Charity at Christmas

 Christmas has always been a time when we should remember others to me.  Indeed, the very act of gift-giving is a way of caring for others, although I'm sure not many think back to the gifts brought by the wisemen as the origin of Christmas gift-giving today.  We're generous with our own children of course, but at Christmas I try to find other ways to give.

My favourite Christmas charity is World Vision.  As well as having a reputation for spending a very high percentage of donations directly on the people they are trying to support, they have developed a unique catalogue of Christmas gifts that appeals to me.  You can give a wide range of things, from soccer balls to schoolbooks, from chickens to medical supplies.

It's those last things that appeal to me, so this year we are giving a cow to our children, and a goat and chickens to our grandchildren.  They won't ever see them of course; the gifts will go to a family in Africa for whom it will make a big difference.  It's also a way of reminding our children of the importance of charity, and perhaps getting them into the spirit of giving too.  We're lucky to be able to afford it ourselves at this stage of life.

I also always give to the Salvation Army here at home.  I miss the jingling bells of their Santas in the mall this year, but I'll mail a gift in.  I believe they do good work, quietly and reliably, in our communities.  There are several other local charities we support, especially the foodbank here in Meaford.

Finally we give to our church.  It's not that we're terribly religious, although I would describe myself as spiritual.  But we enjoy going to church once a week, both as a way to mark the week, and as a way to getting out in the community.  And it won't be able to keep the lights on, or pay our minister, unless we help out.

In fact, I think a lot of churches will end up dissolving over the next two decades, and a very important force for good in our communities will be gone.  You only have to look around at the sea of white hair, and the almost complete lack of children to realize that this is inevitable.  In the meantime we'll do our best to keep it going.

December Skies

When you're stuck in one place much of the time, looking out the same window, at the same view, you develop a fascination with the constant changes happening before your eyes.  Skies change quite often at this time of year, sometimes several times a day.  I could show you 100 different photos of the view out my window over the entire year, every one of them different, but here are a few from the past 2 weeks.

Let's start with the snowstorm of two weeks ago, here late in the morning when the snow had mostly melted off the window.

The next day started out dull, dark and grey in the morning.  The bird in the upper left corner is a decal, meant to represent a hawk, to scare smaller birds away before they fly into the window.  Don't know if it really works, but we doo our best.

But by two o'clock was bright and sunny.

We went through that cycle of grey and blue skies several times over the following week, often in the same day.  With temperature sometimes above freezing, the snow was slowly melting, small green patches appearing.

This morning it looked like this.  In spite of a little fluff of snow last night, it is more than half green.

Then the snow flurries arrived and it started turning white again.  We'll go through constant cycles like this for the next 3 months.

I leave you with this morning's snow flurry.  Wishing it on all of you!

Sunset

We had a nice sunset the other night.  Got just a few shots while I noticed it.  If your head is buried in a book at that time ( as it usually is) the view out the window can just pass you by without you even noticing!

It started out a very gentle pink, and I wondered if it would really change much.

But change it did, A  stronger pink spread across the clouds.  Sorry about the reflection of the lamp.

Zooming in always highlights the colour.

Then Mrs. F.G. noticed the colour and took the camera out front.  A little blurry, but great colour; it was getting really dark at this point.

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Did you realize that we're only 9 days until the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year?  Yes, in 10 days the daylight starts getting longer!  Hurrah!

Raper Park

 Fred Raper Park down by the water is usually my ultimate destination when I go for a ride down by the harbour.  It's been the central focus of local council debates over shoreline protection as the water levels have risen and storm damage has increased.  There seem to be two scenarios, 'restoring' the park, or 'naturalizing' the park, the former prohibitively expensive, and the latter the cheaper (tax-saving) choice.

After one of our local contacts mentioned seeing work going on there, we drove past to see what was happening.  It appears they have chosen to go ahead with the 'naturalizing' option.

It appeared that everything beyond the parking lot had been cleaned off and the playground equipment removed.

For now it's a sea of dirt, and I doubt that any real planting will be done before winter.

They have left the shelter for now; the playground equipment was in the centre of the open area beyond that.  I do hope they retain the sidewalk down into the centre of the area, which I enjoyed riding down to get a clear view of the bay.  But who knows what 'naturalizing' means.  It may mean just leaving it alone and not spending any more money on it.

This is the best picture I've got of what the park looked like before the clean-up.  The playground equipment has been out-of-bounds because of Covid rules here in Ontario.

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Imagine our surprise when a friend dropped off this Christmas 'tree' for us!  This was totally unexpected, a lot of work for her, and beautifully done.  It's built on the framework of a large tomato cage, and it includes branches from at least four different types of evergreens.  We're both surprised and thrilled!

Christmas Preparations

We're making good progress with our Christmas preparations.  Yesterday we finished decorating our tree, a new smaller one than we have had.  Yes, we've downsized the Christmas tree, from the 7 foot version to the 4 foot version. We had the previous one for at least 15 years, but it was increasingly heavy and awkward to bring up from the basement and to put up, especially since I can't really help anymore.  But we weren't prepared to just not have one.

