H1N1! And Other Stuff
A gorgeous day of full sunshine and reasonable temperature of 6-degrees centigrade. Our leisurely breakfast followed by a visit to our very local Canadian Tire for our ten-year-old Honda to have an oil change, and an emissions-control test preparatory to license renewal. The return home awaiting completion of those tasks was a mere fifteen minute walk. After which we walked in a more convivial way, up the street to the entrance of the ravine.
Where we loosed our two little dogs so they could sniffle and snuffle their way wherever it took their fancy, leaving their own messages for other dogs to interpret in their turn. The clay upon which the ravine is mostly based, along with sand, has succumbed to its late-fall mire, not only the result of rainfall, but of the freeze-and-thaw cycle of low overnight temperatures and a rise in temperature during the day.
Calling for extreme caution when treading downhill and uphill, both. We know the terrain so intimately from our quotidian ventures over the past 20 years that we have little problem negotiating our way without slipping beyond control. We had witnessed, two days earlier, a young woman with two leashed and vastly overweight chows struggling to make her way uphill, teetering and sliding, finally slipping back to the bottom of a hill.
None of that today, since we're the only ones in there. As usual, slipping peanuts into the crotches of trees, in holes in the barks of others, along the rails of the bridges gapping the stream, watching as squirrels raid those deposits in gleeful possession. Yesterday, Stumpy approached us no fewer than four times for his peanuts, today we've not seen him even once. He knows where to find them, clever little fellow.
Later, we take ourselves off to the town centre for the H1N1 vaccination clinic. Earlier in the day, my husband had dropped by to pick up our numbered/coloured wrist bands and copies of the questionnaire to be filled out, and was given instruction that we should return at three for our inoculations. Which we did, arriving to find hordes of other people doing the same. We were ushered into a small theatre, advised to wait until called.
After a few moments of waiting, we were informed that those with purple wristbands and final 3 numbers under 300 should hie themselves off to the third floor. There, a long line had formed, but moved along at a good pace. We soon found ourselves in front of a long line of desks where people manning computers inputted our information and sent us along to another line from which we were eventually dispatched to other desks.
Nurses and health technicians viewed the completed questionnaires we held, pleasantly posed a few questions, then proceeded to deliver our inoculations, directing us afterward to a waiting area where we were advised to await the print-out of our inoculation information, and after fifteen minutes of 'recovery', we were free to leave. The entire process having taken 25 minutes, despite the throngs of people.
On arrival home, I assembled my haircutting equipment and set about giving Button and Riley their long-overdue hair trimming. I filled a plastic bag with black- and with apricot-coloured poodle hair. Button, approaching 17, feels this to be a vast indignity and resists mightily, making the procedure difficult, but in the end rewarding, as we regard a nicely groomed little dog.
Riley simply submits, resigning himself with a huge heave of a sigh, to the inevitable. And he too, comes out of the process looking neat and tidy, and utterly adorable. We've decided to overlook a bath this time. In this weather bathing them always presents with a situation where they require a long rub-down with soft towels to remove as much moisture from their skin as possible. They're sensitive to the cold, and shiver for hours afterward, even though they look and feel dry, and we've put little warm coats on them.
There's satisfaction in having enjoyed a pleasant and fruitful day. Onward and upward!
Where we loosed our two little dogs so they could sniffle and snuffle their way wherever it took their fancy, leaving their own messages for other dogs to interpret in their turn. The clay upon which the ravine is mostly based, along with sand, has succumbed to its late-fall mire, not only the result of rainfall, but of the freeze-and-thaw cycle of low overnight temperatures and a rise in temperature during the day.
Calling for extreme caution when treading downhill and uphill, both. We know the terrain so intimately from our quotidian ventures over the past 20 years that we have little problem negotiating our way without slipping beyond control. We had witnessed, two days earlier, a young woman with two leashed and vastly overweight chows struggling to make her way uphill, teetering and sliding, finally slipping back to the bottom of a hill.
None of that today, since we're the only ones in there. As usual, slipping peanuts into the crotches of trees, in holes in the barks of others, along the rails of the bridges gapping the stream, watching as squirrels raid those deposits in gleeful possession. Yesterday, Stumpy approached us no fewer than four times for his peanuts, today we've not seen him even once. He knows where to find them, clever little fellow.
Later, we take ourselves off to the town centre for the H1N1 vaccination clinic. Earlier in the day, my husband had dropped by to pick up our numbered/coloured wrist bands and copies of the questionnaire to be filled out, and was given instruction that we should return at three for our inoculations. Which we did, arriving to find hordes of other people doing the same. We were ushered into a small theatre, advised to wait until called.
After a few moments of waiting, we were informed that those with purple wristbands and final 3 numbers under 300 should hie themselves off to the third floor. There, a long line had formed, but moved along at a good pace. We soon found ourselves in front of a long line of desks where people manning computers inputted our information and sent us along to another line from which we were eventually dispatched to other desks.
Nurses and health technicians viewed the completed questionnaires we held, pleasantly posed a few questions, then proceeded to deliver our inoculations, directing us afterward to a waiting area where we were advised to await the print-out of our inoculation information, and after fifteen minutes of 'recovery', we were free to leave. The entire process having taken 25 minutes, despite the throngs of people.
On arrival home, I assembled my haircutting equipment and set about giving Button and Riley their long-overdue hair trimming. I filled a plastic bag with black- and with apricot-coloured poodle hair. Button, approaching 17, feels this to be a vast indignity and resists mightily, making the procedure difficult, but in the end rewarding, as we regard a nicely groomed little dog.
Riley simply submits, resigning himself with a huge heave of a sigh, to the inevitable. And he too, comes out of the process looking neat and tidy, and utterly adorable. We've decided to overlook a bath this time. In this weather bathing them always presents with a situation where they require a long rub-down with soft towels to remove as much moisture from their skin as possible. They're sensitive to the cold, and shiver for hours afterward, even though they look and feel dry, and we've put little warm coats on them.
There's satisfaction in having enjoyed a pleasant and fruitful day. Onward and upward!
Labels: Health, Nature, Perambulations
posted by Pieface @ 6:17 PM
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