistic physicians and careless remarks by family and friends. I'm usually okay with all of it, but there are days when I'm so tired it overwhelms me. 

As we are prone to say, "First world problems." I should be thankful to even be alive, pain or no. In any less developed part of the world I'd be a goner.  I'm reasonably certain I'll feel better emotionally in a couple of days, which seems like an eternity as I see the work I need to do pile higher and higher, but there's nowt to do but wait it out. And this too will pass. 

Help is on the way!

Nothing so rare as a day in June

Or some such poetic flight of fancy. While thousands of Calgary's residents and businesses continue to gut flood ravaged homes and businesses and six rail cars full of diesel fuel slowly sink on a failing bridge on the Bow River I wandered out to the front of the building to assess the progress of my flower beds.

And as you can see from the pictures, things are coming along nicely. I took these yesterday, today I can see that the red roses which were buds yesterday have now opened, but you'll have to imagine them, as I am too lazy to go down there this morning.

We begin at the front bed, where the yellow roses, "Little Rocket" Ligularia, Sage, catmint and violets are in full flight. Just opening or on the verge of opening are the red roses, the Oriental poppies, echinacea, yellow cinquefoil, and the daisies. In the background the white cinquefoil is beginning to bloom, and the lilac bush is in its glory.

Moving up the walk to the shaded area, the pink astilbe are absolutely gorgeous, and the sage I planted last year is almost three feet tall and holds up its deep purple flower spikes like candles.  The chartreuse hosta I planted as a rhizome last year is coming into its own, a lovely lime colour that brings a bit of light to a spot that is shaded for most of the day.

Across the walk are the deep purple "Coral Bells",  which are blooming but since the blooms are the size of a pin head they are hard to get a decent photo of. Behind that bed is my Zen garden. The sedum mat has really taken off and looks wonderful. I hope (but doubt) that these are hardy sedums. If not I'll drop the $15.00 for a new mat next spring and replant.

Farther down the row several hostas and a white astilbe are just hovering at the edge of blooming. I'll leave them until pictures can be taken. The one hosta has several buds, which is exciting (well, for me it is!) because I've never had more than one bloom on a hosta before.

And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered...

Paul Beckwith · Climatology/meteorology research & part-time professor at University of Ottawa

Torrential rains in some regions are causing massive floods while in other locales record droughts are occurring with higher frequency and severity. 

Global food production is being hit hard, leading to large price increases and political instability. Areas under drought are experiencing massive forest fires of incredible ferocity. The frequency of extreme weather events has changed for the worse due to changes in the location, speed, and waviness of the jet streams which guide weather patterns and separate cold and dry northern air from warm and moist southern air. 

The jet streams have changed because the equator to north-pole temperature difference has decreased due to the huge temperature rise in the Arctic. This temperature rise in the Arctic is due to a decrease in the area of highly reflective snow and ice, which is caused by melting. The melting is from warming due to the increase of greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning. 

The Arctic sea ice and spring snow cover will vanish within a few years and the weather extremes will increase at least 10x. - Paul Beckwith, June 20th, 2013.

What can you do? Talk to your politicians and friends about climate change and the need to slash fossil fuel emissions. Immediately. Cut and paste my comments above and post them on facebook, send them to newspapers, and educate yourself on the science behind global climate change. Leave my name on or take it off and plagiarize all you want, just get this knowledge out ...

From an unmuzzled climate scientist,
Paul Beckwith

Surf's Up - Calgary-Style

Unless you've had no contact with the outside world you'll know that Calgary is in the middle of a devastating flood. As I noted earlier Calgary has three seasons; winter, monsoon and drought. It's rained pretty much steadily and heavily for the past three weeks, but in a 24 hour period about eight inches fell in the mountains above us, with smaller, yet definitely not needed amounts at the lower altitudes. Compounding the problem, the rain in the mountains melted much of the higher than  normal snow-pack, adding more water.

