Happy Birthday Jerry!

Well today is a big day here, it is Jerry's birthday today! Such a big day that he did not get a card or a present from me, which I think I am forgiven for. He did however get some cards in today's post, and a verbal birthday wish from Brenda (Gemma's sister) last night, and one from me this morning. I am hoping that we will go out for a meal tonight, to mark the day in some way, otherwise Jerry will end up cooking on his own birthday. The other option of course is to get something delivered, I will ponder on that one.

I (Gemma) had planned to go back to work today, but didn't make it. I am just not quite strong enough yet, my chest still get's tight, but have now said I will go back on Monday. This is after seeing the Doctor again, who's receptionist called last Tuesday to say he wanted to see me to discuss my blood results. I feel very assured that, having diagnosed, that the system is good enough to follow up on my situation. However, I asked should I be worried, and she said she had not seen the results, only knew that he needed to see me again. So my Doctor was there last Monday, and sent me to the hospital again, and spent seemingly the whole day getting the results, and then has been away all week. But maybe not away away, as he then gets my blood results back, and feels strongly enough to ask me to come see him. This takes me back to the diagnosis by the doctor at the hospital: I do remember that he said that it is definitely Pneumonia, so that is something that is treatable, and so we will start with that. What he said was that not all the results were in, but this was a place to start. So it has had me pondering for the last four days as to which results were not back in at that time. I know I am not diabetic, and do not have a heart defect, my cholesterol was fine too, they mentioned thyroid issues as being common with such lethargy and weakness, but I don't know if this was one of the results that had not come back.

My Mum and my sister and Jerry tell me not to worry, the doctor just wants to follow up on my progress, that they are just being thorough. But I will say that it has unnerved me, and I spend my day thinking of little else. So I spend my day watching movies, and reading magazines - well looking at the pictures, as I have not felt like reading yet. And this is interspersed with hot showers with my head in the water breathing in the steam: I am being a good girl and doing what the doctor ordered, as this is better than any medication I am told. One thing can be said for this, I am very clean, my hair is very clean and very flat. The other thing that can be said of all this, is that I remain very thin, I weigh almost nothing, less than when I left school, and less than when we moved to France, and that was a thin time that first year in France (55 kilos and I am almost 5' 8"), sorry if I made anyone feel bad about their own weight here, not intentional. So all the things that had become snug, now fit me beautifully, so this is one thing that is good for me psychologically at this time. But I have more clothes that fit the bigger me than not, so a bit of a quandry, I will probably have to wear more belts I think to get around this problem.

The challenge to myself today is whether I can manage to hoover the house, and I will say it, it is in dire need of it, and if I do we can be assured that Jerry will not notice if I do or not. Such things do not worry Jerry, which I love him dearly for, he knows he did not marry a housewife. I sadly almost have a nervous breakdown over cooking, so Jerry sensibly cooks to avoid that situation, and whether I do household chores is way down the list of priorities. Jerry's logic is - why clean the floor if you are going to bring in more snow on your boots, and Oliver never wipes his feet, so you clean it and it get's dirty again. Whereas my logic is that you really have to do chores when you really begin to notice how bad it is getting, hence the need to hoover.


So what as this to do with anything, especially Passive Solar Living! not a lot really, but it is a blog about life, and working towards the goal of Passive Solar Living. And one thing we have working out from the above, is the need for a Mud Room, which will hold all our boots, and Oliver's Muttlucks, of which he has 3 left, not so clever when he has 4 legs, but there you go, what can you do. We are probably also going to add a building to the back of the house, for storage, as this will be very much open plan living, no room for clutter - I mean who are we kidding. Anyone who comes to the house will find almost no doors, and everything in view, so an impossible situation, I think Jerry will have to hire a housewife type person, so there is a need to budget for that into the total cost.

Having this additional building at the back of the house, will give us an ideal corner for morning breakfasts , exactly where the sun will be rising, with a woodland view. In fact the view from any side of the house is of trees, so hope you all love trees, we will let you pick a tree to talk to even, anything is possible.

