Past and Present

In 1970 my then husband and I bought a piece of property on a lake, in the bush, and proceeded to build a cottage there. I mean that literally, we built the cottage ourselves, just the two of us, with two exceptions, we had someone come in and dig a hole for the basement, and then hired a mason to build the basement. We also had two weekends where family and friends assisted in lifting rafters for the roof, and shingling the roof. We did the rest. And I mean we quite literally, there were no aspects of the build that I was not fully involved with. I would NEVER do that again. We were young, quite foolish, and eventually sold the cottage to buy our first house.

Why, after 56 years am I recalling this misadventure?

Well, the lakefront at the cottage was full of dead trees that had fallen into the water. I took it upon myself to remove these and drag them to a depressed area on the property to act as landfill. Here is the part of the process that was oh so foolish. There was poison ivy growing where I was placing the dead branches. It did not occur to me to take note of that. I would drag the dead wood to the area, then return to the water to gather more, where I was working knee deep in lake water.

At one point, while standing in the lake, I noticed huge blisters on my left shin. More foolishness, I broke them. They were a reaction to the poison ivy. It spread. I visited the doctor upon arriving home, and suffered quite a bit until the lesions healed. But every spring the lesions would reappear, smaller, but lasting for months. That happened every spring for around twenty years and then it petered out.

Well, three days ago, it came back. I have an itchy rash on my left shin, just where the poison ivy had settled all those years ago. I am treating it with witch hazel and aloe vera lotion, which is working quite well.

In the meantime, after some truly wonderful mild days, winter has returned, lots of snow, and some low temperatures at night. This is most noticed going out for daily walks. So we are “girding our loins”, donning our winter gear, and heading into dealing with four more weeks of winter weather. It will be getting milder as the weeks progress. But tonight the temperature is to plummet from above freezing this afternoon, to -19C in the early morning hours.

I am hoping this is the last arctic blast for the season!

Yesterday my email stopped working. I tried a few things, nothing helped. Today I decided to call the administrator for the account and inquire if there was a problem there. No, no problem there, the fellow spent about fifteen minutes working with me to figure it out, trying this and that. The upshot is that the problem was not the with the account, it was with software on my computer. The problem was completely at my end.

I felt sheepish and regretful that I had taken up the administrator’s time to figure this out. The only information I really needed to lead me to enlightenment was that there was nothing wrong at their end. But if I had really applied myself at my end, I might have discovered the issue myself. I had blocked access to my computer, to what I thought was an incoming file, but apparently I was blocking the email server. It was a quick fix when I realized what I had done.

I thanked the administrator who had spent time trouble shooting the issue with me, wasting his time. I tell myself, to make myself feel a little better about it, that I gave him new information about what type of software can cause such a baffling phenomenon at the server end of things (instant disconnections). Well, maybe that was worth something to him, maybe not. I am good at finding what can go wrong with any piece of software, I like to think of this talent as a “feature”. Some software developers have appreciated it, or so they told me.

The highlight of my day was lunch. I cooked up a batch of Cream of Tomato Soup Base, and had myself a bowl of soup. Comfort food for cold weather.

Worldly

Weather

-1°C
Date: 5:00 PM EST Monday 23 February 2026
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.3 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: -0.9°C
Dew point: -8.3°C
Humidity: 57%
Wind: NNW 17 km/h
Wind Chill: -6
Visibility: 24 km

Quote

“Home is slowly teaching myself that sometimes the box isn’t built for everyone.”

Source:
Miguel Fenrich · for CBC First Person · Posted: Feb 22, 2026 4:00 AM EST | Last Updated: February 22
Living in rural Sask., I thought of myself as white with brown skin. A nationwide tragedy shook me awake: The shooting of Colten Boushie stirred conversations in my family that highlighted my differences

I find this quote, and the article, very astute, and descriptive of the never ending challenges of living almost entirely outside the box.