Lucky in love

We’ve been living the high life for the last 6 weeks, not that we don’t always live high and happy, but we’ve been on a bit of a whirl. I am disappointed that I wasn’t doing a good job taking photos as we’ve had ‘visitations’ and not much record of them. For instance my sister, Betsy, was in town for the first time in a year and we had a lot of good times and laughter with her. Of course she inspected my head and did her ‘older wiser sister’ thing. And our good friend Alan Bull, who lives in Windsor, Ontario, was working here for 3 weeks so we got to catch up with him too.

And then Jim’s sister and her husband, Pat and Ed Lawlor came to town and we did finally get the camera out. A photo that should have been and wasn’t was of Pat & Ed, and Arthur & Jessica Vickers www.arthurvickers.com at Arthur’s gallery in Cowichan Bay because the Lawlors bought one of Arthur’s fabulous Orca Family sets. Arthur is hardly ever in the gallery but he was that day 3 times as we came and went. We decided he was lurking outside somewhere and as soon as we went through the gallery door he followed us in! He is a wonderful story teller and a very spiritual person so it was an amazing day, again with a lot of laughter but also powerful images and emotions.

We were supposed to meet Pat & Ed in Las Vegas and tour around southern Utah and Nevada for a couple of weeks but Jim and Pat decided they might as well come here instead. Of course we had a fabulous winter weather-wise until that decision was taken and then the weather pretty much collapsed. Sure it was in the low teens and pleasant enough but not as nice as it had been in February. And good grief, when we went to Seattle it was a howling winter storm and freezing. Luckily we ‘did’ mostly indoor things ‘cuz it was bitter. When the Lawlors returned to PEI for Easter weekend they had summer weather, 20C for heaven’s sake, and we had another storm. Today Jim  I went to Costco, (remember I said I would need to buy plants!) and I wore my down jacket knowing we would be outside in the garden centre. Actually many of my seedlings are doing okay but Costco's garden centre is a spring ritual.

Speaking of friends and family, Randy Mains is back from Abu Dhabi for 6 weeks, Joan & Rob Tweedie have returned from South Africa, and we had a very happy time at my cousin Barb’s on Easter Sunday with the extended family of 15. BTW, if you get an opportunity to have bacalhau, the traditional fish stew that Portuguese/Brasilians eat on high days and holy days, I think you’ll love it. I don’t eat fish but I do eat that.

A sidebar referring back to hair related things, specifically sodium laurel sulphate: I recently read in a newpaper medical column that anyone who gets mouth sores or cankers should find a toothpaste without SLS in it (the stuff is everywhere). We are using a Jason product, Seafresh which we like well enough to continue with. My hair is starting to grow back, btw, after 4 rounds of cortisone shots in the scalp, and yes they hurt.

And that’s it really. We have just been having the best time with so many really fine people and being reminded every day how lucky we are in our friends and family. And there is still a little bit of wine left on the store shelves but you better hurry if you want any…

Another sidebar is that this post didn't want to cooperate so I haven't labeled the photos most of which are obvious anyway. The ones that aren't obvious are in Seattle, Pike Market, Pioneer Square, and the Underground Tour.

Farmer Jean

Jim has taken to calling me Farmer Jean; he’s never happier than when he can just slightly and ever so kindly mock whatever bee-of-the-moment I have in my bonnet. For a few years I’ve been growing a very few vegetables, in a exceedingly desultory way, mixed in amongst the perennials and shrubs. My current bee is that being able to grow a few edibles is an important skill that shouldn’t be lost by the masses, or at least not by me. Not that I ever had any skill at growing food nor has that probably changed suddenly. But one tries! And we are bombarded with dire warnings of earthquakes and the consequences thereof. Of course if we ever have ‘the big one’ in my lifetime it will be in January and my farming skill won’t do any good. On the other hand if we have the quake that is predicted for Vancouver Island, Calgary will be ocean front so it won’t matter.

So Jim, who humours me in most things thereby earning the right to mock built me, even though I like to think it’s for us, a tiny kitchen garden. And then he hauled in all the soil and spread it for me while I swanned off on a social engagement. Giving myself some credit I did buy the seeds and do the grid for the “square foot garden”. I’m not sure what the premise is but making a grid is somehow supposed to make for more efficient use of space so I’m trying it. I also decided to ignore the package instructions and directly sowed some bush beans, beets, and lettuce. What the heck they are only seeds and Costco’s garden centre opens in ten days which is about when I’ll know the seeds didn’t germinate. And in our teensy plastic greenhouse, thank you Betsy, I’ve started some other seeds and if they are as successful as other years it’ll be another trip to Costco for plants. Oh yeah, you have to water the seedlings don’t you. That’s the part that I seem to forget.

