The Time I Lost My Marbles.

As the title says, there was a time when I lost my marbles. I know that many of you are reading this and saying to yourself that this is not news. Others are thinking that I am making light of mental illness. Neither is true. This is my experience with Vertigo.

  One day a couple of weeks ago, Melinda and I were out for our morning walk. We stopped for a few pictures on the way and as we left our favourite trail to rejoin the road, I felt dizzy. My vision was affected by it as well, and I soon developed double vision. I decided that I should return to the house and maybe think about a trip to the ER. You see, I thought at the time that I might be having a stroke.

  In the 5-7 minutes that it took us to walk back to the house, I found that I could no longer walk a straight line. When I looked ahead of me, my point of view flickered back and forth like a poorly rendered 80's video game, and if I looked down at my feet, I veered sharply to the left. The decision to go to the hospital was a foregone conclusion at this point.

  I changed my  clothes and as I tried to make my way to the car, I started to vomit with every move of my head and the world was spinning around me. Melinda drove me to town to visit the hospital, and I have to say that I never realized how many corners our roads took, but every turn led to another round of dizziness and vomiting.

  We arrived at the hospital to discover that I couldn't walk. My balance was completely gone and I couldn't get out of the car. Melinda went to the ER and asked for a wheelchair and that got their attention. The nurses were familiar with me, they had seem me walk in with broken bones, pieces missing and things sticking out of me, so if I couldn't walk it might be serious.

  I got checked in and proceeded to be sick for the next two hours, that made four hours of illness. There was nothing left and I finally broke something and started to bring up blood. This was starting to get serious for me. Finally I was given an anti-emetic, and I only had to deal with the dizziness.

  The ER doctor arrived and looked at my eyes, and determined that I had BPPV(Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo).  He stressed the Benign part of the name, but at that point I was doubtful.  I had entered the point in this illness that I was sure I was going to die and was scared that I would live. 

  I was lucky in that the doctor was familiar with this illness and performed what I later discovered was called an Epley Maneuver. This involved quickly laying down with your head turned and then rotating your head to the other side, pausing between movements. 

  Is seems that the disorder is caused by small crystals in the inner ear triggering a feeling of movement that is not seen by the eyes. The conflict between what your ears and eyes are telling your brain overloads your senses as it tries to compensate and the vertigo sets in. 

  The maneuver listed above is designed to re-seat these small crystals to a place in the ear where they don't cause any problems, and must be done several times a day until the symptoms disappear.

  These microscopic crystals, called otoliths are composed of calcium carbonate, the same chemical make-up as limestone and marble. So I now joke that I have medical proof that I have lost my marbles. 

  Luckily for me the symptoms lasted only a week, with most days having only one episode of Vertigo. I also consider myself lucky that they decreased in severity as time progressed. I posted on Social Media and was surprised to find out the number of people that had experienced this before. I feel for each and every one of them and for any that continue or will experience this in the future. 



This blog is part of a writers group exercise that we are challenged to do. WE are given a word, and challenged to write a blog post about that word. The word this week was "marble". I had started writing a completely different story when I experienced this, and it seem appropriate to tie all of the strings together.

When Passion Becomes Obsession

When Passion becomes Obsession

 

  We all have passions. We all have things that we are passionate about and often they are things that others don't understand. For those of our friends who do not understand our passions, they seem like obsession. But are they really an obsession, or are we just devoted to the things that we love, and over time our passions change, we learn to love and do new things. Sometimes those passions are complementary to earlier loves and at other times they displace their predecessors. It is the cycle of life, we experiment, we prosper, we grow bored and we move on. 

  

  For many years my driving passion was geocaching, and I still like to get out occasionally, but it doesn't seem to hold the same spot in my heart that it used to. I found a resurgence in my love for it when I discovered photography. I found them to be complementary hobbies, geocaching would take us to wondrous spots and I could capture them on camera for future reference. For a time I was in the prospering stage again. Then a new passion arrived, writing. 

