When the rare alignment of sun, a ready wheelchair, and me dressed and with energy occur, I head outside even if I have to pay for it with an erratic heart for the next 36 hours.
For clarification, my heart problems which stopped fencing and started wheelchair use was POTS plus autonomic failure (postural hypo--tension) which meant my heart went above 170-240 beats per minute if I was upright even for a minute or two, plus spikes in blood pressure which caused tremors and mini-strokes. Now, I have a collection of upper and lower heart erratics, which are not only painful (for example, if my ventricles, the lower heart, don’t beat while the upper heart does, it is like water filling a balloon to bursting – where bursting is chest cavity bleeding: that is one of the eight to twelve erratics) but indicate that my autonomic system, the part which does the stuff you don’t have to think about, does not have the ability to exert itself AND maintain a steady heart beat for the rest of the day. The rule now is ‘1 day, 1 activity’ whether that is a shower, or an appointment, and even then, I can overexert myself. But I am trying to find boundaries which allow me to do something and go on to live another day.
Last weekend, a late sun through cleared clouds allowed me out to wheel a block or two with Cheryl and show her some of the ‘tales of our neighborhood’. I am sure your neighborhood has local characters and things of interest. Thankfully the guy with the long beard who used to be on the house by the corner and comment on my clothes, ass, and breasts has moved on to where-ever lechers with poor impulse control go. Across from us is a short closed off street which has old houses and this lovely garage, showing that all one need do is stay still long enough and you too can be on of William Hope Hodgson’s Fungus people.
It also shows a ‘Canadian VW camper van’. While parts for cars are regularly made on both sides of the US, Canada border (and now that our Canadian dollar is higher, expect Canadian plants to open up to exploit the cheap US labor: “They seem good chaps, by jove, but use some local lingo, and not the Queen’s English.”) in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s there were particular colours of paint only used on Canadian sold Vehicles. Orange, yellow, and green all had separate shades, and the Canadian colours tended to look like faded photos from the 1950’s. One of the ways I could tell I was back in B.C., Canada from Los Angeles, were the car colours from my childhood everywhere with the yellows, browns, oranges, and odd green cars paint colours unseen south of the border. I have searched and searched but found no reason why Canadians were given different colours.
There are several squirrels that use the old 70’s apartments in the area as good places to store food, since they have large gardens. Here is one black squirrel with a red chest (??) who is busy rearranging the soil.
All squirrels seem to have OCD tendencies. With the green spaces taken over, the barn owls, I have not seen for a while, nor the family of raccoons, however, our fence is still part of the squirrel highway and Linda saw a bald eagle sunning a while ago. I have seen a hawk in the park (beacon Hill), and an owl, and there is supposed to be a heron there somewhere. Deer has been seen within four blocks of our apartment.
When we moved back to Victoria, and found out that our apartment rented while in the UK was in the area we wanted (lots of trees, open space, all in walking distance), but had been, until we moved in, a crack den. We looked around as we still wanted this area but more space and privacy. We saw a sign advertising for ‘ladies only’ rooms, and thought it might be a boarding house.
This is only a few doors up from our current apartment, while an actual boarding house was round the corner (which I called 'The Addam's House' due to number of Ambulance trips from there), in the heritage house they tore down to build the condos across from us. Once we answered the ad we found that it was not a female renting the room, but an older guy....who liked older women. There was a lack of seperate cooking or bathroom facilities. The rooms were furnished but the male older owner required that women NOT retreat into their rooms and shut the doors but that they must stay in common areas until at least 8:00 pm AND keep the door open to their room. This did not sound like a room for rent but an elderly voyeur who could not get out to peep in windows anymore so hired rooms to ‘ladies’ and required them not to close the door. Too weird, no privacy and we ended up finding our apartment. Five years later, the same sign, like a venus flytrap, has remained up the entire time. It also looks like some of the extra ‘Canada Green car paint’ was sold to do the trim on this house.
This week, another sunny day, the day after showering meant a trip out to Beacon Hill Park. It was very GREEN, and in the open sunny areas, where the mud flats reflected the heat, the Sakura blossoms of this cherry tree had opened. 
The other trees were just starting to open.
In the shady grove, you can see two squirrels, a grey and a black on either sides of the tree.
