The wind is high today. I can feel a breeze coming in at one corner of the new widow in the back bedroom, which means the wind has given us a gift, the gift of knowledge. Attila will need to fix that opening to the great outdoors, not that we know it is there.
The clouds are moving quickly across the sky. I am watching them parade in and out of sight, as I gaze out the living room window. My perspective has changed. This morning I moved the furniture around, so that my chair no longer faces the front of the house, it now faces the side of the house. This gives me a view of the sky, and the branches of the neighbours ash tree, the one of the few trees that escaped their scourge. The sun no longer shines in my eyes all morning, which is an advantage. I miss seeing the pine bough’s graceful sway, in windy weather, but one cannot have everything.
Our neighbours, the young couple with two boys, are gone. Last April they told us they were spending the summer in a trailer park, and that they were renting the main floor of the house out temporarily while they were gone. The husbands brother was going to continue living in the house, in the basement. All through late September and October there was activity next door. First the tenant moved out. Then the brother in the basement began to move his belongings out, with his father’s help and his father’s vehicle. Then the house fell silent, and a few days later the property management notices went onto the widows, the house had been repossessed. Oh how I wish they had lost the house before they cut down so many of the beautiful trees on the property, probably for firewood. I really miss the flowering crab tree they destroyed, it provided shade, lovely spring aromas when the blossoms came out, bird song all summer long, and privacy. They stripped the property of its many of its charms. They missed the ash tree, probably because it is so large that taking it down would have been a very big job, requiring a permit.
Who knows what will happen next with the house next door. We are hoping that its luck changes. The couple who owned it when we moved in sold it as soon as we painted the exterior of our house. The couple who bought it lost it to the bank. The next couple who bought have now also lost it to the bank. Each successive owner has further diminshed the house, making unwise choices in landscaping, and interior renovations that were not completed. The house needs someone to love it.
On Saturday morning, when Attila and I were out picking up the materials needed for the window replacement, we stopped in at the drug store to pick up his prescription. The drug store offered flu shots. I took a chance and talked to the druggist, about my allergen. While we waited he made some calls and could tell me what non-medicinal ingredients were in the shot, so that we determined that I could have the shot. So Attila and I both had our annual flu shot. I am going to take all my prescriptions to this drug store in future, it is a Rexall Drug Store. Neither of us has had any reaction at all to the shots.
Worldly Distractions
Weather
10°C
Date: 3:00 PM EDT Monday 30 October 2017
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 99.6 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 9.5°C
Dew point: 1.8°C
Humidity: 58%
Wind: WSW 35 gust 60 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”
Peter Ustinov
1921 – 2004