Calgary lies in a natural bowl created by glacial flow thousands of years in the past. Two rivers run through this bowl, the Bow and the Elbow. The city was originally built at the site where those two rivers converged. In the past couple of days both rivers have been flowing at 10 times their normal volume and speed, overflowing the dams, and rushing through every low-lying neighbourhood in the city.  A hundred thousand people have been forced to evacuate their homes in Calgary and surrounding communities. Thankfully, we are well out of the evacuation zone. If you look at the map, to the far right in about the middle in the community of Pembrook Meadows. That is where we are, so we are well out of harm's way.

All the downtown high rises, offices and hotels have been evacuated. The power has been turned off  downtown due to flooding of wet electrical transformers.  

Still there is no chaos and no panic, in large part because our mayor, Naheed Nenshi, has been on his feet non-stop keeping everyone informed and reassured since the crisis began. He even opened his home to several seniors who had been evacuated from their assisted living facility. It is no mystery why Nenshi is Canada's highest ranked mayor.  

The Stampede Grounds are totally under water, as the Elbow River wraps around the site. The Stampede is scheduled to open two weeks from today. People are already volunteering to pitch in and clean up the grounds and buildings so the Stampede can open on time. Calgary is vibrant and very community-centred. People have a reputation for pitching in and helping each other. Thousands are already overwhelming the city offices with offers of any kind of help needed, from shoveling mud from flooded basements to feeding emergency workers.

And though the photo of flooding in a backlot in the downtown is genuine, the Orcas have been photoshopped in - I think. LOL

Endlessly Fascinating...

Neurologist Oliver Sacks is almost a household name for his ground-breaking work in neurobiology.

I could listen to him all day. In this TED Talk he describes several cases where patients who were perfectly mentally healthy had hallucinations, and how the syndrome that describes their condition came to be recognized and named. It is a fascinating glimpse into how the brain works.

Feeling Better Yet?

As reported earlier, I emerged from my doctor's appointment on Tuesday morning with prescriptions for two of the needed six medications I had on my list. Thus began the circus. I was totally out of one of these meds, and, of course, it is the only one I take that I absolutely cannot skip a dose.

The pharmacy FAXed my list to the doctor's office, and advised I follow up with a phone call. I called. My doctor was gone for the day and would not return until Friday, so sorry, but no filling of prescriptions by FAX until Friday. I explained to the voice on the other end of the line that there is one medication I must have, and asked her if one of the other doctors can't simply write a script for that one?

Lost your marbles yet? Need help?

She said she'll call me back. An hour later she called back and said, "Dr. X will FAX a script for two pills, one for Thursday am and one for Friday am." (Oh goodie! A co-pay for the dispensing charge of $15.00 + cost of two pills!)

She instructed me to check with my pharmacist in a couple of hours, and to call the pharmacy on Thursday afternoon and ask them to FAX a request for the prescriptions again since my own doctor will be in on Friday. I thanked her and went about my business, weary and a little aggravated around the edges.

A couple of hours later I called the pharmacist and learned that Dr X had written scripts for a two-day supply of every medication I take plus one I don't take and never have taken! I think my hair is a bit whiter than it was when I crawled out of bed this morning, but never mind. I had already arranged for delivery of a couple of meds for Tony earlier and I asked that the one I needed be added to that. I told them I only needed the one medication. I got two bottles with two pills each but at least not nine bottles with two pills each, so that was some kind of victory.

This afternoon I called the pharmacy. (I really wouldn't blame them for blocking my number.) I apologized but said I had to ask them to FAX this blooming list to the doctor again, and read the list to them. Second on the list was my pain med. Now this is just plain old Tylenol 2, but as soon as I said I needed a new prescription the pharmacist asked, "You've got a prescription here from March 1st for 480 of them. You need more?"

I had the bottle in hand, filled March 19, 240 pills, which still has 20 or so pills in it. But it says clearly at the top, NO REFILLS. The pharmacist explained the bottle I had in hand was from a prescription written in November. Suddenly I was filled with a sinking feeling that my doctor may well think I am taking twice as much pain medication as prescribed, when I only rarely take the amount she allows.