 I had used the photos from geocaching in the past and developed a blog that I updated in a hit or miss fashion. It seemed that sometimes I was too busy doing to take the time for the telling. Then, about six months ago, the writing bug bit me, hard. I started on a novel and the next thing you know I had two novels written in the first draft stage, but my blog still suffered. it seemed that words on the computer were words that I didn't get in my novel. A challenge from the writing group that I joined changed all of that. The challenge was simple, to start a blog or to return to one we already had. The twist was, that our first topic was randomly generated. I posted that one a couple of weeks ago. Now I am back to writing on my own terms. And that brings us to the obsession.

 Starting on November 1, writers all around the world are taking part in NaNoWriMo. If you are wondering what that is, you are not alone. It stands for Nation Novel Writing Month, and is a challenge to write 50,000 words in one month on a novel. It has been going on for a long time, but it was not until I started writing a novel and looking for community involvement that I discovered it. So, for the next month I will be chained in the basement at a desk, hammering on the keys of the computer in a quest to challenge myself to write a novel in a month.   I think that qualifies as an obsession, don't you. 

To all of my friends and family, I'll see you in December.

  

 

Memory of Wool

   Now that the weather is getting colder, we find ourselves digging in the closet for warmer clothing. Gone are the days of t-shirts and shorts, and we welcome the season of long pants and sweaters. As I dig through the piles of clothes, I find that I am amazed by the changes in my closet over my lifetime. 

   When I was younger, cold weather meant that the hats and mittens were pulled out of a garbage bag that had spent half a year stuffed into the back of one of the few closets in the house. Now we find ourselves looking in a walk-in closet, for a plastic tote that in all likelihood has been sealed with cedar to keep the clothing fresh and moth free. No more picking up the moth balls that fall out of the bag as we dig through finding our favourite hats and mittens. 

   The clothing itself has probably changed the most. We used to use wool for everything. We had wool scarves, wool mittens, wool socks, wool sweaters, and even wool long underwear. I even remember having wool pants to wear outside when it was particularly cold. And we were glad for the extra warmth. We pitied our friends who went coasting or skating in only a pair of jeans. We knew that they were going to freeze as soon as they got the least bit wet and that they would be the first to leave to go home and warm up. 

   Wool was the go to material for many years. It retained its warmth when it got wet, and it let out moisture when you were physically active. But anyone who remembers those days also remembers how it itched. It seemed that we got a new home knit sweater most years for Christmas and we had to try it on for fit as soon as we unwrapped it. With no base layer, as we would say today, the feel of that scratchy wool was enough to make us want to rip the skin from our bodies. But when we put a shirt under it, we were warm and cozy and ready to face the worst that winter had to offer. 

   Today, microfiber has largely replaced the wool of our youth, and it does the job with amazing skill, keeping us warm in all conditions. But there are still the purists who insist on natural fibres and for them it is still wool. But even wool has changed over the years. The Merino wool of today is as soft as silk on the skin and you can wear it with little worry that you will remove it to find you skin reddened and full of hives. The socks, mittens and hats are all soft and warm while being more durable than their home knit ancestors. You don’t see anyone today sitting around with an orange stuffed in the heel of a sock, darning the worn out section. Some skill have gone by the wayside in the march to progress.

   Regardless of the type of clothing you prefer, modern or old-school, this is the season to dig out those warm clothes and get outside and have a walk through the crisp air as you kick your feet through the fallen leaves and take in my favourite season of the year in comfort.

Changes in our Lives

  As we shuffle through this mortal coil, we make many changes in our lives.  The things that at one time meant the most to us will fall by the wayside, temporarily or in some cases, permanently. New challenges and experiences will step in to grab our interest, and these may become the new driving force for us, or they

may end up being one more step on the journey through life.  

