Rebuilding and renewal - 7

[AndrewP]

Happy Sunny Sunday all.

Not a huge amount to report but enough to justify opening up the ole online diary.

Friday morning I woke up with a fair amount of pain - I think I had an angina attack in the night. Blargh. I took a couple of aspirin and felt decent enough by the time I needed to leave for work. The pain persisted for a while though and the fuzzy head as well which is always a nuisance. Worrisome when I think about it, living alone here. It's always been a concern for me but not one that has ever - I believe - played a role in looking for a partner. I'm pretty sure that my health was always a concern for my XW - she was very avoidant of the subject of death and even though we never talked about it, finding me cold and smelly in the morning was probably something she was very afraid of. Odd that OM is (I believe) a fair bit older. As a creature of routine I would probably be missed fairly quickly. There's a young nurse who lives around the corner that actually carries one of those zappy machine things in her car. My daughter (the one who can be counted on to answer her phone) has her contact information.

Over-all though my health is better I think than it was when I was married - I've not been walking lately and need to get back to that. I have some yard work that I'm going to let slide but I was pleased that I was able to move my snow tires around with no difficulty which I got put on yesterday. Not sure what caused the pain but certainly something to monitor. I did turn in the prescription that I had for anxiety from back last year. I never did take any of those pills.

I did get a fresh haircut on Friday. I usually had a basic crew-cut - I used to say "George Clooney". The new barber I've been going to did a very different cut, leaving a lot of hair on top of the head which I presume is the fashion these days. I've seen quite a few young people with hair like that. I asked the barber this time to not let it be so long and to do a more basic haircut. I looked at it later and for those that get the reference I think it looks a lot like Tintin. I'm good with that as Tintin is a pretty cool character although I think that Snowy was the actual brains of the outfit.

I was also surprised to have an old friend drop by the plant on Friday. He's a salesman with our biggest customer (everybody knows everybody in this business) so I took him on a plant tour and got him in to see the company president. It was interesting to be a fly on the wall when they talked about the various customers, trends and opportunities. I probably learned more about our business in that short while than I have in a long time.

There's a project that's come up with Corporate that is going to take a bunch of time so I'm going to work from home 2 days/week on a limited agenda for the plant for a month or so to try to get it taken care of. I'll have to do an hour or so at the start and end of the day for the plant and then in between work on the project. It will be nice to do something within my old scope of work that I like to think I'm quite good at.

I do have my vacation booked for the end of November / start of December for 2 weeks. I'll fly out to see my daughter and her husband for the weekend of Dec 4/5. I'm going to check flights. I had reached out to my travel agent but they never got back to me so I think for this one that I'll just book it myself. I'm not 100% sure if I'll take a day to just wander around Seattle on my own for a day or not.

Yesterday was a good day. I was talking to "F" at the flower shop and mentioned that I'll be dropping of a bag of Halloween candy for her son and her like usual. I do wonder if she is interested in me - I joke that she gives me the flowers she wants me to have and I just buy them and "do what I'm told" which seems to get a chuckle from the other staff. She has great taste and I get varieties of roses that I might not have experienced otherwise so win-win as far as I'm concerned.

She pushed me to check out their discount table too and I found a lovely wreath for $5 that will go up at Christmas.

She is quite a bit younger than I am and her son is I believe 8 or 9 now. She did have a guy in her life I know about a year or so ago but think that ended as she has mentioned from time to time about having some weekends completely to herself when her son is with his Dad. I don't know and haven't asked. It's one of those awkward things that makes dating difficult.

I am slowly I think moving towards dating again but not to the point where I'm wanting to actively do anything about it. It's been at least a year of celibacy which I'm fine with and just about a year since I asked S to move out. I certainly don't miss what I had with her - it was toxic for me. I've not heard from or about her since she moved out, nor from her kids. I have little curiosity too.

The thoughts of having to go through something like that again bothers me a lot. And despite the generally accepted advice to date for a while before allowing cohabitation, for me, it's trying to identify those things that are indeed deal-breakers before I get too emotionally attached. Identifying proxies for the things that are important to me is something I've given a fair bit of thought to. Money management can be spotted fairly easily I think - do they think before buying something, do they insist on contributing on dates and take the lead. Housekeeping I think can be judged by the amount of trash they generate. I'm pretty far on the other side of the normal spectrum on that going roughly 6 weeks these days without putting the can out to the curb. How they treat people at restaurants etc, the condition of their vehicle.