The pharmacy's policy is that when you bring in a new prescription it clears the old one off, but in this case they did not do that, and their inconsistency led me to believe I had no prescription for pain pills left. I called back and had a heart-to-heart with the pharmacy manager and asked if they were not going to be consistent then they should at least let me know, so I don't appear to be a drug-seeker with my doctor.  He said, "Dear dear but we can't be responsible for getting things wrong. We're too busy to follow our own rules, or to be consistent. But if your doctor calls asking if you're an addict and I happen to answer the phone and remember this conversation I'll tell her you aren't."  (Somehow I am not feeling the warm glow of reassurance, but it could just be stress-induced senility setting in.) 

Now I hitched up my big girl drawers and called the clinic again, to tell them they should have received a FAX from my pharmacy. The receptionist chirps, "Yes, you need scripts for med #1 and med #2. We have it. Bye."

"WAIT! Read that back to me again. Med #3 and #4 are NOT on the  FAX?"

"No, just these two."

The pharmacy has FAXed a request for two of the four remaining meds I need. I had to hog-tie the receptionist to the telephone while I told her exactly which meds I need. She got a bit starchy and suggested I should make an appointment with the doctor when I want so many prescriptions. 

I told her I HAD made an appointment with the doctor, and had seen her on Tuesday, and although we had talked about the medications, and I had brought her a printed sheet of the meds I needed scripts written she only wrote two of the six prescriptions I needed before getting distracted and as a result I have spent two and a half days trying to get the mess straightened out.

She said she would FAX the pharmacy, and ask them to FAX the clinic back the correct list of the medications.  She then said, "Then I'll have to see if one of the doctors who is in today will sign them." I told her no, I want my own doctor to sign off on them tomorrow. The clerk is supposed to call me back once she has the FAX from the pharmacy. So far this has taken 10 phone calls, seven FAXes and two and a half days of wasted time.

This is one of the joys of "elderhood". If you aren't demented when you go into the doctor's office you damn well are by the time you finish with them.

All Together Now Zzzzzzzzzzz…..

A couple of weeks ago I had some blood work done at the lab. Last Friday our GP's office called and said the doctor wanted to discuss my results with me, nothing urgent, was I free the next morning at 8:30 am?

Well I was not, as I have a standing (or lying) appointment with my bed at that particular o'clock. On the rare day when I have achieved something resembling consciousness by that time it's dangerous to assume I am coherent.  So she suggested Tuesday at 10:30.

Ten-thirty is still iffy by my body clock. My wits and I do not tend to look in the same direction until noon at least. Elephants could float overhead at 10:30 am most mornings and I would not even notice, or if I did, I wouldn't give a flying fuc^. But she pressed it and I reluctantly agreed.

I laid out *everything* yesterday. I printed off duplicate copies of the prescriptions I needed to have refilled, with doses and timing, (one sheet for her and one for me). I printed the one question I had. I laid out my morning meds, made the coffee, decided what to eat so I could take the pills, decided what to wear, in appropriate layers. One layer = 20 C, two layers = 15 C, three layers = 10 C, four layers = 5 C. And if it's raining one additional layer to whichever choice was appropriate. (For those who are dying to know I went with two layers and a rain layer because it was raining buckets.)

I always arrive early so I have a few minutes to sit, quieten myself, counsel my doctor phobia, meditate a bit, and let my blood pressure and heart rate settle. Today, there were no handicap spots open and I had to park halfway down the lot. Rather than drown I hurried faster than I should have, so I really needed that "quiet time." But as soon as my butt hit the seat the admit clerk called me in, plopped me on the scales (yikes!), then took my still-elevated blood pressure and pulse rate.

Remember it is 10:30 in the morning and I am still stupid. The doctor comes in. She is a pleasant young woman in her early 40s, but she has a computer phobia which is unfortunate because she has to use it for every appointment. She approaches the computer as one would an erect hooded cobra which is triangulating for a strike. Fear stark on her face she slides into her chair, never taking her eyes off the screen. 

"I called you in?" It is a question she asks the screen.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I had labwork done."

She winces and touches the keyboard as if anticipating an electric shock, and brings up my file. "You need your thyroid medicine increased. It that all?" 

"No, I need refills." I hand her my sheet, with prescription refills printed in 16 pt Georgian font, double-spaced. Clear, concise.