Otherwise the garden is looking not too bad for March with tulips and pieris japonica doing their thing. It was a sunny warm day until about an hour ago when the clouds and cool wind blew in. It probably has a direct relationship to Pat & Ed (Jim’s sister and husband) being somewhere over the prairies on their way here for 10 days. Last time they were here, in late April 2 years ago, it snowed. You know what I’m saying…. it’s like having the winter Olympics at Whistler/Cypress.

Much ado about much: Jim & Jean go to the Olympics

The Flame!

Well we didn’t really go to the Olympics, just to Vancouver to see the sights. Inspired by a local columnist, Jack Knox, we and half of Victoria decided to do the patriotic thing and make the supreme sacrifice by going to Vancouver to wave the flag. And also like everyone else from Vancouver Island we forsook our car and took public transit. You’ve probably picked up the implication that there were a lot of us. Over the weekend (we are WAY too smart to have gone on a weekend) the foot-passenger traffic on the ferries was overwhelming, at one point leaving 600!!!! passengers behind. The ferry terminal is not an airport, no lounges, and the expectation is that most folk will have a car to sit in, which of course these people didn’t have. Some have complained that BC Ferries should have done better planning but how were they to anticipate that a) Victorians would break down and go to Vancouver and b) they would go on foot? I/we think they’ve been pretty good about putting on extra “flights” and keeping us moving. But the numbers have been staggering; keep in mind that our ferries carry upwards of 2000 passengers.

Early ferry rider

Building wraps everywhere

That was an aside, the main story being that we went yesterday, Monday Feb 22, and had a fabulous day despite the hesitation when the alarm went off at 5:00am. Thanks to the ferry website we figured out where and how to park at Swartz Bay and joined about 500 red-mittened and like minded folk for the 7:00 ferry which got us to Tsawwassen at 8:40am. We bought seats on the PCL bus which drove us off the ferry and deposited us outside the Art Gallery 45 minutes later but we also got day passes for Translink which we used all day and to get back to Tsawwassen. Another aside is that PCL and Translink send extra buses to the ferry when their agents let them know they’ve sold more than the usual number of tickets so there isn’t a wait for a bus and that all this organizing takes place on the ferry.

We spent the day just wandering and being part of the crowds and hype that has marked these games as unique and un-Canadian. We may have to redefine ourselves from reserved to über unreserved. Our first stop was to the torch at the waterfront and we can’t figure out what the complaints were about. Sure the sightlines from street level were improved by the time we got there, but it didn’t seem like the chain link fence would have been much of a problem. We thought we might go to the Mint but the line-up to see/touch the medals was two blocks long and I figure they’ll probably keep a set for their archives so we can see them later.

Outside the Mint

On TV the medals look huge! Another super long line-up was to get into The Bay (open 24 hrs till the end of the Games) for Olympic paraphernalia. Has ever a retail store/chain made such hay over an event? The marketing has been brilliant; as soon as Oprah said she wanted a pair of mittens The Bay sent her 300 for the studio audience. I really want one of the red and black checked scarves but doubt I’ll get a special delivery from HBC. And the knit sweater that I didn’t buy three weeks ago thinking they might go on sale? Forget that pipe dream.

The Bay: the building wrap and the line-up

We went to Canada House and were there when the Stanley Cup made a guest appearance, and we went to Robson Square and Robson Street where the crowd was thick and happy. There lots of police in evidence, but having fun and chatting with the throng.
Belgium has loaned Vancouver a tram that runs back and forth from the Canada Line to Granville Island for free but sadly will terminate after the Paralympics. We lined up for it and everything else but it was all good and the day was perfect.

Granville Island

Does this even look like Vancouver?

At 3:30, standing on Robson Street, we decided we were tired enough to head home (how do people stay until midnight?) figuring there wasn’t much chance of making the 5:00 ferry but we’d give it a shot. So we elbowed our way the 4 blocks to the Canada Line station, got off at Bridgeport 20 minutes later and directly onto a 620 express bus to the ferry which pulled into the terminal at 4:30. All of this detail is tedious if you don’t live in Victoria but for us it is something of a Miracle Tale because it worked! We learned this morning that, in keeping with our blissful good fortune, the decision to come home at that point was the right one. The foot traffic was huge for the next two ferries with people left behind again and that despite it being a foot crowd like we had never seen before on our ferry.