 

  Recently I have taken up writing, and have to date written two novels. As a beginning writer, I now realize that the first draft is rough, really rough. I see a long time in the editing phase as I re-learn all of the grammar that I have forgotten since I was a student in those long ago days. To that end, I joined a writing group, and we meet every other week to be a combination critique, cheering section, and motivational group. They are cheaper than a therapist for trying to reclaim any shred of self respect after two weeks of tearing apart every word that I have put on paper. 

  As part of our group, we often set goals and do writing exercises. The last meeting set a goal of creating an online presence through a blog, or if we already had a blog, to get back to writing. The catch was that a random idea generator would pick our topic. The topic that came through this descent into computer alchemy is "Will Butter Rule the World."  That's it, no more suggestions, no guidelines. The only caveat was that we should aim for five-hundred words, I missed that last one as we were on vacation, so I went over.  We met again last night and lo and behold, not one of us had published on our blogs. So guess what our goal was for this week? You probably guessed it, to actually hit 'send'. 

  Well here goes, my quick jotting for my writers group.

The Rise of Butter

The end of the petro-economy or ‘The Great Greening’ as it later came to be known, did not arise from the efforts of the environmentalists as everyone anticipated. Rather it came about from the greed of the petrochemical executives themselves. Everyone in the early 21^st Century assumed that the race to stop global warming would be won by the citizens through a concerted effort toward altruism and the good of their fellow man. The truth is that the greed of the executives hid the fact that peak oil had long passed and the industry was on borrowed time. Trying to squeeze every cent of profits, they kept the decline a secret as the first wells went dry. Playing a shell game with shipments, they kept the populace in the dark about the end of oil until too many dry wells brought shipments to a halt. The ships that delivered the oil had dry tanks and the flow to the consumer ceased.

Industries that relied on oil closed, and one of the hardest hit was the agricultural industry. Reliance on cheap fertilizers derived from oil and monoculture planting led to crop failures in the first year. Hybrid seed that could not reproduce from the parent plant, grew wild and people watched in vain as their efforts to feed their families produced nothing of value for their stomachs.

The fledgling alternate energy industry, long stunted by the petrochemical companies, struggled to ramp up production, but ran into the same energy wall that the rest of society had, it takes energy to produce products, and the machinery that had been used to date ran on fossil fuels. A great effort ensued to retrofit these machines and at last they were put into production. The final straw of the petro-collapse was discovered when there were a shortage of lubricants to maintain any machine in working order. Work progressed on finding a replacement for high grade machine lubricants.

Most trees suitable for producing oil fruit had been cut for firewood on that first cold winter after the collapse of oil, eliminating several potential sources. Parallel research into the uses of lard or vegetable oils ran into the same problems, their products could not be grown without large amounts of fertilizers or antibiotics. The solution came from the dairy industry, and the use of butter. Researchers were able to refine butter and cheese into a high quality lubricant that would keep machines running for the foreseeable future. Countries that had banned the use of antibiotics in their dairy found themselves the leaders of the new economy as their herds flourished while their competitors hybrids succumbed to disease.

The dairy industry, already a strong lobby in the petro-dollar days, took advantage of the situation and rushed to cement their advantages in the marketplace by having advantageous laws enacted banning the use of antibiotic feeds in agriculture. This made the dairy industry the sole reliable source of fats and oils for industry and home use.

The United State, once a leader in the dairy and oil industries, found that their over-reliance on oil products and pharmaceutical farming, left them unable to maintain a domestic supply and their industries fell into decline. Canada, Britain and Germany having found themselves in a favourable position, replaced the dollar with the Pound(butter) as the favoured international currency. Butter is now revered as the saviour of the human race and is held as the new gold standard.

Peanut Butter Pie

  Let me say right from the start. I love Peanut Butter Pie. I really love Peanut Butter Pie. Okay, now that I have my confession behind us I can continue my story.  Our first exposure to Peanut Butter Pie was at a cafe in North Conway, New Hampshire. We had just survived a climb up Mount Washington and were looking for a coffee and something sweet to celebrate. As we were driving and looking for a likely spot, we noticed a cafe called "The Met". It looked interesting so we went inside. It was an art gallery/store/cafe, very nice. We saw the Peanut Butter Pie in the display case and had to give it a try, we had heard of it, but never had a chance to try the real thing.