She looks at the sheet in dismay and pecks at the keyboard. A paper comes out of the buzzing printer on her desk. I am still stupid. I do not look at it.

"Call in October to book an appt." she says, and she scurries out the door.

I stuff the paper in my bag, hobble back across the parking lot through sheets of rain and drive to the pharmacy down the road. At the pharmacist's counter I take out the prescription sheet and ask for refills on…. I look at the sheet. Of the five medications I needed refills on there are only two listed, and I don't need either of them right away.

The two medications I need refilled now are not on the sheet. But I also need one filled for which I have a prescription on file. I ask for it. The pharmacist says I can't have it because it's 41 days early. I tell her that this can't be, as I only take half the dose of what's prescribed. Nevertheless the pharmacist insists I can't have the medication and suggests that I "go home and think about it". (???)  But she agrees to call the doctor and get my refills straightened out.

I come home, look at the meds in my case. The one I need refilled was last filled in January and could have been refilled in March. I call the pharmacy. "Oh, we got the drug names mixed up," she said. "We thought you wanted the other one that you just had filled."  (I toy with the idea of suggesting they all 'go home and think about it')

On a practical note I think we all ought to go home and go back to bed, sleep a few more hours and start this day again. 

Rambling in the Roses

Well, only one rose blooming so far but it's a beauty of pure butter yellow. Of course, it began to rain buckets on us as we finished planting so I didn't think and let Kevin take the bucket the rose had come in to the garbage without recording its name. So now I have no idea what kind of rose it is, other than it is hardy, on its own root and is supposed to bloom from June til frost. (promises promises)

It has a lovely form as a bud, and opens to the old tea-rose form. The bush is loaded with buds. There must be two dozen in various stages of development. 

 
A morning walk with the camera affirmed what I can see from the balcony.

The sages are blooming, the ligularia "Little Rocket" has several fabulous spears of brilliant yellow. The purple-blooms of the sage and catmint fill in between the ligularia and the rose, creating a nice purple and yellow combo.

I noted that the other roses, some of the echinacea (coneflower) and the Oriental poppies are putting on buds, so there should be an explosion of colour in that front flower bed before too long.

Back in the shade the fern and hostas are doing well, and across from them, the purple sage is blooming and the feathery heads of astilbe buds are just beginning to open and blushing pink. The large leaves of the "Midnight Lady" ligularia are behind the astilbe. It will eventually have yellow daisy-like flowers which look like an ox-eye daisy.

The beds still look a bit bare, but will fill in over the next few weeks, especially when I go down and plant the last six-pack of dusty miller I found tucked underneath one of the shrubs. Aiiii.... Missed that entirely! Will have to figure out
where to shoehorn in another six dusty miller. 

Sadly the coleus plants I put in are sulking and haven't grown. Maybe they don't like our soil, or there's been too much rain for them. In sun or shade, it doesn't seem to matter. They are all threatening to shrivel and die. I may replace some with those dusty miller. In gardening it's always a "win some lose some" situation.  

But there's no argument that replacing the moss garden around the standing stone in the Zen garden with a sedum mat is a big success. Since the moss was in bad shape after the winter I pulled it out and replaced it with a sedum mat I found at the gardening center. It gives the impression of a wild and pristine forest at the base of a lonely and inaccessible peak. 

Is This the Asylum or...

Is it one more stop down the highway?

We have a couple of neighbours who really enjoy squabbling with each other. I think both are monumentally bored and fussing with each other lends a little drama to their deadly dull lives.

They live two doors apart. One has a cat.  I live on a different floor and in a different wing. The one with a cat took a holiday last summer and asked me to look after her cat. I agreed, and three times a day traipsed to her unit to open and shut windows, feed, water and keep company with the cat who is a biter and is not to be trusted.

Her place probably would not quite qualify for an episode of Hoarders, but she's definitely not house-proud. She left for her holiday without cleaning the cat's litter box, which was packed concrete solid with soiled litter. It was so hard the cat could no longer scratch a hole in it, so he'd been using the floor in front of the box for a couple of days at least.

