Thoughts on triple anniversaries

 A sort of rambling, stream of conscience post:

It's Canada Day today (for another hour, anyhow) and I'm sitting at home with the cat. It's the first time I've missed the fireworks down on the pier, so I never saw how she reacted before. She's been sitting upright, on high alert, ears stiff, eyes wide, the pupils dilated, staring at one window after another, ever since the noise started. I'm only about 3 blocks and a bit of water from the fireworks, so they're loud here, even with the windows shut. I kept reassuring her, "it's all right, don't worry, nothing's happening ..." She couldn't believe me.

Maybe we should find other ways to celebrate. Sure, the fireworks are pretty, but there are hundreds of cats and dogs and rabbits within hearing distance. Birds, too. And the deer that browse in our gardens. It's not right to be scaring them like this.

And about me staying home. Too tired to go out today, maybe a bit too sore.

Anniversaries coming up, besides Canada Day. Personal anniversaries. The blog is one; I started this blog July 3, 2006, that's 17 years ago this Monday. At the time, I'd been experimenting: could I come up with something to say every day and stick to it? I thought I could, and so far, up until this last year, I've missed very few days, posting 5392 times, or an average (brought down this year) of 317 posts per year. Recently, though, it's more like every second day.

And that has to do with the other anniversary. My birthday. I'll be 81. The years do creep up, and I'm slowing down, grumbling about sore knees and back. My hair is turning white around the edges, and my eyes complain when I spend too long at the screen.

Old Timber Eagle

My old friend, the eagle who stands on the museum lawn. I feel a kinship with him; hard worn, with a gimpy shoulder, but still out among the trees.

Under his chin.

But at least there are no spider webs on me. Yet.

And I'll keep on blogging.

P.S. The cat has finally, an hour and a half after the fireworks stopped, gone to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pensamientos sobre aniversarios.

Hoy es el dia nacional, Canada Day, (por lo menos por una hora todavía) y yo estoy en casa con mi gatita. Es la primera vez que no bajo al muelle para ver los fuegos artificiales en este dia, y nunca antes vi como reacciona la gata al oirlos. Desde que empezaron los estruendos, se ha estado en alerta máxima, erguida y tiesa, con las orejas a lo más alto, los ojos grandes, con las pupilas dilatadas. Se da vuelta para mirar una ventana tras otra. Estoy apenas unas tres cuadras del muelle, y aun con las ventanas cerradas, se oye cada explosión bien claro. Le digo a la gata — No te preocupes, no es nada, estoy contigo, no pasa nada — No me cree.

Estoy pensando que tal vez deberíamos buscar otro modo de celebrar. Si, los fuegos son lindos, pero hay cientos de gatos y perros y conejitos en las casas alrededor. Y una multitud de pájaros en los árboles. Y venados, los que bajan a comer de nuestros jardines. No está bien espantarlos de esta manera.

Acerca de que me quedé en casa. Me sentía muy cansada. Y un poco adolorida.

Hay otros dos aniversarios pendientes. Aniversarios personales. Este blog por uno. Empecé el blog el 6 de julio de 2006, hará 17 años el lunes. En esos dias había estado probando si podría tener algo para decir a diario, sin fallar. Creí que sí, y hasta ahora, he perdido pocos dias, subiendo 5392 posts, un promedio de 317 posts por año. (El promedio ha bajado por mi flojera en este último año, cuando subo por lo general 3 o 4 posts por semana.)

Y esa flojera es a causa, pienso, del otro aniversario; mi cumpleaños. Este año cumplo 81. Los años avanzan, y yo voy enlenteciéndome, quejándome de rodillas adoloridas y una espalda que no quiere enderecerse. El cabello se me está volviendo blanco alrededor de la cara, y los ojos se declaran en huelga cuando paso demasiado tiempo mirando la pantalla.

Fotos:

El águila viejo del museo. Siento como si somos mejores amigos; los dos viejos, corroídos, con un hombro fuera de uso, pero todavía encontrándonos entre los bosques.

Pero las arañas no hacen sus telarañas en mi cuello. Todavía no.

Y seguiré con el blog.

P.D. Ahora, una hora y media después de que cesaron los fuegos, la gata por fin se ha dormido.

Aging beautifully

The African violets on my windowsill have stopped setting out new flowers and are concentrating on making seed pods, leaving their petals to corrode and fade. And even the age spots turned out to be beautiful, when I stopped to really look at them.

A hint of yellow in a cave of purple petals.

The green hairy bulbs, with their tall brown stalks, are the growing seed pods.

Deep purple, fading to baby pink.

Barnacles on his knees

Beauty yesterday; the beast today.