Kindness and compassion is a tough one to spot I think because it's so easy to fake.

From another thread

You don't NEED a partner but you'd like to have one - that's normal. Sex is great and having someone who is your sounding board is great (although to be fair I do have a best friend who can fill the sounding board role as well). Companionship is nice. It would be grand to have someone who would care for me if I was sick the way I care for CMM, but for most women, honestly, we are more likely to end up caring for the guy since their life expectancy is lower. At least I have grown kids and family who will take care of me if that becomes necessary.

And sure - talk to multiple people at once. If you went to a party you might end up speaking with more than one person, right?

I laughed when I saw this. I do indeed try to talk to multiple people at a party. One of the things I didn't like about social events with my XW was how she would latch on to / be latched on to by others and then we never ventured outside that. I did end up though at the wedding I was at recently being button-holed by one of the other attendees who just kept talking and I couldn't get away. I did manage before that though to wander around a bit and visit with my various cousins etc.

---

Yesterday was pretty productive. We've had some good frosts so I picked what was left in the "garden". Actually it's my flower beds next to the house but I also plant pepper and tomato plants in with the flowers. I had some 300,000 Scoville peppers that weren't ripe that I didn't want to go to waste so tossed those plus some sweet peppers, unripe cherry tomatoes, and some garlic that was needing to be used up into a pot of vinegar and let that bubble for a while then blended it roughly with my immersion blender. I had a small taste this morning and put it in my omlette. It turned out surprisingly good. Lots of heat but also quite a lot of flavour. The three small jars I made will probably last for quite a while.

I also managed to get a big chunk of my Christmas shopping done yesterday. I have everything for my son-in-law and about 1/3 of what I'm getting for my daughter. I have some good ideas on what to get for my son and have been browsing the Lee Valley Christmas catalogue for ideas too.

Last night I watched Hocus Pocus - what a really cheezy movie. I kept hoping that I would start enjoying but never did. I then watched the first Lord of the Rings for the first time in a "lot" of years and quite enjoyed that. The cat enjoyed having a lap for such an extended period of time. I've been trying to make time for him although he's gotten used to me sitting at my desk for quite a lot and he's currently purring loudly while making sure that some receipts I need to put into my cheque register stay put by laying on them.

Ah well - enough for now. I'm meeting my son for brunch and need to get moving. He's not responded to any of my texts on the subject but that's not unusual.

Still not sure what to make for dinner tonight. I have a pretty full pantry at the moment, especially with regards to meat. I'm thinking duck stew with fresh biscuits.

[kml]

Don’t you have and nitroglycerin pills to take when you get angina?

I don’t know if you have it up there in Canada, but Dune is playing on HBO Max this month and my son and I quite enjoyed it. Beautiful scenery and special effects and cinematography, and they’re not trying to cram too much in. Lovely.

[DnJ]

Good Morning Andrew

LOTR is one of my favourite! Love the story, the scenes, and the music is superb.

Kindness and compassion is a tough one to spot I think because it's so easy to fake.

You’ve mentioned this many times over the years. I seem to see through disingenuous behaviour and words more easily.

How people treat people is a pretty good indicator. And not just at restaurants. Kindness is not measured by the amount of your tip or the coin in the collection plate. One does not buy a kind soul.

I recall coming home with my still pretty new car. Not even gravel or dirt on the floor mats yet. Lol.

Anyhow, a group of kind folks were standing gathered around a person on the sidewalk in town. This group of folks were all looking and standing. I did a u-turn, stopped, and got out.

The guy was the town drunk. He had fallen off the sidewalk and into the bushes. He was cut and bleeding. The bottle he was hiding within his coat sleeve had broken and the booze had wetted down his arm and side. He leashed dog was still tugging on him, and he was thoroughly tangled within the brambles of the hedge.

I went straight to him. Remove the dog’s leash from his hand/wrist and handed it over to the only one of the peanut gallery that offered to help me. Notice, help me, not help him. The gal took the dog while I got the poor guy out of the hedge. I cleaned him up as best I could. Had the gal walk his dog to his house and told her to wait and I’d return to look after it.

I poured this less than coordinated guy into my car. Secured the seat belt and drove him to the hospital. Ha, he was one of my very first passengers.

The gaggle of kind folks dispersed.

After dropping him off and updating the nurse with what I knew, I went back to his house. I took the dog from the gal, let myself in to his house, and let the dog of his leash in the porch. There was food and water there.