Where I go back to work next week, Jerry is on Spring Break, and plans to go to the lot with a Level, and start making out the site. It is not ours yet, but they are happy for us to start moving forward with our plans. It all depends on how much snow is still on the ground up there, as there is plenty down here in town still. The general view is that winter was longer this year, and at least 12 degrees lower than normal, I think -18 yesterday. I am glad I have not had to go out in this for sure. It does look beautiful out though, you look up and see the sunshine and a Carolina Blue Sky, and then you look down and see how deceived you can be. We call it a Carolina Blue Sky in honor of our dear friends Dianne and Mark who live in South Carolina, and Dianne I practically live in the wonderful quilt you gave us when we came here. And thank you for yet another book box from the library of Lone Wolf. You know Jerry needs to build another bookcase, and maybe we need a library added to the new house plans.

And finally, all this talk about my health, and how fragile life can be has caused me to change my attitude about my jewelry: I will no longer keep it for special occasions only. I now choose a different ring to wear every day, and make use of the little I have, because although none of it is immensely valuable, they all mean something, and deserve to be worn.

And finally, finally, I would like to make a mention to all our friends in France who have fastidiously written to us in French, as we do to them, and we miss them very much. So for all that we were driven out by rich English people, who don't realise or don't care how much they are disliked, we have retained the friendships we made, even after moving all this distance away from them. It is truly lovely to receive letters and cards with all the news. But everything happens for a reason, and without the past and it's events, we would not be here writing this, and looking forward to a better future in Canada.

Good News and Bad News!

The Good News is that an X-ray taken today, shows a huge improvement in the Pneumonia, but still a shadow on the lungs, the doctor said this shows that the medication is working really well. Dr Ben also said this means I can go back to work next week.

The Bad News of course in all this, is that I do not get paid when I don't work. It is surprising when I get paid so little relatively, how much you notice when it is not coming in anymore. The additional issue here is that we will no doubt get a bill from the hospital, which makes me feel a real burden on our circumstances. When I return to work, I have to take care of myself, which means no extra hours trying to make up for all the money I have lost us.

There was an upside to things this past week, the Chamber of Commerce is requesting Resumes to be put forward to work for whomever they get to take over the building I currently work in. It is ideal for a Call Center, and the hope is that the COC can prove they have this database of people ready and waiting to work for them, so I have sent mine in and am very hopeful on that score.

I think we are just going into the last kick of winter here, and it is snowing again, we are due a much colder week. But then I think Spring will be here.

For us Spring will mean spending a lot of weekends up at the Lot, and taking Oliver up there to have a run in the woodland. My health will improve with spending more time out of doors. Things are progressing in the purchase of the land, is will apparently now be very straight forward, so we will soon own our little bit of Cape Breton Island.

I think it is worth a mention that we have found the lot on GoogleEarth, complete with mobile home they had there when they were carrying out the work, no longer there due to selling it. So we are able to see from the Ariel Views the extent of the land, all the way down to the river/lake frontage. The road goes through the lot and pretty much splits it in half, and we may let my (as in Gemma's) sister in Toronto have a cabin overlooking the water, as this is important to her. I think she may even call her little bit 'Green Acres', but we have to decide whether we approve of that or not.

We have been trying to think what we will name this house, as it will need more than it's civic number I feel to give it some personality. But we realise that we won't really be able to give it a name until we see it in the flesh so to speak and get a feel for what name fits. I feel a welsh name would be perfect, but this is a very Celtic region, so we have to leave it open for now, as in open to discussion.

To go back to GoogleEarth, we found both our homes in France, Rose Cottage in Liphook, and 250 Whitehorse Lane, you can almost see the deck we built in the garden it is so clear. It just shows us how far we have come in our 13 years together.

Diary of an Invalid

Well today is my first day downstairs in over a week, and I do feel that my health is turning this into the 'Diary of an Invalid'. After dragging myself to work for three days, I finally gave in and had four days in bed, and a doctors appointment that turned into 'You will go to the hospital now, do not pass Go, and do not collect $200' . Well not quite like that, but it felt very scary to be told that. After almost seven hours at the hospital, on a drip, and blood tests and chest X-ray, they said I could go home to sleep, but had to come back in the morning. They still did not know what was wrong, and I had four days in bed thinking I had a heart valve defect, and I kept telling the Dr that my heart would not stop this racing and stopping, but they kept saying it was not relevant.

