Twins times two

Pat called today - a real treat - and told me about a visit she had with Sandra and her twin grandsons. I've been thinking all day about how utterly unique this situation is - two grandmothers each with a set of identical twins. Pat said the meeting was a first for all concerned - the twins had never met identicals before. She said they could all tell each other apart! And they had a good time together, bonding instantly. They met at McDonalds and visited the zoo - how much better could a day be for little boys.

Crappy weather in Winnipeg; not a good summer so far. Winnipegers earn good summer weather by enduring that awful winter. I cannot remember a bad summer - probably because as kids every summer day is good. The sound of lawn mowers and smell of cut grass transports me to 1251 and summer mornings. My memories are of roller skating, playing hide and seek on the never-ending front yard of Dominion Street - we used it all from Yarwood half way to Notre Dame. Swinging on the swings at Sargent park, catching tadpoles in the creek, playing with a yoyo. Slathering ourselves with baby oil and iodine at the pool or later at Bird's Hill. Mom would drop us off in the morning and pick us up baked like hot dogs on a grill. I can remember looking straight into the sun so the sun tan wouldn't be creasy from squinting. No wonder we have age spots and cataracts.

And those humid warm nights when it was light 'til almost 10:00. Sitting on the front steps with my Dad proclaiming as he did every year, "Here we are sitting on the stoop reading the Winnipeg Free Press at 9:00 p.m." Swatting mosquitos, scratching the bites ( ahhhhh). Picking warm tomatoes off the vine and sitting with a salt shaker gobbling them up with Mom and Eilleen. We didn't even wait to walk a few steps into the house. Rhubarb!! Mom would make a compote we'd eat with vanilla ice cream. The mint that grew in the side yard crushed between the fingers for a swoony sniff (we didn't eat it), the crab apples, crisp and sour.

Treats from the garden - fresh green beans, yellow wax beans, baby beets (before they became a gourmet treat), baby potatoes. One year we grew peanuts. Dad ordered the seeds (peanuts) from the Burpee catalog and they grew into scraggly struggling plants; we got to see the little peanuts tangled in the roots. Fresh crisp cucumbers transformed into Auntie Addies pickles - the crispest pickles without too much vinegar or dill. Her pickles were legendary and gobbled up as fast as she could make them.

The splendid long, long summers of our childhood memory - a week passed as slowly as a month does now - giving us a chance to store the sensations away and recall and enjoy them now.

A screen door banging shut...and we'd be back at school again.

Oddball

I have never written poetry but my sister did. Yesterday I came home, sat down and wrote this without prior thought, inspiration or inclination. Clearly Eilleen is at work. It must have been a haunting.

Walking straight.
A challenge? Who would guess?
The brilliance of our gyroscope -
Its praises unsung, is a quiet miracle.

I stagger now and list left-wise.
Loopily, my destinations reached.
But I see eyebrows raised…
My aura broadcasts “Oddball”

Aging brings gifts in its wrinkled basket.
Becoming invisible was an unexpected pleasure.
Different again - I’m sticking out.
Looking crazy, looking drunk.

What did you say? I can’t hear you either.
Whisper something in the good ear.
Something kind.

Sugar in the morning, Sugar in the evening......

Sweetness perception comes and goes from day to day and sometimes from morning until night. Typically I can't sense the sweet in the morning and it returns at night. A glass of wine is a challenge and I'm training myself to concentrate on the aroma and only note the tastes, trying to ignore the lack of balance. A new way of enjoying the wine...maybe I'll see something in it that i was over-looking.

Ants have invaded my computer space and they are emerging every once in a while from the keyboard in the vicinity of "u,i,o". Woe is me, I have to clean off the whole desk and spray in order to get rid of the beasties. Their original target was the wrapper from an energy bar with a tiny piece of chocolate exposed. Thinking the invasion to be minimal, I've just been slapping them down one at a time, but now I see they are on the floor in marching formation - it's a serious attack which I must rebuff using all of my anti-ant resources - primarily the can of RAID.

Chest Xray

An X-ray accompanied me on another significant part of my life. To emigrate from Canada to the US in 1964, the requirements were virtually nothing compared to what they are today. At 21 years old, I hardly had a history to investigate and Jack Rock's brother Alex, sponsored my immigration as I was single and a student when I made application. It took six months of gathering
documents completing paperwork and being interviewed. After we were married, Jack and I left for our honeymoon and our new life in California. First stop was at Pembina, North Dakota where clutching a large manila envelope full of stamped and approved documents and the vital chest X-ray, we stepped across the imaginary line separating Canada from the US.

Twenty five years later I became a citizen and took the oath in Seattle along with 67 other grateful people, many from South Africa and South Asia. That was a great day.