To cap off our perfect day we were in front of the TV drinking a very nice bottle of wine, thank you Mary & Sydney, in time to watch Virtue and Moir in their exquisite gold medal ice dance, which if you missed you really missed out.
And yes, I am stiff and sore after only 6 hours of walking and standing.

Robson Street

Magnolia Tree on Robson Square

Another crisis of our own making

Well ‘crisis’ might be just a titch inaccurate. It’s more like “The Little Shop of Horrors” but not musical and not all that amusing. This one is called bamboo or rather Bamboo because it demands attention and a capital letter. When we moved to this house, 8 years ago, I decreed that I did not want the typical pyramidalis hedge between our front balcony and what sometimes is a busy street. Pyramidalis is like a black hole in space, sucking the life and love out of everything in sight. We have some in the back garden and they are much bigger than I ever wanted them to be and they are BORING. It’s a functional enough tree and ubiquitous in our part of the planet, but really drab and unimaginative.

We wanted something evergreen and relatively quick growing as well as hardy enough to withstand our occasional snow events. We’d ‘done’ photinia and I was feeling a bit jaded about it despite its very good qualities because it tends to attract tent caterpillars which is a big ugh for me and it is also rather dark. “Let’s have bamboo!” says I to long-suffering Jim who has to execute my many plans. We’d had bamboo before and thought we knew the pitfalls; we love it but being of the itchy feet clan we’ve never had it for as long as eight years in one location. BTW, there are two categories of bamboo, running and clumping. “Running” bamboo does just that, rampantly romping through entire neighbourhoods and making enemies of the perfectly nice people who live in adjacent postal codes. We had learned all about running bamboo, the hard way.

year one of the hedge, circa 2003

So, we planted 7 biggish “clumping” bamboos in a contained garden bed between our driveway and the street. The variety was pretty much guaranteed to develop slowly and to top out at 16 feet in about 10 years. You would think we’d know better by now than to walk down the path of believing what the nursery tag says. There was the Miss Kim lilac, a dwarf variety that would be 4-6 feet high in 10 years (they always say 10 years). Well that little gem grew to 10 feet in about 5 minutes and eventually committed suicide when we tried to move it. Did I say ‘we’ tried to move it? That would be Jim again, not we, after I whined and snivelled for 2 years about the space the lilac was wasting. If he had only listened to me when I first wanted it taken out it would have been quite a bit smaller and oh so much less work. But I digress. 
 From the balcony, 2010

So picture this gorgeous chartreuse green hedge rustling in any breeze and looking very light and lively for the first 6 years. One of the many good features of bamboo besides that they look great, have no bugs, and self mulch, is that they only grow once a year. They are evergreen but it is only in June/July that they put up new canes so you can really see what is happening because it is all at once. I am getting to the crisis! About two years ago I began to get a bit worried watching the canes grow 12 inches a day and noticed that some of them were approaching timber size rather than the light and airy of which I am so fond. Last year, Jim’s brow began to get quite furrowed as he fought the roots shooting out one end of the ‘contained’ area, and we found shoots poking up through the concrete seams in the driveway.  Recently I asked him if the sprig of bamboo I could see sticking out of our sprinkler system shut-off box was left over from the annual pruning (I forgot to say that we have to have 3-4 feet taken off the top of the bamboo every year now to keep it below our view and our gardener told me the other day he has to bring in help and bigger equipment for next year because it has outpaced his capability!) or if it could possibly be attached to a root. Well I know you know the answer to that question!

Jim hard at it, and mountains of cut bamboo canes. Notice how I am safely indoors taking photos from the kitchen window?

Jim spent the better part of two days hacking out the compacted roots at the other end of the ‘container’, and trimming out about 1/10th of the standing canes to re-expose a row of heathers.

For $3000.00 and a year of empty dirt we can have the whole hedge removed, (the process involves backhoes and hard labour and is NOT guaranteed) but what would we plant? The canes make the absolute best trellises for sweet peas, an idea I stole from Butchart Gardens, small birds love the refuge, and our hedge is a landmark. My nephew was coming by bus from the ferry and the driver knew exactly where “the house with the bamboo” was. For free I can send Jim out on “shoot patrol” every summer to try to keep it under control (you can tell I should have been a Brigadier General or Admiral I’m so good at delegating). So for the time being the bamboo stays and as I keep saying to Jim, “we can always move”. If we find any shoots coming up inside the house, just kidding I hope, you can bet I’ll be letting you know all about it. Actually you’ll hear me screaming from here to wherever you are!

