first snow, EH, COVID, mudding, and a bunch of other things – Ongoing Letter

It’s spitting outside – half snow and half rain. It’s a Sunday today, and I’m ‘taking a day’ (day off).

The teardrop trailer is in the garage. I added another coat of urethane a few days ago, but I’m waiting for a cover that I ordered online. Hopefully it will get here soon so that FT can get back putting his car in his garage.

My backaches are starting up again. They come and go. Not chronic yet, but it’s hard to say what will happen.

Work on the rear suite is going well enough. SB never came to finish the skim-coat mudding and sanding job. He offered his help a few weeks ago. I asked what he’d charge – “a couple hundred”. I emailed him $200 right away and told him the spare key would be left *at a place*. He said, “Saturday morning this room will be ready to paint.” I texted him Saturday morning saying I had a headache and that I’d show up the next day, which I did. I started painting. I soon realized that some of the sanding hadn’t been done. Crap! Too late to sand – it’s already painted. Then I realized that none of it had been done. So it’s been a sand, paint, sand, paint thing. I did my own skim-coating, and FT and I painted. It’s pretty much all ready to add the trim.

SB and his son apparently had COVID and are now recovering. I dropped by with EH to see the suite and realized I didn’t have keys. I ask SB, who was chatting with a neighbour in the alley, for the spare key. He said he never got one from me. I didn’t want to remind him that it was sitting *in the same place* ’cause he’s had a hard time of stuff – COVID, his ex-old-lady, money, etc. “Probably time to get that done then…” he said. “Yah, maybe, I’ll catch you later.”

SH called me while I was finishing work a week or so ago. EH was apparently stuck on the sidewalk near Walmart with his immobile mobility chair. The batteries were fine, but an electrical glitch in this old chair left him stranded. “It’s like you have two legs,” he said a while later, “but you’re stuck there. Your legs are attached, but your legs won’t move, and no matter what you try, you can’t go anywhere.” <sigh> I said, “You drive a Mercedes car, but you have a Datsun mobility chair. You need a new one!” We drove to a place in town a few days later to look at some new ones. He picked one out and placed an order for it. Maybe tomorrow (Monday) we’ll go down and pick it up.

I’ve repaired – or attempted to repair – his two very old mobility chairs several times in the past few years, even scavenging parts from one to get the other to work. I’ve ordered two gel-cell batteries for his “working” chair. At least it will be a spare chair for him. We’ve been fighting the batteries on that bugger of a chair for a long time.

The left speaker on my ‘new’ Lenovo Yoga laptop packed it in. It was like it was blown, but it is still what I would call ‘new’, so how could this be? I took the contraption apart and tried to resurrect the speaker. I think blowing it with compressed air and running a magnet across it likely cleaned it out. “What do you mean, I treat my computers rough‽” Now I can listen to bluegrass without the scratchy, tinny, low-fi effects of a crap speaker. <place jab about bluegrass music here>

FT is using a contraption for circulation in his legs called Revitive. He’s been using it almost daily for a few weeks now. I tried it once but never got past 15 minutes. I think he’s really concerned about mobility and stability in his legs and has felt some degradation in the past couple of years. His sister in SK suggested this device. His feet catch on various things at work (work with me, of course), and so he’s very aware that tripping and falling is a real concern.

I have a new student (CS). He’s only had one session so far. Grade 7, struggling with math, mostly multiplication and division. I gave him homework – recording himself skip-counting by 3, 4, 6, & 7 – but he so far hasn’t sent it to me. We’ll see. I don’t think I’m willing to take on any more students until the rear suite project is done.

Finances are down to the wire. I’m about two weeks away from defaulting on my mortgage, insurance, and tax payments. I still have one more RRSP and a few lines of credit to tap, but I don’t want to do that. I also have overdraft protection, but the interest on that is high! Luckily I don’t have many more expenses for developing the rear suite – only a window, some floor glue, and maybe a car charger to buy.

Speaking of finances, I cancelled RBC from my life. Why? I wanted to order cheques for the RBC line of credit, but their automated AI phone thing hung up on me! It said I had to go online to order cheques – hmm… don’t you think I tried that? Online, it said I had to phone. I went around and around for 15 minutes before the stupid thing hung up on me. So I drove to RBC and cancelled my two credit cards (credit limits of $15,000) and my line of credit (also $15,000). So, to hell with you! You don’t get my business!

I got some upholstery work done on the driver’s seat of the van. The leather was in good shape, but the vinyl was cracked, ripped, and worn. So I went to Re-Coat Renovations to ask about it. Actually I was just walking by on my way to Canadian Tire for some crap for the rear suite when I saw their storefront. They said they needed a day with the van. This is how it turned out. Really nice!

Here are some before…