Interestingly, and sorry apparently you’ve inspired me to story tell, I recently had a run in with this guy.

He walks his dog down the road in front of my property. He walks down the incorrect side of the road, with traffic instead of facing traffic. He keeps his dog on its leash until he reaches my property edge. At this point he lets his dog off leash and it ambled around and into my bushes and property and deposits it’s gifts. Once he has walked past my property frontage, he and dog them move across the road to the proper side, facing traffic, continuing to the mile road and then down that gravel road.

I asked him to clean up after his dog. Or let him off leash after my property - it is farm land after that. I maintain and mow my ditch, the ditches past me are not.

Well goodness me. No way! He blew up! He threaten to call the cops. Said I was harassing him. And on and on. I remained calm. He was quite upset.

I assured him all I was doing was asking him to please clean up after his dog or let him off leash 500 feet later. Ah, irrational folks. He went ballistic. Told me his doesn’t have to talk to me. I assured him he is correct and he doesn’t have to talk with me. All I’m doing is talking to you. It’s completely up to you if you respond.

He had some difficultly speaking and walking. For the ten minute conversation he stood in place. Never moved. Just angry and argumentative. When I pointed out this fact, that he hadn’t moved and was indeed talking to me, it was something to see. Reality slams into the irrational perception abruptly.

“I should just walk on the other f-ing side of the road. Those people don’t have a f-ing problem with me or my dog.”

(Bingo. Negotiating with irrational people, it has to feel like it is their idea.)

You are free to do so. I do not control you, nor tell you where to walk. I’m only asking you clean up after your dog.

I’ve not seen him walk by on my side since. And lately he seems to have found a different route for his walks.

Methinks, he doesn’t know it was I who hauled him out of those bushes and let him bleed in my car. Lol.

Good thing kindness is it’s own reward.

Oh, and kindness ain’t being a doormat either.

…it's trying to identify those things that are indeed deal-breakers before I get too emotionally attached.

Some things only get revealed or discovered once we get emotionally involved. Once we get further along passed infatuation. Hence, dating for a while.

Huge deal-breakers are pretty evident. The lesser extreme and still valid deal-breakers are harder to uncover “before”.

We must risk ourselves. One cannot discover all deal-breakers before any attachment or risk of hurt. That’s how life is. Be well healed, strong and stable, and live it. That holds true for much more than dating I suppose.

You haven’t had an angina attack for quite a while. Well, one you’ve shared here.

I also live alone. I understand that worrisome feeling. I consider how long would it take to be discovered if I fell down the stairs. Post pending retirement, quite some time. Likely weeks.

We must risk ourselves to live.

Still, might have to invest in some manner of self alerting gizmo. Even though I’n not that old.

I have a aunt who is now 96. A few years ago she fell while walking down the back lane in winter and broke her leg. Luckily, and truly luckily, she was discovered laying there in the snowy lane. It was -20C or so. Just an easy stroll to the store. Had she not been discovered she’d have froze. At 94 she could not drag herself to get help.

At 53, I’m pretty sure I could drag my self up the stairs. Or is that just male ego and denial. Lol.

Hmmm. Maybe I need a phone on each level of the house. Oh, now bargaining. The last attempt at holding on to what was.

Sigh, fine. Get the stupid life line gizmo. Haha. Acceptance.

Have a great day my friend.

D

[AndrewP]

Don’t you have and nitroglycerin pills to take when you get angina?

I have nitro spray which my understanding is I am to take "prior" to doing something that may overstrain my plumbing. This episode seemingly came out of nowhere.

I don’t know if you have it up there in Canada, but Dune is playing on HBO Max this month and my son and I quite enjoyed it. Beautiful scenery and special effects and cinematography, and they’re not trying to cram too much in. Lovely.

I am looking forward to seeing this adaptation. It would be nice to see it in a theatre but will most likely wait until it is either available to buy so I can re-watch whenever I like. I built my own PLEX streaming server on a Raspberry PI recently which works quite well for me.

I recall coming home with my still pretty new car.

I have similar stories. One was standing knee deep in flood water across the street trying to keep the storm drains clear when the village got flooded a number of years. More than one person told me that it was the municipalities job and not mine - at least one of them was pretty forceful in his opinion. I was there, I saw what needed to be done and did it. I know that "C" will often drive people to doctor's appointments and such-like which is one of the things I admire about her.