And on a completely different note, we think Chelsea Grey, Benjamin Moore, is a very nice change from the navy blue walls, not that we actually have many walls when it comes down to it.

More "much ado"

Briefly, on the hair front, now there are 6 patches and a receding hairline to keep me wound up. I still have lots of hair so I don’t look like a freak, yet, but it is causing me a certain amount of grief. I keep reminding myself that we could have been vacationing in Haiti and bald patches aren’t much to get fussed over so enough of that.

a beautiful orchid to lift my spirits

It’s been a busy couple of weeks as aren’t they all. Right after New Year and the packing away of the Christmas gear it was time to deconstruct our perfectly nice TV and dining rooms. In my wisdom I had decreed that the TV room carpet had to go as it was 20 years old and had acquired a couple of burns from the fireplace. Of course we couldn’t match the wood flooring so opted to lay tile to tie the floor into the kitchen and were able to get an almost-the same-and-only-someone-picky would-notice option. It is the same tile that went into the laundry room re-do before Christmas if you are following along. It’s a personal peeve not to have some flooring coherence in a house. Does anyone but me remember the 70’s when every room in a house had a different carpet colour? Blue, red, pink, green, ghastly! And on that note, Jim decided he would rather have the same flooring in the TV and dining rooms as they are really one space so out went the hardwood that was there.

The deconstruction process

'wackers'

It took a couple of days to empty the rooms and reorganize ourselves so we would still be functional and comfortable for approximately two weeks. Then up came the old flooring and down went a 5/8” subfloor over the existing plywood. The same knight in shining armour, Gary Wilson, who rescued us on the front door, (we are a serial saga) did hard labour with Jim laying the subfloor. How level are your floors do you think? Not, I bet. This space I am talking about is 17’x28’, almost 500 sq. ft. and it was amazingly good except for one high spot where the house had settled away from a supporting wall. That little wrinkle got left to our tile people, Tenor Tile if any of you Victoria people want to know about a good tile company.

Progress!

It took three tilers two long days and they did a great job including putting spiffy 12”x24” charcoal gray tile on the fireplace surround. And then the cleanup and moving furniture ensued. Thank you again Gary. Did I mention that while the house was in a mess I decided to paint our foyer, walls and ceiling, and in the midst of scraping down the ceiling texture I “put my back out” Where does that expression come from for heaven’s sake? It’s not like putting out the trash or putting out a light… Anyway, the result of the whole event is, I think, spectacular. The rooms look way more spacious, not that they weren’t big enough already, and the colours flow really well. No, we didn’t put heat under the tile: it would have cost another $2000.00 to heat our very heavy Persian carpet – no point.

And now, because I haven’t settled the living room since Christmas and because it hasn’t been painted for about 6 years, guess what? The navy blue is becoming “Chelsea Gray”, and then we are going to quit the house work and enjoy ourselves. There’s a concept!

Winter jasmine and crocus

In case you are trying not to read it, it says 15C, in the shade.

Which brings me to the weather. It has been an amazing couple of weeks with El Niño in full swing. We’ve had some rainy days (not like the mid-Island who had floods) but it has been WARM! Saty tuned to see what happens to the Olympic Alpine events. Cypress, site of the snowboarding competition, is almost bare. We are supposed to cool down in a couple of weeks so it will probably be fine in the end but you can bet it is adding a bit of excitement to the organizers lives.

BTW, Jim scored 79 and 80 on his last two golf games!

Another life lesson: "much ado about nothing - again"

Or as a friend couldn’t help herself from saying “hair today, gone tomorrow”.
In light of all my blessings, what’s my current ‘life lesson’? Sometime between November 13 and December 23, (hairdresser appointments) 3 biggish patches of my hair packed their bags and moved out. Carol, my hairdresser, was checking my scalp, as she always does, and we were chatting about nothing when suddenly I realized her attention was absolutely riveted on the back of my head; and then she had to break the news to me. Yikes.