Looking inside

A trip to Eaton's department store was high on the joy list when I was a kid. Opportunities for exploration abounded. I would dream of being locked in the store overnight - able to run around unsupervised, jumping on the matteresses, running down the up escalator, trying on the clothes and jewellry, nosing into all the books. A visit to the shoe department on the fifth floor where they had a shoe fitting machine/x-ray machine installed was the height of delight. All the kids found this device utterly fascinating...you could look in the viewfinder and actually see the bones in your feet. The machine was a marketing gimmick installed by many department stores during that time period. The picture of my feet and bones - watching my skeletal toes wiggling, watery white on black, was mesmerizing and we couldn't get enough of it. The shoe guy would admonish us with the usual "This is not a toy". But we would wait until his back was turned or he went into the stock room, then push and shove to have a turn. The machines were poorly built and leaked radiation all over the place, we found out later. In those days we were innocent of environmental hazards - we would run with glee behind the mosquito fogger which was spraying DDT all over the city. Who knows how really damaged our DNA is?

My father had bits of shrapnel in his body, left from WW1. Once in a while he'd get a bump somewhere and inside the bump would be a small piece of metal. I imagined that his foot xray would show up little bits of metal like pepper all over his feet.
Perhaps the idea of looking inside my Dad, clanging along full of metal, is what interested me about the idea.

Sandi

Sandi from Village Kitchen Designs came up to the house today to continue with the kitchen layout. She did the plans originally and I want her to redo and redraw the plan with the updated ideas that have accumulated as the house as unfolded and taken shape. She was very helpful and had many ideas. She listened and absorbed my ideas and fed them back with improvements. I enjoyed our short collaboration and hope the meeting will yield the results I'm after which is to capture the kitchen and add some style.

I felt almost normal today and it was quite a relief from the screaming meemies of the past few days. Warp speed is not easy to maintain for days on end. The onlly thing sad to see go is the endless stream of energy, nifty to have at your disposal.

Tonight is one of those perfect summer evenings where the valley is purply-blue in the shadows, a brisk breeze is blowing and everything looks almost shimmery. The sky is bright blue but the light is just starting to fade out. Cats are winding down, snuffling around for something to eat. Richard's cruising his snack shelf in the pantry.

We have to plan a trip because somebody is going to break out with itchy feet soon!!!

SPEED

On steroids for 14 days to see if some hearing can be saved in my AN ear. 10 days of a full dose and the past three days have been ratcheting down. Never having taken a drug like this before, I was surprised at the effect. Hearing almost immediately returned to the ear which is like a miracle. In fact the AN ear is now about like it was when first diagnosed. I can hear sound - still can't distinguish words, but hearing sound means stereo, so much safer than the monoaural world I was descending into. Most of the 10 days were just fine and then like a bucket of cold water in the face, the speed turned on. I was compelled to move fast and for some reason, organizing things appeals (not just too me, but this is typical) and eating everything in sight. Food doesn't "hit bottom" and no satiety value whatsoever..you can just keep tossing it down and it seemingly disappears. Eilleen told me that this was the sensation she had with alcohol...no amount could ever be enough -- never satisfying so there's always the drive to get more.

Because of a huge appliance sale at Lowe's I ventured out and bought a new washer/dryer and dishwasher for the house. In the big box stores my ears are clanging and ringing like a fire alarm and of course, this puts the whole body on alert. As the swelling decreases in the tumor tissue, I imagine that the pressure on the blood vessels constricting flow changes affecting the whole system. While the swelling is changing presumably from minute to minute, so does the alarm in my head. It can't be ignored and the result is tension exhaustion after a while. Interestingly (this never lacks for interest) with perserverance the brain adjusts - at first you want only to retreat and then you notice, OK, it's coping and with a little more time, coping more. Our CPU is a magnificent piece of work...astonishing.

Staggering around

Soon I will be a Post Toastie...the term used for the walking irradiated. This should be a new and most interesting experience. Today I visited the mall to look at some furniture and get exercise in the air conditioned comfort of the concrete palace. I saw myself in a shop window, disheveled, staggering and had to laugh at how bad I can get. I'm surprised anyone approaches me to ask what I'd like in the stores. With some luck, the staggering may be lessened post irradation.

A memorial service for my ex-boss was held on Thursday. It was a wonderful opportunity to see many old friends and remember how truelly special it was to work at Lawry's when I did. Now, the grey heads outnumber the "naturals" and much of the talk is about retirement plans, grandchildren and health issues. Time marches on.

Will the picking of stuff never end? Today, more plumbing picks and selection of bathroom mirrors and storage cabinets. All next
week will be selecting things and playing "fetch" for the installers on the job.

Richard The Imposter in photo posing as an avocado picker.