Mrs. F.G. has a great collection of Christmas ornaments, so two days ago she went out and bought a new smaller tree for us.  It sits on a little table, and seems just right for us.  We got the lights on the first day and yesterday put of the small fraction of our ornaments that will fit!  It made us think about all these things that have sentimental value to us, but may not mean much to our kids. What do you do with them?  And we have a lot of ornaments!

We've also finished our Christmas cards, just a few left to stick in the mail.  And last week we finished packing up the box to send out west to our daughter and her family, our grandchildren.  No chance of a visit this year!  We may see our son and his wife briefly, while keeping our 6 foot distance!

Yours truly, making his small little contribution to Christmas - wrapping gifts and packing the Christmas box.  I'm the one who does the Christmas cards too, so I'm not totally useless, even though I can't go out and do much shopping!

The snow we have following the big storm last Tuesday hasn't melted much, so it's still white outside, which does add to the feeling that Christmas is imminent.  But what do we get for each other when we already have everything we need?

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I forgot to mention in yesterday's post on pain management, my recognition that strong pain is linked to high blood pressure.  I've been taking my BP twice a day, and getting some pretty high readings in late afternoon when the pain is worst.  So that was a pretty good reason to get the pain under control!

Pain Management

Like most other spinal cord injury patients, I suffer from chronic and constant neuropathic pain or nerve pain.  For me it's normally a band of pain around my chest at the injury level and it feels like a bad sunburn, or a tight straight jacket with the inside consisting of steel wool or coarse velcro against my skin.  It's not the sort of pain that comes with a sudden acute injury, and doctors simply don't seem to know what to do about it.  The medical advice is that you just have to 'learn to live with it',

I usually explain it as if the upper part of my body, the unparalyzed part, is sitting in a tin can with sharp edges all around the top.  And when I move, my body rubs against those sharp edges.  Over the past ten days the pain seems to have become steadily worse (at least until Sunday), and I've been pushed into doing more active pain management.

There's a conundrum here, because I don't like to simply take more drugs, so I tend to feel I should just 'grin and bear it' a lot of the time.  But if you continue doing that I get to the point where I'm really not functioning very well, if at all.  I just sit and gaze out the window, and miss writing blog posts and other constructive things I could be doing.  At that point I think I need to do something!  And the medical advice is to take whatever you need to control your pain before you get to that point.

I do several things to try and control the pain.  I take a drug, Gabapentin, which should reduce it, but I'm not sure that it's actually working.  After a bad day Saturday and several days before, I went back to taking some cbd/thc tincture, which does seem to have helped in the past.  The disadvantage is that when I've used this regularly in the past I've felt a little dopey during the day.  I'm dopey enough without adding to it!  I've also added simple tylenol a couple of times a day.

One thing that really helps in the evening is a bean bag heating pad, which Mrs. F.G. warms up in the microwave for me.  Using it for an hour of more after I'm put to bed really helps, and I fall asleep easily, thank goodness!

But a big part of my pain management that you might not think of, is keeping my brain occupied.  As long as I'm consciously thinking of something else, or reading, I forget the pain.  I seem able to just ignore it.  As well as having a book on the go, I'm constantly using my cellphone to read the news or play sudoku.  Sometimes, even though I'm glued to my cell phone too much, I think it's actually my best pain medication.

I learned yesterday (even though I've been asking for months), that there is a pain management nurse available nearby.  I've requested an appointment, and hope to get more advice about what I can do soon.  In the meantime, I'll continue actively doing what I can, but if I miss posting you'll know why.

Down by the Bay

After church on Sunday we drove down to the shoreline to see what was up.  We discovered that the new bridge was finished, and they've added a wide sidewalk fenced in by good railings, along the harbour side, so I'll be able to expand my wandering area down by the harbour next summer.  But as we drove a circle through the gravel parking area over there, there were so many big potholes that it wasn't worth the drive!  Maybe I won't be expanding my harbour visits after all.

So we turned the other direction and drove a couple of blocks along Bayview, where we usually stop.  There were the beginnings of a few icicles and waves were splashing up.

But evidence of the storm two weeks ago was obvious.  They've cleaned off the road and sidewalks, but the grass is covered in small stones, right beside the tiny but popular beach.

Further down there were more icicles,,,

And more rocks thrown up on the grass.  Council has intense debates on whether they should spend money to clean up this area, and they've proposed actually charging tourists for parking here!  Sometimes I think this town is hopeless.  Adding more large boulders, which are probably needed, will be a prohibitive cost for this council, whose only concern is to minimize taxes!

A few more icicles along behind the caution tape that now blocks off the entire park area beyond the parking lot.  I like the last picture with the slopes of Cape Rich in the background.

I'm working on pain management here, hoping for some improvement in the debilitating pain I sometimes suffer from.  It makes me non-functional for hours at a time some days.