The odour was overwhelming. The first day I came home, got my shovel and broke up the litter in the box into manageable size blocks, shovelled it into several bags and filled the box with clean litter from my stock. Then I scrubbed down the floor, which was covered in pee and worse, and washed the matt that she had lying adjacent, which he had drug over his mistakes.

When she returned she was angry that I had changed the litter, and told me so in no uncertain terms (it's expensive!). She also didn't like the way I had fed the cat, but she had left no instructions, other than, "the food is in the pantry".  She complained almost daily about my cat-sitting sins until November, when she asked me to cat-sit for her two week Christmas holiday.

Not surprisingly I begged off. Thankfully the neighbour volunteered. That was good, except on the third day the neighbour showed up at my door and said, "I don't want to do it, you do it."  She hadn't cleaned the litter box for the three days she'd taken care of him. When cat lady returned she gave me holy hell (again) for not feeding cat the way she wanted. Told me I could have called her sister long distance for instructions if I didn't know what to feed him on what day. Complained about it from January until April when she asked me to take care of the cat during her two week summer holiday.

I said, "NO, in no uncertain terms! Right now I'm having trouble taking care of my own family." So she went to the neighbour and came back saying the neighbour will feed the cat and I can clean the litterbox. I asked her what part of no does she have trouble with? I am not taking care of the cat, or his litterbox. "Oh," she said.

She was scheduled to leave Friday morning. Thursday night she called me from the neighbour's. "Here", she said, "you and neighbour can work out the rotation of who is taking care of the cat on what days."

She handed the phone to the neighbour. I said to neighbour, "I told [cat lady] from the beginning that I am unable to take care of the cat. I am not cleaning the litterbox, I am not rotating days, or mornings and evenings. I am not doing it period. I told her that two months ago and have told her that every time she has brought it up. "

"Okay," the neighbour said, "I know you haven't been well. You have to take care of your health," (She is 30, healthy and is home all day, and has a young, strong husband). "Don't worry about it. We'll do it."

Today I got a long distance call from cat lady saying, "I just got an angry e-mail from neighbour asking why you aren't helping take care of the cat like you promised?"

If this is the Asylum some of us aren't getting our meds on time.

When the Student is Ready

The teacher will appear, or so Zen precepts say.

Allow me to introduce Brother Servant Salvador, master teacher of simplicity.

Here he meditates, using his mala beads, probably on which lesson the student needs to learn next and what technique to use.

Perhaps the lesson is that all things are temporary? For example, he teaches that the body is temporary in a unique way. He steals all the toothbrushes and hides them. While one isn't supposed to form an attachment to one's body, one's failure to achieve this state is never so obvious as when a molar has to be extracted from a bottom jaw. The roots reach into one's shoulder blades apparently.  Attachment is too mild a word.

Maybe the student's senses should be sharpened by the removal of and/or puncturing of skin? It is a well-known fact that students must be scourged. All religions are cognizant of the value of pain to heighten the senses, instill a healthy sense of fear and impress the need for immediate obedience.

The teacher also encourages simplicity by breaking items of value. The student's favourite vase? A bowl pushed off the counter onto the floor, a six-foot leap ending on the screen on the ipad?

The student's outburst of temper is eventually followed by the lesson of contrition and there will be cuddles. But not until after the shouting has subsided and the teacher has emerged from an appropriate period of contemplation under-the-furniture or in the too-high-for-her-to-reach-place.

The interruption of sleep is another valued tool the teacher uses. "Wake, lazy sluggard; for the hour is 3:00 am and the teacher is an hungered for grilled chicken with gravy from a can in the pantry!"  At 4:00 am the teacher begins to sing, "Wake oh lazy one! Dawn approaches and your toes are both titillating and delicious!" At 5:00 am the teacher begins a course of acupuncture on the student's scalp, a well-recognized technique for curing the migraine now throbbing on the right side of the student's head. 

At 5:10 the teacher is ejected with appropriate curses chanting, from the student's bed chamber. He begins his 80 decibel "song to the morning" howled by his sect from time immemorial. The older monk gets up from his perch on the cat tree, a scuffle ensues, there is some hissing and quiet descends on the monastery, at least temporarily.  