The squirrels were out due to the sun but young and skittish, except for the older squirrels, who knew what the sound of a plastic bag meant. The older squirrels however would retreat up a bit into a bush and then slowly gnaw down the peanut.
The flowers on the sun side of the vegetation islands where the squirrels hid and played had opened.
Meanwhile, young squirrels mostly stayed in the shade of the grove, where the overhead canopy hid them from crows and owls.
Here they leapt and raced like hyperactive younger brothers. This also included getting distracted from peanuts and suddenly getting into fights with each other.
Here for example, one squirrel is stretching out, finally taking the peanut from my hand, and above him you can see a streak of brown in motion.
This picture is a still from a short film Linda took and up in the tree, just out of sight, is a black squirrel who took the peanuts and went up there to eat them. When this grey stretched and grabbed the peanut, the black squirrel threw the remaining shell and one of the two peanuts still inside down and nailed the grey, bouncing it off of his head. Oh, the lovely woodland creatures, and people say how they reflect the glory of god. It appears then that god is like a sibling on a long car trip who can’t stand to see anyone but themselves get any treats. I do remember one birthday party very young where the young girl spent most of the time running around trying to make sure none of the children her parents invited (that included me) got to eat or take any of all the lovely food. She ended up licking most of the icing off the cake before being carried out screaming by her parents. Squirrels can be like that.
After an hour, we headed back,
and I just now remembered that Linda promised me a butterscotch sundae for going out. She used the ‘oh dear, out of time’ routine to escape ice cream payment then, but I am definitely owed one ice cream from the Beacon Hill Drive in! I like going out as the sun and new growth is full of color and the young kids are brought out in droves, very cute – however, going to the park, even in a wheelchair to take pictures of small children is a good way to end up on the neighborhood watch list, and then I would be a local tale (the bad kind).
In Surrey, B.C., in first grade, the fifth graders, the ‘older’ kids, swore they was a body buried in the woods behind the school. And the one guy most adamant in telling us the tale said that whoever found the body FIRST would get a NEW BIKE. The ‘body behind the school’ is common (we had that in LA at the elementary school there), along with the woman with lots of cats being a witch, but since then I have never heard of a reward for a six year old finding the body. Maybe we were a little TOO starved for entertainment out there (a scar from childhood is from when I hid under the trucks at the plant across the way, raised my head up, cut myself on my crown, felt blood and then ran screaming home, shouting over and over to my mother, “HELP! HELP! I CUT MY HEAD OFF!”
I woke up Saturday to construction noise BUT a sunny day. So, good day to see the squirrels.
Maybe squirrel mothers were a) desperate for food for childbirth or b) desperate for food for babies. I got dressed with help in a corset with my Lip Service hoodie and arm warmers. Here I am reading Tea for Two
(thank you the person who got this for me a present, it is a very nice Boy Love story about an overly active guy who gets sent to the Tea Club as detention, and meets the refined President. The reactions to the traditions of the tea ceremony are laugh out loud, and his attempts to become refined and dignified and good too. We find that the President has been taught to act as an adult and be distant and refined since a child, and this ‘wild child’ is teaching him how to smile – he hasn’t worked up to a laugh yet, that might be in book 2!).
I just talked to Cheryl and she recommends it too. The lesbian side story at the end of the book about the sisters has no influence (lie!).
We saw a lot of people, a couple 2 to 4 year old boys chasing squirrels with sticks and lots of crows (like hundreds). So not a lot of squirrels, and the ones we saw were mostly young and twitchy.
Now, looking at my face, does my desire and focus to feed squirrels make me look like a squirrel? Same teeth and hand positions.
Odd. Despite the giant squirrel in the wheelchair they came and took peanuts anyway.
But one grey squirrel kept retreating up a tree nearby, going out on the branch and then eating his peanut while pulling off bits and dropping shell bits on me. I am not sure if this is squirrel humor or not?
When we visited the the Hoh Rainforest, we saw young black squirrels swinging around on the moss. And the rangers said we were lucky as they, due to the uniform, get pelted with cones from the squirrels when they walk in the woods (cheeky squirrels).