 

It was love at first taste. The peanut butter and chocolate danced across our tastebuds and mingled with the strong coffee to produce a near state of euphoria. I'm not going to say that this pie was the reason we kept returning each Fall, but it did definitely factor into our decisions. Then one year the unthinkable happened. There was a change, and as we got out of the car after an 1100km drive, tastebuds on high alert, we discovered that the menu had changed, there was no more Peanut Butter Pie. Imagine our disappointment as we exited the car, stiff and sore after a 12 hr drive only to discover it was gone.  I think in retrospect that we may have had an obsession with this pie. We lamented our loss to all who would listen. It was a dark time.

  It the course of these lamentations, we learned from someone that there was a "pretty good" Peanut Butter Pie to be had in Bridgewater, NS. We had to try this new one immediately. We left the shop we were in and headed to the River Pub. We had never been inside this establishment before and were pleasantly surprised to see that you could have a great view of the river while enjoying your chosen food or drink. We ordered the pie and when it came we were overjoyed to discover how good it was. It was a very good Peanut Butter Pie, and it was so much closer that we could enjoy it more often, which we did. Times were looking up for us in the pie department.

  A few years later we were in Mahone Bay, only a few kilometers from Bridgewater and enjoying the Scarecrow Festival. After walking the town and seeing all the scarecrows, we decided to stop for a bite to eat. We looked around and saw a cafe/deli covered with pumpkins. The walls, the roof, everywhere there was a space, there was a pumpkin. So in we went. As we were walking by the display cases, THERE IT WAS, a Toblerone Peanut Butter Pie. JO-Ann's Deli was our new favourite place.



We had to try it. It looked so good and the name conjured up all the tastes that a dessert should have. We were not disappointed. We had found our new favourite Peanut Butter Pie. We really loved this one. We found ourselves looking to see if there were any festivals planned so we would have an excuse to go and have a piece of pie, it was that good. We talked about it to our friends and family. We wanted it to be popular so that it would survive. And all was right with the world.



  As the years passed we got a bit more into cooking and making our favourites at home. We decided that it was time to see if we could recreate this pie at home. We searched cookbooks and the internet and finally found a recipe that looked on paper as though it was a contender. Here is the recipe that we used Tobleroene Peanut Butter Pie.


We made up the pie and as we waited for it to set, we kept our fingers crossed that it would turn out OK. We again were not disappointed. It was great, it was something awesome that we could have at home or take with us wherever we went, not just at one town. We were delighted.

We now had a recipe that we could make as we wanted and we could pack a piece of the pie in our picnic lunches when we were on the road.  We discovered that we could freeze the pie and it was as good if not better served that way. We felt complete. Our new love now lived with us and we  no longer had to travel to visit, we could enjoy whenever we wanted.






We hope you enjoy the pie and thank the original poster for putting the recipe up or all of us to find. In the interest of disclosure, none of the above mentioned establishments in any way sponsored our post, nor do they even know that we have mentioned them.

Down in the Coal Mine

  As we were in Truro for the Maritime Mega 4 events we took in many of the satellite events that were planned in the area. This trip was not an actual geocaching event but was an activity on the way to an event in Joggins.

 







  One of the organizers was able to get a trip down into the coal mine at the Springhill Miners Museum for a group of people. This tour was a great experience for me as I had been down in the mine many years earlier with family, probably around 1973, just shortly after the mine opened as museum.  The Springhill Miners Museum comprises a portion of the mine and several buildings to represent a portion of the daily life of miners at the time of the "bump" that occurred October 23 1958.  A bump is an underground earthquake caused when the galleries where coal was excavated collapse. The coal is removed and most of the stone on either side is shale or slate which is fragile and can come crashing down with no notice.