Exhaustion and intimidation have ever been the tool of brainwashing of religions. There is no other explanation for why we  become lifelong students in the school of catzen.

Unless you count kitten kisses.

Mud Pies in May

Calgary has three seasons, winter, monsoon and drought. Winter ends with not a whimper but a deluge that has the two rivers which flow through the city rambling out of their banks and up into the surrounding neighbourhoods looking for a cracked foundation, or a faulty sump pump. Streets and pathways are awash and basements are flooded.

Of course the 27th of May is the predicted date of the last frost of the season so eager gardeners, including yours truly, grab their gumboots and head for the garden centre. Having lost half the perennials I planted last spring to drought and the lack of a functioning irrigation system in the flower beds I laid a steel glove on the irrigation company and have exacted a promise that several additional sprinkler heads will be going into the flower beds. As soon as it stops raining.

Ian, bless him, the 10 hours I spent in labour with that boy have been repaid 1000 times over. He came over last Monday and took me plant shopping. Last year the pickings were slim and I came home with a pretty, but a somewhat disappointing bunch of plants. This year someone must have read my "want" list because the selection was everything I wanted and more.

The problem here is one of scale. This is a HUGE building. The main walk approaching the front door is 20 feet wide and 120 feet long. The beds were originally planted with potentillas, and some kind of coarse, leggy, ugly shrub which grows from the base each year and so accumulates a huge amount of dead wood and can't be trimmed into a neat shape. These plantings  are now 10 years old and need to be ripped out and replaced. My plan is to replace two or three a year until they are all gone.

It takes bold colours and mass plantings to achieve any impact on this scale. What we did last spring was 50 times better than what had been there before, but the plants were too small to have the needed impact. This year! Be still my heart. The garden centre had BIG plants with wonderful foliage that flower from June 'til frost. Plants that will tolerate shade. (I admit I went a little crazy.)

The landscaper was supposed to come and plant what I bought this past week. He was going to dig out some of the worst shrubs and replace them with plants I'd bought more suited for shade. I just couldn't take on this job. The soil in these flower beds is heavy clay with very little organic matter. In the south we'd call it "gumbo". Go down six inches and it's pure clay, with no organic matter whatsoever. So we needed to amend the soil before planting anything new.

But due to several days of non-stop-drenching-24-hour-around-the-clock rain the landscaper couldn't work, and rain is forecast for every day next week. Here I am with a balcony full of plants getting more pot bound by the minute, and an appt for oral surgery this coming week which will effectively erase my capacity to do anything for several days.

Thankfully the sky cleared about 10:00 and I begged Ian to come help his desperate mother get some plants in the ground. On the way he bought a bale of peat moss, a bag of builders sand and a bag of compost, all to add to the bag of sheep manure which has been languishing on my deck for the last year. He brought a wheelbarrow and long handled shovel and a willing heart. Oh I do love that boy.

First task was digging up five shrubs which were badly sited. They need full sun, and are in a spot where they perhaps get four or five hours a day. As a result they are lanky, soft stemmed and totally covered in black aphids by July. The honeydew they produce is so thick it drips like strings of black snot on the sidewalk. People brush the branches as they go past and it's a mess. I cut the shrubs back severely last spring, but it's like chopping up a starfish - the low light level makes them send out two match-stick size seven foot-long shoots from every spot where you cut the branch. 

Once the shrubs were dug up  we added large amounts of peat, compost, sand and manure to the black "gumbo" soil. It was hard work. Then we planted two roses, a yellow and a red, a Ligularia "Little Rocket", 10 white swan echinaceas, 10 shasta daisies, and half a dozen red Oriental poppies in the front bed. These are all substantial sized plants, with some "presence" to them, and that bed ought to be popping with colour and texture in a few weeks.

In the bed nearest the door, where Ian removed the worst shrubs,  we amended the soil and planted two pink Japanese Astilbes, with a Ligularia "Midnight Lady" between them. A couple of weeks ago I planted a white Astilbe on the other side of the walk, and I'll put the Coral Bells directly across , so the colours echo each other. I have several other plants to go in both beds but at this point the clouds were massing black and threatening, we were beginning to get rained on, and the thunder was rolling.