The first part of my lesson is that I’m not nearly as detached as I like to pretend to be. In fact I haven’t handled this event particularly well; not quite weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but pretty irrational all the same. Sixteen year old drama queens - move over! My father was completely bald and I am envisioning the same for myself. Ugh. At this point I have had blood tests that don’t show anything unusual which is good news, and I had a dermatology appointment today which is a major miracle. It’s now 2 weeks later and I am calming down a bit but still don’t have ‘bald’ on my list of fashion preferences!

the least scary photo

The dermatologist is calling it alopecia areata, which means nothing specific just, hair loss in pathces which I definitely have. Typically he says there are three round patches and it hits hard and fast. Also typically it is a hairdresser who discovers it as there isn’t any warning or evidence of loss. Usually it occurs when people are between 20 and 45 years old although he has a 70 year old who’s just had it happen (I assured him I’m not yet 70), and there isn’t any known cause or trigger. (I am putting my money on the double flu shot I had December 4; see the 'princess' reference below.) He doesn’t particularly believe in the much touted stress factor (good job because I’m not) but does believe that everything that happens to any of us, other than infections, has a genetic origin so was interested in my father’s alopecia universalis (full body). Typically in areata the hair should start to reappear in 6 months or so if it isn’t treated and the first generation will probably be white. He could speed it up by a couple of months with cortisone shots but that sounds too painful so no thanks. If I develop more patches he will take a different tack and says there are ‘treatments’ but he didn’t elaborate so I'm thinking they may be dire.

This is the part to pay attention to:
My GP (lovely Iain) suggested that I change to an infant shampoo to reduce stress on my scalp/hair, which I did. I don’t know if it will have any effect on my head but what has changed is that my long standing ‘dry-eye’ syndrome has improved. If any of you have weepy eyes in wind or cold or if your eyes feel dry and scratchy in the mornings, try a different shampoo. The culprit (thank you Carol) is sodium laureth (sometimes lauryl) sulphate or sodium laureth 13 and it is used as a foaming agent in a great many products like shampoos, facial cleansers, and toothpaste. Apparently it’s a poison and while much diluted and benign for many people we get it in a lot of products and it can build up. I often refer to myself as a princess, not because of regal delusions or aspirations or because I think I am special, but in the sense of the Princess and the Pea fairy tale. I seem to react and over-react to all and sundry chemicals and I have an overactive immune defence mechanism. Sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s less fun. In this case I’m hoping my hair will make a return engagement if I make some changes, and redecorate the environment.

I’ve moved on from the baby shampoo since I have adult hair, what’s left of it, and discovered some really nice alternative shampoos at a local health food store. I’ve also switched from my “dermatologist recommended” cleanser, Cetaphil, to a ‘clean’ one and a couple of itchy stingy spots on my face seem to be resolving. It’s early days yet on these products and I doubt they have anything to do with the sudden hair loss but any improvement is good.

The general consensus is that the hair will grow back; eventually, probably. I am certainly hoping that it is on vacation and that this is not a permanent emigration to a more hospitable clime. But will I ever be able to trust my hair again if it does return? My hair that was, according to Carol, just about perfect and completely reliable? Another big piece of the life-lesson: forgiveness and trust in response to betrayal is essential to health, happiness, and hopefully a thick head of hair!

The most important part of the lesson is that I have the best and most supportive friends and family in the entire universe!

The completed laundry room and the progress of the miracle amaryllis!

Auspicious Beginning

2010. Good grief how did that happen?

This amaryllis was a bare bulb, purchased at Canadian Tire, and planted in nothing but gravel on November 25 as we were dashing out the door for our week in Halifax. Look at it now; it stands 27 inches high and chose today, January 1, 2010 to begin to unfurl. That’s what should be known as a miracle.

I often wonder how it is that I have lived such a fortunate life, through no fault of my own. About 15 years ago our dear friend Rob Tweedie, formerly of South Africa, surprised me by positing that only 1% of the world’s population lives as well as we all expect to. I hadn’t thought of it before but have many times since. I suspect that the percentage of people who are as fortunate as Jim and I have been is much lower than 1%. We have warm and generous friends and family; we live in freedom; we are intelligent (most of the time!), educated, and curious; we are healthy and active; we aren’t burdened with too much wealth but have enough to enjoy ourselves. Our list of blessings is endless. I sometimes try to see myself living in another culture or a different era which sets me wondering again why I am so lucky to be where and when I am.

Our best wishes for this new year and always. J&J

On a different note entirely, having been to South Africa recently, we went to see the movie Invictus. Yes, it’s a lot about rugby, but it is also inspirational at many levels and an interesting insight into the simple ‘ties that bind’. We loved it.