Despite the fact that it snowed yesterday, SATURDAY was sunny and Linda stole the camera while Cheryl and I enjoyed a break and a chat
and went off to take pictures of the flowers that have come up (hope they are still alive after the snow). I could use some help from readers as I show you this, um, blue (purple?) flower that looks nice.
And over here are a bunch of yellow flowers that had come out into bloom (I know roses, carnations, lilies, daisies, lots of flowers, okay, it just turns out there are a few hundred flowers around where I live!).
She also took a picture of me beneath the Sakura tree.
I found another squirrel who was brave enough to go through the crows and kids to get a peanut, who then acted like I did not bring the high quality peanut she usually demanded.
She however was not the oddest squirrel of the day. Hands down, that would be Helmet Head, a squirrel who seemed to think that life was made of American Football (there are also some males during football season who seem to feel this way, if beer is included). Helmet couldn’t do a straight line if his hunger depended on it (guess he never learned a 10 yard buttonhook), but rather did complex feints to the right and left, bobs and weaves just to go an inch forward. So, after a series of blitz attacks, Helmet had reached the goalposts (you can see him standing up by the tree).
I am holding out a peanut maybe 2 feet away, pretty easy right? Haha, that’s because you don’t see life as fourth down on the 30 yard line! Helmet leapt IN THE AIR forward, 
the velocity skidding his body forward over the scattered nettles.
Helmet is only a foot away,
but instead of coming forward, in a blinding bob and feint to the left he then leapt to the right, completely fooling the opposition!
(I am still holding the peanut out with sort of a dazed look on my face since Helmet I think got a few too many hits on the head). Arriving, he spins,
and instead of going right or left, he does a shuffle step and bounds pretty much EXACTLY where he was before.
Only now, with the momentum carrying him forward he immediately launches into the air again and leaps left atop the peanut which, after watching this squirrel burn up about 5 times the energy in the peanut, I have dropped.
Helmet is VICTORIOUS, touchdown! And though only 4 or 5 leaps to the left and right, he managed to get 18 inches forward. In true Helmet Head style, after the peanut is safely tucked in his teeth he bounds, getting some significant air time as he bounces a rebound off of the side of this tree to make his getaway.
Good luck Helmet!
"Every party needs a pooper and that’s why they invited me, ‘Party Pooper! Party Pooper!’" – that is the odd song which means we went home after this because I had frostbite in two of my fingers. But I got to see the outside world (it is big and has a very high ceiling!). At home, we worked on the postcards for this week for part of Saturday and Sunday and did 60 postcards. That is a good number, sixty! (of course 61 sounds MORE impressive...but sixty is good too). Thanks to several donations of postcards from different people over time, I was able to meet some rarer requests.
Thank you very much for both the requests and the assist with the postcards. This week due to some connectivity issue, both Cheryl and I were taking more time and being a bit more careful with the cards, so these are really postcards of deliberate care (after dropping lots of things, from toothbrushes to drinks, making sure I wasn’t stamping on my fingers instead of the postcard was a high priority).
So, was it a good weekend where you were?
Fall has arrived, and the trees are sending the leaves down in bushels. Which make some kids happy.
I am trying to remember that delight of seeing big leaves instead of automatically thinking “Oh no, this means every leaf blower in town will be on my block forever!”
Sound-wise today was extremely noisy. I did not know why as I had a medical appointment. When Cheryl came she said the Coho – the 50 year old tilt back and forth ferry had carried over the Olympic Torch. Not only that, because of the ‘political target’ it could make, the slow moving, waddling Coho Ferry was escorted by the US Coast Guard until Canadian Waters and then by the Canadian Coast Guard. I am not sure what the plan was because the Coho was built back in the days when LARGE amounts of steel was put into ships, enough to make those giant Caddies that go through brick walls seem wimpy. So was a speedboat supposed to hit it with explosives? Because of the Olympics? And would the Coho notice? Or was one of the cars aboard supposed to go off, and then the Coast Guard would what? Shoot all the potential suspects swimming toward the Coast Guard vessel? I am not clear on the logic of most things security related, like why U.S. citizens like Cheryl can come to visit me with a driver’s license but cannot as a CITIZEN of the US return to her country/gated community with one, but MUST have a passport.