I still have the Coral Bells, a yellow leaved hosta, two dozen dusty miller, four English thyme, two dozen coleus, a half dozen veronica, three or four cranesbills, and a sedum mat to plant. And all the shrubs need trimming. (This is a job for the landscaper with his power trimmer.)  For now the remaining plants are back on my balcony, and we wait for a sunny day where the landscaper can come and finish the job.

This year the flower beds are going to be smashing. If I live to see it. Lord I am tired. But I live for the three months of the year that I can garden. I'd have to be dead not to be out making mud pies in May. 

The Zebra and Dr. Google

This is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Awareness month and since I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) I thought I should write a post about it.

Several physicians have said to me, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." They are taught this dictum in med school, and it means that when a patient comes in with a complaint you first think of the common causes for their symptoms; a cold for a sore throat, an allergy for hives, arthritis for bone pain etc. rather than the exotic, like yellow fever, or beri-beri.

The problem is, I'm not a horse. I'm a zebra. I am to quote many a physician, "Complicated." Having one "rare" disorder is enough to discourage many physicians from taking any interest in you, but I have three, laid over a background of childhood polio. Much to your relief we are not here to discuss any but the last one I had diagnosed.

It's also the one which gives me the most trouble right now. EDS is caused by a genetic mutation leading to either a lack of collagen production, or defective collagen. Collagen is a group of proteins found in the muscles and connective tissues, and the main component of tissues that support, connect, or separate different organs of the body. It is found in tendons, ligaments and skin, and is also abundant in the cornea (eyes), cartilage (ends of bones), the bones, blood vessels, the gut, and the discs between the vertabrae.

Collagen underlies the:
• Storage of energy
• Protection of organs
• Structural framework for the body
• Connection of body tissues
• Connection of tendons, bone etc. to muscles

 It's clear from even this short description that being collagen deficient is not a particularly good idea. It's rather like being forty sandbags short of a dike when the water rises around your house in a flood. The water doesn't look at the 2000 sandbags you filled and piled so carefully, it simply finds the weak spot and suddenly your grand piano is floating in three feet of muddy water.

When EDS patients talk it's often of how to cope with the unending and severe pain they suffer. The muscles and the fascia that hold them together are fragile, and sustain many small rips or tears during even normal daily activity. This means constant deep muscle pain for many patients.

But pain is also the result of being "bendy", or in medical lingo "hypermobile". Joints move too far, they jump the rails and either partially or completely dislocate with little or no provocation. Turning over in bed, or pulling on a T-shirt can dislocate shoulders, a sneeze can subluxate (partially dislocate) ribs.

 I have always been extremely hypermobile. On the Beighton scale I score 8 of 9, even at an age where a 3 will get you diagnosed. I can place my palms together behind my back in what is called "the backwards prayer" pose. I can turn my feet entirely around so my toes face backward. I can bend my thumbs down to touch my forearms, and all my fingers will bend backwards to a 90 degree angle to my hand.

 But this slippery joint business also means one of my neck vertebrae slides forward just enough to entrap the nerve to the right side of my face, so it feels like I have a nail in my eye and a toothache in every tooth on that side of my head. My right hip slides too far sideways with each step, and my crooked spine has trapped my sciatic nerve so that if I walk too far, or climb steps, I get lightening bolts of pain from lower back, down through my abdomen, hip, knee to my foot. Picking up bags of groceries, or vacuuming, subluxates my shoulder and neck and I'll have a migraine for two or three days afterwards.

Another EDS marker is thin, transparent or extensible skin. My veins are easily visible through my skin, and blood draws are a nightmare because my veins are so fragile they rupture, collapse, or lack the surface tension needed to allow the needle to penetrate. Blood vessels are prone to rupture, vascular tumours are common, surgical sutures tear through, and scars widen and assume a thin "tissue-paper-like" appearance.