   We arrived at the mine site to begin our tour and wandered the grounds seeing the machinery and exhibits as we waited for all of our party to arrive. We took a walk through the miners museum building and it gave a brief insight into the, people and the mine as it existed at the time. The #2 Colliery was one of the deepest of its kind in the world with a sloped shaft reaching 4300m(14.200ft) in length with side cuts and galleries where the miners worked being over 1200m(4000ft) underground.

 
  We paid our admission and were given a numbered tag and headed to the change house where the significance of the tag was explained.  Each miner had their own brass tag with a unique number on it. It was used to assign gear, to tally coal mined, to receive a pay stub and most importantly to track who may still be in the mine at the end of a shift or in the case of a disaster.


  Each miner changed out of their street clothes and hung them near the ceiling in the change house. They then headed to the outfitter who have them a numbered lamp that corresponded to the number on their tag. The tag was then hung on a hook to be retrieved when they came out of the mine at the end of the shift and turned in their headlamp to be recharged for the next day.

After we were outfitted with hardhats, it was time to head to the mine shaft itself. We walked to the mine head and started down the sloping entrance to the mine. A walk that many a miner had undertaken before us. It is only as you get in the mine shaft that you realize how low the ceilings actually were. The coal seam was only about 4 feet high, so that is the amount of material that was removed, most miners worked on hands and knees as the mine owners didn't expend extra cost to make the mine higher for no added revenue from coal. Since I am 6' 4" tall the mine was a bit crowded and I did a lot of head bumping. The only consolation for me was that there was someone 6'9" tall behind me and he had it worse.

 





  We continued on our way down, a walk of about 300 feet that took us to a level about 80 feet underground. Here we tried to get comfortable as our guide explained about the structure of the mine and how the mining was done. The mine is flooded past this level, so we could go no further. The lights were turned out just after we were warned again about the rats in the mine. The rats were a constant companion to the miners and were a nuisance as they would steal water and food, but they also were an early warning system in the mines as they would notice trouble often before the miners would. If the rats started to run out of the mine, it was a good bet that the miners woudl be following them. We stood briefly in a dark that was absolute, so dark that there was no reference points for balance. We were told that after only a few hours in this complete darkness, trapped miners would be unable to stand because of the disorientation.
 
 







The lights were turned back on and it was time for the climb up the slope to the surface. We turned on our gear and retrieved our numbered tags. We then returned to the museum where the attendant would look up your number and tell you of the fate of the miner who held that number on the fateful day of the bump. Mine was 40 years old, with 3 children and he died in the mine, one of 75 who lost their lives that day. It was truly a somber experience to learn of the fate of so many who only wanted to provide for their families.Many who survived owed their lives to the Dragermen, who wore air tanks and would head into the mine as everyone else was trying to escape, to try and save their fellow miners. Due to their work 99 of the 174 miners underground were rescued. It took 5 and a half days to reach the last of the survivors. After that it was a recovery mission,

Tidal Bore Rafting

  It had been a couple of weeks since I did any writing on the blog. for part of the time we were away enjoying the festivities of the Maritime Mega 4 geocaching event in Truro, NS. It was an awesome time to meet geocachers from around the world and to experience our own province like a tourist. The MM4 committee organized many satellite events around the province and one of the ones that we most looked forward to was Tidal Bore Rafting. I have a confession to make, I am from Nova Scotia and have never experienced the tidal bore. Not once in over a half century of conscious memory. Whew, that is behind me. We thought that there could be no better way to experience it than to take a full immersion experience, and that truly describes what happens when you hit the river and meet the bore.

 We started the day by meeting with the organizers of this event. We seemed to have to sign an awful lot of waivers before we were allowed to go to the next step.
  You only live once right. Now, everyone is given a coloured rubber bracelet, this tells you which boat you are in, each boat holds 8 people. We looked around to find the souls with similar coloured bracelets and we had ourselves a crew.