Anyway, the torch arrived, and according to Cheryl, the ‘Torch Run’ of the Olympics (which is supposed to be about ‘amateur sports’ and not ‘whoring ourselves to media and corporations’ is the ‘RBC and Coca-Cola Torch Run” – because moving the Olympic Flame certainly can’t be done without sponsorship! So Coke and Royal Bank had been using this as several million in advertising having contests on who would run with the torch, and so the torch was jogged 300 yards, then lights the NEXT person, in order to get all the people in who Coke and RBC sold the spots to. AND then afterward, you can buy the torch you ran with. Surreal. I was about to make a joke about how probably Pepsi is sponsoring the Torch Run in Real World or one of the Virtual Worlds. But then I thought I should check to make sure that isn’t actually happening; since many big brands are now opening shops in virtual worlds (Yes, I realize how insane that last sentence sounded – are you being served in your Nike Virtual World shopping experience by penguins? Who knows? Does someone purple carry the torch with wings?).
Back to reality, after my last blog about heaven help those who try to stop me going to badminton, I got 30 minutes sleep, and then in the rain I rolled to badminton (I am not a political target either!). I ended up in my first game facing the badminton coordinator and one of the other very good players. But I was not daunted! In fact, here you see an early point where I am using one hand to push myself up onto my clothing guard while I reach for the birdie.
This caused the wheelchair to tip over, but I HIT the birdie, pushed the floor with my fist and the chair bounced back as I called, “In play, still in play” and we went on to win the point. Most impressive for someone who has a 17% chance when trying to scratch their nose of hitting it.
When serving, the important thing is to serve LOW over the net so they cannot slam it back at you – this was a VERY good serve I managed, and Linda got it.
I did confuse them a bit with my serves. And they came back at me and my partner. It was a match to 21 points. We were ahead, then behind then ahead. Here you can see me wheeling past after guarding the front and probably blocking a tipped in birdie,
I seem pleased, or in concentration.
While in this shot I am about to send the birdie into the far back corner.
The problem is that I can only be so many places, as I have a chair that does not move sideways, and the opponents learn to NOT hit to those places – very vexing. But I still got some hits in, here I moved back to cover my partner while he was serving and hit the responding hit (you can see the birdie at the VERY top of the screen, that bit of yellow) which I hit backhand to boot!
Well I played tough, or honestly by the end I was mentally exhausted and a little confused but I tried hard
and we ended up losing 23-22 or 24-22, I am not quite sure, all I know is we were tied 21-21 and so could not finish but kept going. I like close games and this one was close.
After another game I wheeled home and then got too little sleep due to two cement trucks, a crane, two chainsaws and a few other handy noisemakers the next morning starting at 6:56 a.m. Ug.
Remember those two squirrel siblings I told you about. Well here they are. You see one is bounding toward Cheryl, while the other is finding and digging up where the sibling just buried the last peanut.
Then, as the squirrel gets the peanut, you can see the other in the background, having found the last peanut is now eating it.
Then they move aside so the happy sibling (the poor clueless one who you end up tricking to do your chores) goes around to find a new burying spot while they finish the peanut – then as the sibling bounds off to get another one, they dig that up too. Sad but oh so familiar.
I also got some postcard loot for the postcard project in Hawaii and on orders which finally came in – here is one of the Postcard Books that I have been looking forward to getting and sending out.
I used to spend my hours as a youth in the old Pasadena Public Library which looked a lot like this one but a lot bigger (it had lions too outside). There was hard wood everywhere and the old card catalogues, and the information/answer desk where you used to be able to go and ask a librarian a question like, “How many moons does Saturn have?” and they would find the answer for you.
I also got this set of Escher cards 
which I can send out with little gifts or just as cards while the hand lasts. I like Escher because so much of it seems a metaphor for disability; the way medios think and work and so much in life. What doesn't go round and round in disability land?
Also here are some of the stickers we picked up at a store, I think just outside the Waipio Valley called Honoko.
We have already sent out several of them (half?) on the postcards we did last week – about 30+ in number. I liked finding these touches of Hawaii and bringing them to the postcard, because when they are gone, they are gone. And that is the point of a postcard, isn’t it?