 However, I'm lucky, as I have a relatively mild case. Many are far worse off than I am. I know of children who are wheelchair bound at eight or ten because they are too loosely-jointed to walk. There is no treatment, other than supportive bracing and pain control, which many doctors, including my own, are reluctant to prescribe in adequate amounts. So you eke out the pain meds carefully, trying to get by without them whenever possible. And the pain becomes just one more thing to contend with.

You can't tell an EDS patient by appearance. Patients look perfectly healthy. So many, like me, slip through the diagnostic net for years, even though I showed dozens of doctors how hypermobile I am. I had vascular tumors and blood vessel ruptures and difficulty with scarring, and though the diagnosis was suggested by a young resident during rounds after I had an arterial rupture in 1975, it was rejected as "too rare".

I was only diagnosed three years ago, when I was 64, by an absolutely wonderful woman GP, who noticed my odd scars and hypermobility on her own. The diagnosis was confirmed by a geneticist just recently. Thank the Cosmos for the web where as "zebras" those with rare disorders can congregate and graze slowly across the virtual plains, talking to each other, finding comfort and safety in a herd that is not made up of horses. And for a place where we can write and educate patients and doctors who may know little (or nothing) about EDS, and may not recognize the symptoms for what they are.  And thankfully as someone joked the other day, physicians now often leave the exam room to consult "Dr. Google", who keeps the world's largest repository of medical knowledge.  Gotta love the innerwebs, the "zebras" best friend.

Predictable as Sunrise…

Yesterday, as reported, I planted six Osteospermum plants, which meant digging six small holes about four inches deep in soil which had been thoroughly dug on Monday last. I sprinkled a bit of time-release fertilizer granules in the bottom and plopped them in. My friend and neighbour Gail came along and planted the larger false spirea.

When I finished in the garden I brought the hand truck with the bin of garden implements, left it sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor and sort of collapsed into my chair. I even had an unexpected two hour nap on the sofa in late afternoon. 

Today I am climbing Mount Aconcagua, (aka "my dirty house"). I decided to call it Aconcagua because Aconcagua is the highest mountain in the Americas and since it is in Argentina it's appropriate since my house-keeping has definitely gone south. Unfortunately I had a very busy week for me, and I can barely move today. I start to sweat after 10 minutes on my feet. This climbing business is not for the faint of heart.

Wikipedia has thoughtfully provided me a to-do list for the day. Beginning with "Nido de Condores", which I think was a warning that if I didn't quicken my pace the condors (who are the world's largest vultures) were apt to mistake me for dead and tie on their bibs, the order of tasks is outlined. 

At "Nido de Condores" I cleaned out the cat box. (Maybe it's the stink that attracts them - "them" being the condors). The floor is absolutely awash in cat litter. Not just the floor in front of their box, or in the laundry alcove where the box lives, but the entire house. That little stripey bastard of a kitten rolls in the litter and carries it all over the house on his fur. He seems to think this is a big joke.

Moving up the side of the mountain, you can see my path was staggered. I veered like a drunken monkey, until at "Berlin" I hit the wall and had to sit for a few minutes. But the drier stopped and I had to shake out, fold or hang those clothes or else my days as a fashion maven will be over. This task is complicated somewhat because the stripey one thinks jumping in and out of the laundry hamper while you sort the socks, towels and undies is a cool thing to do, preferably when he's just rolled in the litter! (He's fortunate that he's so cute, and he knows how to smooch good.)

Looking farther up the mountain and measuring my progress. At "Independencia", the kitchen floor was finally independent of the bin and hand truck full with its cargo of hose, muddy shovel, fertilizer, and other gardening implements, and the counter and stove top became independent of dirty dishes and mysterious crusty bits.

While I was outside returning the gardening implements to their proper spot I stopped a moment and looked over the side of the balcony at our Japanese plum tree, which is just beginning to bloom. In a few days it will be covered so thickly in blossoms you won't be able to see the leaves.    

The mountain's final summit lies far ahead and will take a good deal of perseverance to achieve.  There are tufts of silver grey fur everywhere, along with a uniform layer of litter and a goodly amount of dust. In other words, I have to vacuum, but first I have to sit.  Vacuuming is the last 300 foot high cliff before I summit. But I have to move along, those condors are circling and they have a hungry gleam in their eye.