  Next stop on the journey was the donated show pile, where shoes that were deemed too dirty to make the return trip home ended up. If you are worried about your shoes, it you wonder if the mud will come out, visit the show pile. The mud won't come out.   Next is the PFD Pile. We head there to get a flotation device that fits and get yourself strapped in.  Now properly shod and buoyant it is time to start the parade to the river bank to start the most exciting part of the day.

The donated shoes.

Getting bouyant

The start of the parade to the water

As we hike from the lodge we get our first sight of the river and our conveyance for the day, and the mud. Lots of mud. Red mud, slippery mud, did I mention lots of mud.  There is no use being dainty and trying to get to the boat without getting any on you, it won't work and you will be coated soon anyway. Best to just just grab hold of your inner child and slip, slide and roll your way to your boat.

 

The look of things to come

After a brief mutiny when the captain was put over the side, a new caption was at the helm.

  Now we embark on our boats and push off from shore. We head down the river for our meeting with the bore. It is amazing how shallow the river is at low tide and at several points people had to pile out to drag the boat over the bars to get to deeper water, the river changes day by day so there is no map for the bars. 

 Back in the boats once more we are motoring along watching the eagles perched in trees waiting for the inrushing tide to deliver supper, I think we are too big to tackle so are safe for the time being.  The driver takes us to a sand bar in the middle of the river where we can debark for a little while and stretch our legs as we wait for the bore to arrive.

On the bar, in a few minutes this was the rapids

  Some people use the time to get up to some mischief.  Our guide is heard to mutter that it is never the children who end up throwing mud.

Incoming!

  As we look down the river we see a faint line of light coloured foam on a chocolate milk coloured river. The bore is coming. No need to panic but it is time to get back in the boats for the highlight of the day. We move a bit further down the river and meet the bore head on. If that sounds dramatic, it is.

   It is up and over the face of the bore with the full force of the motors behind us and then into the calmer water behind it. An amazing ride, but it is not over yet. The boat disappears under the waves and fills with water. The driver gooses the throttle and pushes us into the next wave, now the water is up to your neck and another wave is looming. The water crashes over your head and the boat is nowhere to be seen, you can feel it under you, but you can't see it.

   The boat is now into the calm water and runs out the holes in the transom  and you are once again in a boat and not riding atop a submarine. You look around and see 7 more smiles that look like the one you feel on your own face. You then look around to see what the spectacle looks like from the outside as others plow through the waves.

 You think to yourself you are so glad that you did this and it was an amazing experience. But it is not over. You are in a brief reprieve as the boat is navigated around to plow through the waves once more. This time you know what is coming. The anticipation is a bit more acute. You grip the rope a bit tighter. As the waves this time seem a bit bigger and the boat plows into them a bit harder, you are sure you are going to leave the boat, not by choice, but by force. Just as you are sure that you are going overboard, another huge wave slams into you pushing you into the center of the boat. A huge grin spreads across you  face and the next wave enters your mouth, you then realize that the chocolate milk river is quite salty.

After a couple of passes through the waves it is time to head upriver to the mud banks for the final experience of the day. We exit the boat near the riverbank, removing our shoes we make out way to the top of the bank, by digging our fingers and toes into the slippery mud. We get to the top and trying to remain upright we survey the slope, then you sit/slip/fall onto the bank and shoot down the side like an otter in a wildlife show. Then it is the precarious scramble to get to the top for another slide.

 

Then we get the signal from our guide that it is time to head back to the lodge. We are a bit disappointed to be leaving so soon, but we are advised on the way back that the showers are communal and the first ones back get to see less of their fellow rafters. We are sold on the idea and head for the lodge. There is only one last muddy climb up the bank to shore and  a chance to hit the showers and get mud out of every nook and cranny.

After the showers are done and the muddy gear is stowed, or tossed, it is time to do a final meet up with the organizers to say thanks and to draw names for door prizes. It is a geocaching event as well.  After all is said and done we line up for a group photos to remember the fun with and it is off to the next event in our weekend.