For those who are going trick or treating tomorrow, good luck. If you are in doubt whether to go trick or treating this is a little measure I use: If you are carrying a bottle of beer or liquor and take hits from it between houses, or have to put out your cig before asking for candy – you are TOO OLD! Sorry.
Hawaii is over, Hawaii is still here.
The trip is over but some memories stay, and the idea that problems are just things to be overcome, that stays. The attitude that I am a valued member of society remains. But the last two memories or ideas are under assault: phone calls daily, from wheelchair sports collecting money, from Triumph who says they have been trying to get in contact (“When?”, “Uh, I believe I called in June.”) as they want $700 to avoid putting a computer unused due to glitches on the loan program. VIHA, Beacon, is there anyone who doesn’t call not giving a damn about me compared to the forms. I still have no GP, the walk-in clinic cancels the specials or tests ordered. I long for the time when people saw overcoming obstacles as something good, when at Badminton a player tries to claim a point because I was wheeling by (off court), “Wheelchair near court! Interfere! My point!” He later looks at me, realizes he will be in a match with a female wheelchair user, and takes his racket out of the line up, then puts it back to end up on the court minutes after me. Try putting ‘Jew’ instead of wheelchair and see how that sounds.
I worry I left the best part of my on the Big Island.
Lungs, heart and nerves are withering, are dying. I live a life of oxygen and dusky fingers. I am adept at using my teeth for many things now. And the signals, the heat has increased in my upper spine, above the T-section. And by increased that means I am on 3 pain killers during the day, and at night the strongest, 5 pain killers, 2 sedatives, and then a spray of medicinal marijuana onto my cheek to help it absorb in minutes. I hallucinate. I bite my lip, my tongue.
And I scream. How can I hold on to something, squeeze something to help me take the pain when I can’t feel my hands? I live by watching what my limbs are doing, I have gross motor function, felt or not: a crane operator. But the spine, it burns literally, while my body is goosebumped in shock it burns hot as I scream, my voice husky from a lack of oxygen. I don’t know how long? As many breaths until my lungs can’t push out any more.
I asked advice. What to do when the future is here? When it is seen? Spend more time with Linda, spend more time with squirrels.
I can do that. We have polite squirrels who often have a ‘a peanut for a starving squirrel artist?’ look. 
Yes and peacocks. The ones who aren’t thin are the ones who are bold. We found a pair of squirrels, both blacks (the smart ones) and one was getting peanuts every 30 seconds, running off and burying them. The other squirrel was digging up the recently buried peanut and eating it. Squirrel #1 hadn’t caught on yet by the time we left. I hope they are siblings.
We met an offspring or cousin to Psycho I call Fearless. Fearless is one squirrel who is going to survive the winter. Why? Because as Cheryl said, “That squirrel will be mugging old ladies for Chicklets.” Well, as to mugging, she would know.
As for me, I perfer my squirrels to view me as sort of like the bookmobile, I am the peanutmobile and all they need do is climb up and take a look at what is on offer.
Fearless, upon returning, would run across 200-300 yards before leaping at least four feet away and landing halfway or more up my leg. Now I know what a tree branch feels like (and isn’t peripheral neuropathy good as he was using claws). I could feel the whump of force through the wheelchair. But at the end of the day it turns out he is quite picky, 
Fearless the gourmet? Or just wanting the highest calorie content?
As you can see by the leg, as he starts to eat after mugging Cheryl, Fearless has had plenty of action like fights. There is a claw mark on his back, likely a crow. This must be why he is basically sitting atop the person he just mugged and having a sandwich.
Luckily Cheryl didn’t mind. See, we have VERY disability friendly squirrels (the people, ehhh, not so much – as we had been just been to a pumpkin farm and found it hard to find space in the disabled parking full of race cars and family vans, without a single blue badge in sight).
As we wheeled home, since I had frostbite in one hand, after turning off our cameras, a full grown bald eagle flew over us, just above treetop. She had a whole branch in her claws, nest building was my guess. There is one bald eagle at least in the park, but rarely seen. It seemed a good time to go home, falling under the shadow of the bald eagle.