The largest hermit crab in my aquarium is a hairy, shaggy, scruffy, awkward old geezer. He's far too big for the shells he wears, so his back feet, there to hold the shell in place, hang out, uselessly. And his main pincer is too big, again, to be used. He drags it along the ground, a dead weight doubled underneath him.

And he has barnacles on his back.

"Barney", with his right pincer curled back, and the tiny holding leg dangling.

Three good-sized barnacles, and a couple of tiny ones, along his waist. It looks like he's growing seaweed on his back, too.

More barnacles on his knees and ankles.

The shell he was wearing for the photo shoot also has barnacles and a two-tentacled worm, to boot. Today's shell is a bit larger, and black. He changes his shell every day; he likes variety. And when you're twice as big as your competition, you get to choose any shell you want, occupied or not.

Looking back, looking ahead

Six and a half years is a long haul in blogging years. That's how long I've been doing this. It's time to pause and take stock.

I've seen too many blogs announce their end this way, so I'll clarify, right at the beginning: I'm not quitting. Not taking a break or a breather. Just checking my roadmap, that's all.

History: the Past.

I started the blog elsewhere, on Delphi, on May 1, 2006, and moved to Blogger in December, 8 months later. I've written 2176 blog posts here, 69 on Delphi, making 2245 in all, just under one a day. (I'm sort of amazed at these numbers, little by little, how they do add up!)

When I started to blog, I was recently retired, weary from long battles in public life, and a lifetime of caring for family, from children to grandchildren to parents. It was good to just sit quietly and -- but no: impossible! I got a bike and started cycling with Laurie; we went on long hikes; we visited the dry BC interior; we devised the Shoreline Project, a plan to, in easy stages, walk around the shore of the whole Lower Mainland. We didn't make it, but we've covered most of Delta and Surrey, anyhow.

Blogging about it all was almost inevitable; so many delights just had to be shared.

I had no camera. Laurie was using an old, crochety film camera. We had to get the photos developed, select some to have transferred to a CD, then copy them again to my computer. It took weeks, sometimes. The first site, Delphi, didn't handle photos well. I switched to Blogger, bought myself a cheap point and shoot and began to teach myself how to use it. And hack it; I made my own lens for macro shots. Not good, but an improvement on nothing. (I'm still using it, rebuilt for the current camera. It needs an overhaul.)

The cameras opened a new world to me. What my eyes couldn't distinguish, the camera did, and I could blow up the photos and discover completely unsuspected lives and relationships. I knew very little about what I was seeing; we'd spend hours poring over guide books and my Invertebrates textbook. I mis-identified things on the blog, and was corrected by amazing, generous people around the world.

Thank you!

Gold dust!

I discovered BugGuide, and Google Search, Wikipedia, and G. Maps. I met (online) a busy community of people as enthusiastic about the creepy crawlies as I am; we joined in Carnivals like I and the Bird, Carnival of the Blue, Circus of the Spineless, and so on. What fun!

I brought home a broken intertidal worm and tried to keep it alive in sea water. It died, but by then I was half set up with a marine invertebrates aquarium. I blogged about that. And about our trips, and the housesitting, and the spiders and chickadees at home. Everything became blog fodder.

Somehow everything seems more meaningful when it is shared.

So no, I'm not quitting blogging until they pry my computer from my clammy hands. I'm having far too much fun to give it up.

And we come to The Present.

Why the need to stop and take stock at this point?

Our situation has changed. We aren't as mobile as we once were. We no longer hike up steep hills, or scramble over boulders. We're not as flexible; we don't often change our route on the spur of the moment. We tend to follow old, established patterns.

It's simple; we're getting older. I turned 70 this July. Laurie is in his 80s. He has always been much more active than I, but the last year has been hard on him, and now we seek out easy walking sites and short paths. We stay on manicured trails more, come home earlier.

We were in a car accident two years ago. (Hit and run driver, not my fault, no obvious severe damage.) Laurie's balance hasn't been right since then, and he has suffered several falls, mostly on the beach. He fell off a ladder in the garden a couple of weeks ago, onto his back, and now can barely get around. He will; he's improving slowly, but every setback leaves its mark afterwards.

It was age (retirement) that set me free to explore, now it's age that starts to cross choices off our lists.

I come from a long-lived family. Dad was still putting in a full day at the computer, every day, at 92. My grandmother, Mom's mom, was playing the piano at 99. I don't plan on closing up shop for a long time yet. But yes, I will be slowing down.

I get yellow line fever. Driving home, I feel the urge to just keep going, take the highway north, see where it leads me today. Or I pass a local road and think, “We've never been down that way; should I detour?” And sometimes we do just that. (See Woodhus Creek). But not as often as we used to.

So our circle has shrunk. No matter. Nature is infinite. There is as much to see at the end of our noses as on the horizon. We won't be bored.