We must risk ourselves. One cannot discover all deal-breakers before any attachment or risk of hurt. That’s how life is. Be well healed, strong and stable, and live it. That holds true for much more than dating I suppose.

I agree. I'm still much more risk averse than I was a couple of years ago. I'll need to get to a place where the risk is balanced by the reward and, in part no doubt because I'm not looking, I don't see a reward worthy of the risk.

You haven’t had an angina attack for quite a while. Well, one you’ve shared here.

The last one was I think about 3 months ago after a weekend of heavy yard work. I have "stable angina" - I know what can trigger it, overwork, anxiety, stress. Not sure where this one came from which is why I'm worried.

Sigh, fine. Get the stupid life line gizmo. Haha. Acceptance.

For quite some time I used an app called Life 360 which I joked with my kids should be called "are you wearing pants". It works based on geofencing so they would get an alert when I left the property ("Dad - did you remember to wear pants") , got to work etc. It was nice to know that they had that info. My daughter used it with her husband so instead of texting back and forth "when are you done work", she'd get an alert when he left the boat and know to be home and working on dinner.

Kind of like back in the day I would call home when I was 1/2 hour away, let the phone ring twice and then my wife would know I was on my way. I think towards the end, it also gave her time to put things back to rights - there was one episode of coming home to her washing wine glasses (she hated doing dishes) and swearing that there was only one glass despite me seeing two. Sigh.

I should test my smart speakers - I think I only have to ask them to call the kids and it would. I have 3 scattered around the house

Anyhoodles, the Life 360 app worked well. In the line of work you are in, there are tools / apps for "working alone / man down" monitoring that you might be familiar with. They'll alert on a fall through the bump or on the device not moving at all. Lots of different ways to do it especially with modern tech. One I really liked that I saw a few years ago was one where a person's grandfather had a tendency to wander in the night so they wired up his socks to send an alert if he got out of bed in the night.

[kml]

there was one episode of coming home to her washing wine glasses (she hated doing dishes) and swearing that there was only one glass despite me seeing two. Sigh.

Yuck!

Apple Watches series 4 and higher have a feature where it will alert emergency services if you take a hard fall and don’t move for a minute. I don’t have an Apple Watch, have just read about it.

[DnJ]

Good Morning Andrew

Knee deep in the flood waters. Yep. Roll up your sleeves - or pant legs - and do what needs to be done.

The last one was I think about 3 months ago after a weekend of heavy yard work. I have "stable angina" - I know what can trigger it, overwork, anxiety, stress. Not sure where this one came from which is why I'm worried.

An out of the blue attack is pretty rare for you. Glad you are deferring the heavy yard work for a while.

I would call home when I was 1/2 hour away, let the phone ring twice and then my wife would know I was on my way.

J and I had a code like that as well. When I worked away, I’d call around a certain time, let it ring twice and hang up. J would then call me. We had a home long distance plan which was much cheaper than making calls from the hotel room. Of course, this was back before cell phones. Wow, remember life before all these nifty gadgets?

…there was one episode of coming home to her washing wine glasses (she hated doing dishes) and swearing that there was only one glass despite me seeing two. Sigh.

I understand that. The implied bit.

I once asked J, post separation, how many times she cheated while we were married. She turned silent and just looked down. I said, don’t worry about it, its over, it doesn’t matter any more. She then stammered - none. Of course, OM was a for sure count of one. One who she left for and was living with. Needless to say I was not believing her story of none. Still kind of curious as to the actual number.

In my line of work, yes working alone plans are necessary. There are apps, that behave like a deadman switch. These apps alarm at a preset timeframe and one would signal they are alright. If no ok signal the app then calls for help.

Oddly, or not so much if you knew the inner working of my corporation, we do not have these apps. We have to call in to an overworked and understaffed call center and trust that they will call us back at our agreed time, and then contact our set up help people after. A few times this has been unwittingly enacted. Working through the agreed time limit. And no call! Ah, yet another broken process. I prefer processes and systems that I have more control over.

Something like the Apple Watch as kml pointed out, with automatic calling sounds pretty good. Of course, I need to wear the darn the thing. Lol. Maybe GPS socks.

Have a great Monday.

D

[kml]

D - an Apple watch type device not be as useful in your profession, as wouldn’t it likely get electrocuted too?

[bttrfly]

Andrew, have you called your doctor about this out of the blue attack? If not, why not? Please do so.

[AndrewP]

Andrew, have you called your doctor about this out of the blue attack? If not, why not? Please do so.