The pain is still here, the fear of living without a net medically, the isolation, the daily times of being helped to breath, to clear the passageway, passing out due to lack of oxygen, the inability to move at all more and more often. I look into a future which realistically has no hope and want what everyone else does: living, a job, a social net, family. On one hand, VIHA has been hinting at a care facility. On the other, I am still planning a new trip while paying for the last, while sending out postcards and thank you’s. The race to use my hands has never been more painful, aching and conscious. No, I haven’t been well but I force myself out anyway. I force myself to do so many things, and now, I force myself to step back and take time to be here, and grieve a little bit.
It was too hard to face things. So my degeneration progressed. Starting today, a ‘Good Day’ isn’t a day when I am mentally like I was, or had a competitive experience, but one in which I didn’t scream, in which I smiled, or just stared at clouds. It is time to stop hating myself for the parts and times of me which aren’t as close to my Able Bodied Life as I could get.
It also shows a ‘Canadian VW camper van’. While parts for cars are regularly made on both sides of the US, Canada border (and now that our Canadian dollar is higher, expect Canadian plants to open up to exploit the cheap US labor: “They seem good chaps, by jove, but use some local lingo, and not the Queen’s English.”) in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s there were particular colours of paint only used on Canadian sold Vehicles. Orange, yellow, and green all had separate shades, and the Canadian colours tended to look like faded photos from the 1950’s. One of the ways I could tell I was back in B.C., Canada from Los Angeles, were the car colours from my childhood everywhere with the yellows, browns, oranges, and odd green cars paint colours unseen south of the border. I have searched and searched but found no reason why Canadians were given different colours.
All squirrels seem to have OCD tendencies. With the green spaces taken over, the barn owls, I have not seen for a while, nor the family of raccoons, however, our fence is still part of the squirrel highway and Linda saw a bald eagle sunning a while ago. I have seen a hawk in the park (beacon Hill), and an owl, and there is supposed to be a heron there somewhere. Deer has been seen within four blocks of our apartment.
This is only a few doors up from our current apartment, while an actual boarding house was round the corner (which I called 'The Addam's House' due to number of Ambulance trips from there), in the heritage house they tore down to build the condos across from us. Once we answered the ad we found that it was not a female renting the room, but an older guy....who liked older women. There was a lack of seperate cooking or bathroom facilities. The rooms were furnished but the male older owner required that women NOT retreat into their rooms and shut the doors but that they must stay in common areas until at least 8:00 pm AND keep the door open to their room. This did not sound like a room for rent but an elderly voyeur who could not get out to peep in windows anymore so hired rooms to ‘ladies’ and required them not to close the door. Too weird, no privacy and we ended up finding our apartment. Five years later, the same sign, like a venus flytrap, has remained up the entire time. It also looks like some of the extra ‘Canada Green car paint’ was sold to do the trim on this house.
The squirrels were out due to the sun but young and skittish, except for the older squirrels, who knew what the sound of a plastic bag meant. The older squirrels however would retreat up a bit into a bush and then slowly gnaw down the peanut.
Meanwhile, young squirrels mostly stayed in the shade of the grove, where the overhead canopy hid them from crows and owls.
Here they leapt and raced like hyperactive younger brothers. This also included getting distracted from peanuts and suddenly getting into fights with each other.
This picture is a still from a short film Linda took and up in the tree, just out of sight, is a black squirrel who took the peanuts and went up there to eat them. When this grey stretched and grabbed the peanut, the black squirrel threw the remaining shell and one of the two peanuts still inside down and nailed the grey, bouncing it off of his head. Oh, the lovely woodland creatures, and people say how they reflect the glory of god. It appears then that god is like a sibling on a long car trip who can’t stand to see anyone but themselves get any treats. I do remember one birthday party very young where the young girl spent most of the time running around trying to make sure none of the children her parents invited (that included me) got to eat or take any of all the lovely food. She ended up licking most of the icing off the cake before being carried out screaming by her parents. Squirrels can be like that.
and I just now remembered that Linda promised me a butterscotch sundae for going out. She used the ‘oh dear, out of time’ routine to escape ice cream payment then, but I am definitely owed one ice cream from the Beacon Hill Drive in! I like going out as the sun and new growth is full of color and the young kids are brought out in droves, very cute – however, going to the park, even in a wheelchair to take pictures of small children is a good way to end up on the neighborhood watch list, and then I would be a local tale (the bad kind).