The road runs north. Laurie, Thunder Bay viewpoint, Sunshine Coast.

While our space contracts, I'm also aware that time has, too. I have a few projects I want to do, and have been putting them off until later; I can't do that. Time's a-wasting. I've got a website to clean up and revise. My grandkids are asking for more of my stories. There's a book (fiction) that I got halfway through writing, hit a dry spell, and never picked up again. It natters at me in the back of my mind; it wants to be written. It's about time I blocked off the daily hours it will take and get it done.

Then there's this: it's not only we that are changing; so is the world around us. In the past couple of years, I have noticed a depopulation of our community of bugs and birds. Cross spiders no longer festoon all the hedges in July; this year I saw fewer than a dozen, not for want of looking. Moths are a rare treat. So are crane flies and cabbage whites. The bushtits showed up this week at my suet feeder; not enough of them to cover one side. I haven't seen a varied thrush in ages. Where have they gone? And why?

I think I know. All the “waste” spaces, the green lands, the remnants of old forests and farms in our area are turning into construction sites, noisy with machinery, silent when they shut down for the afternoon or weekend. No sleepy bird bedtime songs, no crow arguments; the trees have gone.

On our road to Boundary Bay beach, the new highway towers over the delta, great mountains of sand and gravel, access roads, bridges and cloverleafs, huge cement blocks lined up across prime farm land, well above it, as if preparing for the coming sea level rise. The farms may be swamped, but that causeway will go to the loading docks willy-nilly.

I have been trying not to rant. Focus on the positive, I tell myself. Celebrate the beauties we have before they're gone for good! Create an oasis where at least some can ride out the storms.

But it gets to me. And maybe I should be ranting, at least sometimes.

Sometimes I feel like giving up. Blogging, gardening, feeding birds, studying, crab watching -- what's the point? It will all be gone, and too soon. I shake off the feeling and go do something useful. But there remains a residual malaise, an ache I don't know where.

Rainy day, Mud Bay

Writing this out has changed how I see it. It may be that the difficulties in our life right now have made me more prone to discouragement.

And Ma Nature has tricks up her sleeve. I've been looking at Julie Zickefoose's photos of abandoned barns. Beautiful they were in their prime, bustling with activity, gleaming with red barn paint. More beautiful now, as the wood has aged and taken on depth, the grass and vines softening the contours, birds and other small creatures finding a hospitable corner there. Do what we will, the world will continue to be glorious.

Bull kelp, Miracle Beach

So: the Future.

We don't beachcomb under two meters of water. When the tide comes in, we come in with it. And when our energy wanes, well, we cope with that, too. Fretting's useless.

And I have things I want to do, things within my reach. That writing, for one. And if we're not spending as much time on the road, I think I can work it into my days. Better, I'll note here that I will do it, and I'll count on you to crack the whip occasionally.

I think it's time to upgrade my camera from a point and shoot to a camera body and a macro lens and an off-camera flash, at least. It's a big expense, and entails a steep learning curve. And just deciding which camera scares me; what if I choose the wrong one for me? But -- spider eyes! Bees' knees! Those tiny, so very beautiful white flies! Oh, joy and wonder!

About my intertidal beasties, the hermits and crabs, the anemones and worms; I will continue to feed and care for them, talk to them, and try to learn their habits and choices.

The world's critters, big and small, are our cousins, some distant, some close. I am more aware of this with every hour I spend watching them. They might not look anything like us (but they do; they have eyes and legs and mouths, or at least an intake and an outlet; and a way of sensing the world; their bodies are made up of the same materials as ours)  but they act with purpose, as we do, and they have similar needs and impulses.

We learn to communicate with cats and dogs , chimps and dolphins, horses and goats, and they respond in ways we can understand. Something in our mental workings is like theirs. Some call it consciousness. Or intelligence. As good a word as any for such a nebulous concept.

How far down* does this intelligence go? My hermit crabs exhibit curiosity; so, unmistakably, does a jumping spider. The shore crabs see me coming and wave, whether as a threat or just acknowledgement of my presence, I don't know. But it is communication.

I can't determine this. I can't even comprehend it. But I want to continue to explore the question, especially with the animals I have close by. So I'll be spending more hours staring into the aquarium and watching the bird bath and feeder. And, of course, blogging about it.

And,I think I will give myself permission to rant, occasionally.

Some things never change. I still have a spider in a glass house on my desk. (Laurie's latest gift; even leaning on his cane, in pain, he chased it around the bathroom with his pill bottle. And he doesn't really like spiders. I do love that guy!) I still drop everything to clamber on a table to see a moth above the door. I still talk to the chickadees; I'm sure they understand the friendliness, if not the words. And I still want to share what brings me joy. I'll keep on blogging.