Been through this before. I'll just rub dirt on it

Based on past experience - and I have had these unexpected attacks before - after the few days that it takes to actually get an appointment, they take my blood pressure, maybe do an ultrasound and schedule an appointment with a specialist a month or so later who would put me on a stress test that I pass easily. I've been managing this condition probably since my late 30s.

If I were to see them while I'm having the episode that could maybe help - but again, I don't think there's a lot to be done other than managing things. Human bodies are unpredictable things - put together in the dark by amateurs as I like to say Even cars that you can take the parts out of and test them are unpredictable things - working fine in front of the mechanic. Can't just swap parts out of a living being to see if that helps. You can't even open the hood to look inside all that well.

On my male line we have a history of heart conditions although neither of my brothers have any problems. Both my grandfather and father had moderately serious heart attacks around my age although I think I have less risk factors than they did. My dad - who loved his peanut butter and brown sugar sandwiches - had a quadruple bypass I think in his early 60s. My cardiologist assures me that he'll be seeing me at some point in the future for some sort of procedure.

On a better note, my grandfather lived until his 90s and died after he broke his hip and decided to stop eating. My dad died in his 70s when he caught influenza in the nursing home he was in for non-hereditary dementia. He was otherwise in good health - the staff considered him a big gentle giant.

I remember reading / hearing once that you tend to live to within a few years of your mother. Mine passed at 64 from colon cancer. Something I get tested for regularly.

{{bttrfly}} - thanks for caring - I really do appreciate it. As someone who lives alone with what could be considered a chronic condition - it can be pretty concerning and I worry about that.

[AndrewP]

Happy Halloween!

I've asked my son to stop by later to help me get the sloop out of the shed and to put away the outdoor benches. I'm still not feeling 100% so figured there's no sense being silly. He's going to put on his snow tires while he's here. Snow is in the forecast for sometime this week perhaps.

He's usually in the village on Sunday nights for his weekly poker game although I'm not 100% sure that's on this week.

On Saturday I dropped off the bags of candy for F at the flower shop for her and her son like I usually do. She was doing some work in the back and I was a bit bothered when the owner of the shop went back and got her to come to the front. Makes sense I suppose - I do think that most of the staff there still thinks we should be dating. I worry a bit that it could be considered that I'm leading her on (?) I don't know her relationship status although I believe she is single again. She did have someone living with her last summer I believe but get the feeling that it didn't work out. Hard to tell and (in my opinion) rude to ask.

As days pass I do feel more and more sure that I will at some point date again. Not sure when / how though. No real rush. Someone like F would be in some ways a good match. She's kind and capable. She also has some negatives though too. Her young son and his Dad would also be part of the deal. His Dad is very involved and I think actually lives in the apartment just below F. Great for the kid. I don't really want to be involved in raising a kid though. I'd thought I would be ok with that but my experience with S certainly disabused me of that notion. She was perhaps an extreme case in that she was not an involved parent.

Work is better now that I'm not putting in quite so many hours. I'm actually doing up the paperwork for tomorrow's loads right now but that's par for the course. The fact that I'm not dealing with what I felt was the craziness of scheduling trucks and making sure they rolled through has freed up my afternoons though so I've not had to work nights to catch up as much.

My boss - who complained a lot about how I was doing the loading planning has taken on this task. I feel a bit annoyed because almost everything I was told I was doing wrong, he does it even more extremely. Loads are shifted around through the day, the guys have no clear idea what their day will look like and last minute orders are jumping in. One of the things I don't like about working for this guy is that he's never wrong - even when he demonstrably is. He always reflects any issues back. One example is that he complained I didn't have things set for a load that never was processed until I had already left for the day. I pointed this out and was told that I should have known about it. Sigh. It's just the way he is. Another example was when I had the plans in place for some production based on a feeling that an order for a particular product was due. I was told to not do it that way, drained the tanks and then, yep - the order I was expecting popped up and I had an empty tank so everyone had to scramble. Again, he never accepted that he made a mistake.

I was a bit annoyed because one of the drivers went into the control room and tore a strip off the guy working there because his trucks weren't being loaded as he would like. This is something that I would have dealt with before. I did wander out and chatted with the operator and let him vent. I have a good relationship with the staff I think that has mutual respect and good humour. The don't hesitate to both tease me or ask for my advice.

Ah well - a bit more office work to do then time to get my ironing done so that I can be ready for the ghouls and goblins.