Archive | June 2022

Tick Tick Boom

Jun22

I was quite surprised to get a phone call early June saying a local doctor was willing to take me on as a patient.  On top of that, it’s a woman, she’s young, and the office is on Pandosy and KLO, in other words, my hood.  I shop right there at Lakeview Market so it’s meant to be.

I met with Doc Bielby and told her I’ve sprouted a small forest of moles on my chest, and she looked at them and said she wasn’t concerned but would refer me to a skin doc to examine them with a more powerful instrument than she has.  She said “It’ll take a while” to which I replied I didn’t care, given there’s likely nothing funny going on.

I then went to Osoyoos for the weekend, and our neighbour Bonnie invited me on their “nature walk” which is a seven-acre piece of wild land below their property.  It’s lovely with grasses, indigenous bushes and lovely ponderosa pines.  There are benches in various areas where one can enjoy the view of the lake and mountains.

The next morning as I was brushing my teeth I noticed a dark mole on my chest that seemed to have sprouted overnight, and I thought wow, good thing that doc is on top of this. I put on my glasses and when I touched it, it moved!  I grabbed and pulled, and a tick came out and I threw it into the sink and washed it down, feeling creeped out.  But I know how these things operate, so I took off my nightgown, and sure enough, another new dark spot on my back.

I tried to phone Lynne who wasn’t home, so I phoned Bonnie and she headed right over.  In the meantime I told mom and showed her my back and she said “come over here” as though she thought she knew what she was doing and I said “I don’t want a blind person grabbing at this tick, I want someone who can actually see it.”

A few minutes later Bonnie arrived and asked for a magnifying glass (we have many due to mom’s eyesight) and a pair of tweezers.  This wasn’t working, so she requested a sewing needle and lighter which she then used to apply to the tick’s ass.  Unfortunately as I later learned from Google, that’s the worst way to remove them, however it did work and she was able to pull it out and put it into a glass vile for me.

When I got back to Kelowna I Googled the kind of tick, and it looks like it’s a ‘dog tick.’  This kind doesn’t spread Lyme disease however can cause Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.  I advised my pal Julie, who’s a nurse, and she said just watch for any symptoms like numbness, fever and some other things that I immediately decided I wasn’t going to get, and I didn’t.

Then today I was at RBC and while at the teller discovered I’ve lost my debit card.  I was in shock as I’m the sort of odd person who very rarely loses anything, so I was completely discombobulated and at one point handed my many cards to the teller and asked her to rifle through, which she did, and still nothing.

I said to her, “hey, I’m here to withdraw money, but it turns out I’m also here to report a lost card”.  She immediately cancelled my old one and we checked on-line for weirdness, but nothing.  So you see, if I had only the tick on my back, I would never have known and God knows what would’ve happened.  If I wasn’t at the bank today it could’ve taken a long time to notice my card was missing.  Sometimes bad luck is a kind of good luck in disguise.

A Visitor

Jun3

Margaret’s coming for the weekend, and it’s been an awfully long time since I’ve had anyone here.  Certainly no one in 2022 that I can think of, and even last year I think the list would be quite short.  But I’m completely ready, shrimp in garlic cream sauce over spaghetti tonight, Milanese chicken tomorrow and stew made with coconut milk and coriander on Sunday.  Three bottles of tequila laid in as well.

I have an annoying situation with my Jetta in that the air conditioner has decided to work sporadically, and while fine this year as it’s freezing cold, if we get heat I’ll be very upset as the dogs won’t tolerate that.  I decided to take it into a shop, and as the one I called said they could fix a 2015 Jetta’s A/C, I booked the appointment.

Marie had to pick me up at 8:30 AM and drive me home, which was fine as we went for a walk, but then it took until 1:30 before I finally called and they said “Oh it’s a bigger problem than we thought and as Volkswagen has some proprietary issues we can’t get into the A/C/”

Propriety issues?  I said to the guy can you imagine how much it’ll cost me at the Volkswagen dealer, and he agreed and gave me the name of a local mechanic who works on Volkswagen, secret codes be damned.  Then when I got home I told Carl the handyman the story and he provided me with yet another mechanic who knows how to bust into the A/C of a Jetta.

Speaking of Carl it was raining like mad one morning as he was working on my deck, so he ran into the garage for shelter.  Later that day he asked me who used the BB rifle he saw in there and I said “My son used it for shooting mice in the basement.”  Carl also has two sons so he just shrugged and nodded.

As I get older I realize the worst mistakes I’ve made in my life more often involved saying no rather than saying yes, so I’m trying to say yes more often.  I was invited to the memorial of an old boyfriend, and though I hadn’t seen him in over 40 years, we’d become ‘friends’ on Facebook (whatever that even means) so I thought what the heck, I should go.

I was very glad I did, as I learned Don was a talented painter, played guitar, was a scuba diver, a gourmet cook, loved to travel, learned Spanish and was learning Italian, loved his mom, was a great uncle, shopped at thrift and read.  I sat there thinking you know, I should probably just kill myself right at this very moment.

But then I cheered up as I’ve discovered a new channel on You Tube called The Nurse Flipper.  This woman buys all manner of stuff at thrift, and then shows how much these items can yield on e Bay and other popular places.  Being suggestible, I immediately decided I would be the next Nurse Flipper (she’s an actual nurse…)

I raced to a few thrift stores and bought some items feeling sure thousands of dollars awaited, came home and carefully Googled each item and realized I am not going to be the next Nurse Flipper.  It’s still fun, though, and to that end Margaret and I plan to scour the shops for treasures tomorrow.  Because you just never know when the next Aynsley cup and saucer set will appear.