Big Blue, 2010. Pagurus granosimanus.

*Down: only in terms of size. Not value, or complexity; we don't know enough to measure those. If they even can be.

December 30th. Embers.

We're coming up to the end of 2006. Various memes are working their way around the blogosphere; listing the first lines of the first post of each month, tallying up the numbers, comparing "top tens", making predictions.

Me, I'm a newbie. Not to the web; I've been here forever and a couple of days. To the blogs. I started May 1st of last year, on Delphi. A bit of Mayday madness that has become a meme all by itself: a post a day. Or thereabouts.

So: waving goodbye to 2006 in my own way, I will post bits and pieces of those early blog posts, bits that tell who I am, where I'm going and why.

May 5, 2006: About Names

Why "Weeta"?
I answer to a whole slew of names. The one my parents gave me; Susannah; the one they called me, and my brother still uses (nobody else, please); Susie. To casual acquaintances, often Sue.
...
And to my grandkids, I have been, according to the age and favourite language of the kids, Grandma, Jaba, Jabasoo (his spelling, not mine. And Canada Post actually delivered a letter sent to that name, and with a wrong street address. Pretty good, eh?) and recently, Weeta. Which is a 3-year-old's pronunciation of "abuelita".
I like it.

Same Day: Immortal Words

The internet is clogged with trillions of words. Stashed in hard drives all over the planet, pixels appearing on screens on laps, on desks, on beds even, then disappearing a moment later, vibrating energies coating this old planet like slime on a pond; here today, gone tomorrow.
Even more ephemeral than paper, barely more permanent than the brief hellos we interchange with the neighbour in his driveway. ...
So: words into the void. But so what? I will still say hello to the neighbour; I may as well still keep on pouring words onto the screen.

May 10th, Mexican Mother's Day: Unappreciated Beauties A photo of dandelions. And, I think, the unifying principle in most of this blog; to wit:

We mow them down. Roundup them. Tear them out by the roots. Swear at them.
And what do they do to us? Smile at the sunshine. Brighten dingy days. Give little children something to blow away.
My granddaughter, 3, carefully searched out the dandelions that had already lost their little parachuting seeds, and harvested a fistful to take home to Mommy. Arranging them in a glass for her, I realized that they are beautiful, too, with their silky round stems, a neat little creamy cap on the top and a lacy fringe; how long is it since I had really looked at them?

It's a sad time of year, especially this year, maybe because this year has been difficult and fraught with loss, maybe because the future looks dark. There are health issues as we grow older, financial worries, the closing of doors. The weather no longer is a trusted cycle, "seedtime and harvest"; whether to expect ice and wind or baking drought is not something the almanac can tell us any more. And the world seems populated by insane ideologues hell-bent on suicide and willing to take any number of people with them, some by the dozens, others by the millions.

And the sun comes out only long enough for us to get our coats on.

But the world still manages to produce its beauty. Sunrise, sunset. Unassuming beetles, moss-covered logs, fruit flies with brilliant red eyes. Blue lakes mirroring a bluer sky. Eleventy-one tints of green in the bush. The ceaseless whispering of waves against the pier.

I can't do anything about the weather, my age, the news or the sanity of my neighbours, far and near. I can't do much about the beauty around me, except treasure it, cultivate it. Celebrate it.

Call it my act of defiance against the closing dark.

Mom Died of Alzheimer's

This will be a somewhat different post than my usual.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mom died of Alzheimer's Disease at 86, 5 years ago.

Last month, her younger sister died. Alzheimer's.

Her younger brother is now completely incapacitated. Alzheimer's.

The next brother in line is "confused". Early Alzheimer's.

I read some time back that if one parent has Alzheimer's, the children have a 50% chance of developing the disease. That's assuming, of course, that it is carried in the genes, which is debatable.

I am turning 65. Mom showed the first signs in her mid 70s, was incapable of running her computer by age 80.

What does this mean for me? 15 more years of productive work and play, and then the curtain falls? Or not? A 50/50 chance? Or will there be some effective therapy that heals the developing holes in my brain?

The Tangled Neuron, a blog focusing on one woman's "search for answers on my father's dementia", is on my blogroll. The writer continues, in her profile, "Although it's too late to help Dad, I hope any information I can find helps others."

In the last couple of days, she has been writing about

"the growing recognition that Alzheimer’s isn’t a single disease, and the controversy about whether we should spend our limited resources on trying to find a “cure.”
Maybe if we give up our fantasies of a single “cure” for Alzheimer’s, we can start talking about better ways to view and treat dementia. These discussions have already begun in labs, at conferences, on email lists, and in homes around the world. While preliminary, they provide us with a glimpse of how Alzheimer’s care might look in the future."

Well worth reading.