So day two at the hospital was more blood tests, and urine tests, which told them I did not have Diabetes or Thyroid issues. But finally the Dr came to ask more questions, and the nurse that did the Triage told us he was the best diagnostician, but she didn't say he would look like the oldest Hippy in town. Well finally we had a diagnosis of Pneumonia, and all I could ask was how he diagnozed it, which he answered by the X-ray and the listening to my chest. When I told him where I worked, and the fact I don't get paid when I don't work, he bad mouthed the company big-time, and then did a double take to ask me was I management, and once he knew I was not, he felt free to carry on. What I didn't ask was how someone my age get's Pneumonia, I would never have imagined it possible. So now I have to get back on my feet and back to work.

One of the highlights of my week has been a flower delivery from my sister, and apart from making me cry, got the desired effect in the end. They came with a Beany Baby Bear called 'Bandage', who is holding a yellow flower, and has Get Well Soon on his feet. I haven't been able to hold 'Bandage' for long, as Oliver is jealous and wants to eat him. Yes I have had Oliver and up to two out of the three cats (Frodo and Freyja) on the bed pretty much the whole time, Day and Night. The third cat Loki has been up to visit and check on me at least once a day, which was nice.

The other highlight, that almost went unnoticed by me, was that last Monday 26th February, we got the building permit approved. So the purchase of our little piece of Cape Breton is now properly underway.

Latest News

Just a quick update on the status. Have been to see the structural engineer, and after a discussion, we have decided not to go with the frost protected shallow foundation, but to use a frost wall, but with modifications to frost protect it. This will mean more cost in concrete, but won't need any expensive designs drawn up, so should work out pretty even.

Took the plans etc. back into the planning office, with the news that we were going with the frost wall, and 20 minutes later I was paying a cheque for the permit. Should hopefully have it within a couple of days. Just need to get something done about checking the well and septic.

Hopefully if the weather warms up a bit this weekend, we'll be able to get up to the plot for a further explore.

That's it for now, I'll update when there is further news.

Good News

We have been a little tardy with our updates, but we have good news, our offer for the land was accepted. There are some clauses in the agreement that will allow us to pull out without losing our deposit, if either the well, septic tank and additionally if we fail to get planning permission, then we can withdraw and get our money back.

We have had some difficulty finding an Architect with time on his hands, so we drew up our own plans, based on general blue prints that we had. From that Jerry has been to the planning office
and shown them what we have, and have been told we will have no issue getting the permission. What we do need to get drawn up is the foundation plans, as we are going for a specialist/ non-standard foundation - which is called Frost Protected Shallow Foundation. This thankfully is accepted under the Canadian Building Code.

So the next step is getting an Structural Engineer to draw up the plans for the foundation, and put in the application to the planning office. We only have 18 days from acceptance (8th January) of the offer to get this through. Although they have said there would be no problem in extending it if we needed to, so we are not stressed out over that.

On the health front, I had not been well after our last update, I was terribly run down, but I am finally beginning to pick up again, feeling less like a wet lettuce, and starting to work more hours again. I am quite relieved to be getting up again, and not feeling as if my legs don't work. I am being watchful of how I feel, so as not to stay late, and find myself run down again. The extra quality time together has gone to good use, in drawing up the house plans, which has been interesting to say the least.

I take in my lunch to work, usually something to put in the microwave, which is the only option we have. Lately that has not been enough, and I got drawn to the vending machine yesterday to find chocolate, and disappointing that was - it was an Aero bar, and it didn't taste like chocolate as we know it. This was only the second time I had done this, and both times turned out to be a mistake, so I shan't be doing that again. I was telling everyone how good it was for the diet that you couldn't eat the chocolate there. I am down to 57 kilos, that is only 8st 9 in English, still a lot more than when we moved to France, but then I was falling over thin back then.

It is Valentines Day and we ran out of oil, so with a storm coming our way, will be an interesting night. I am wrapped in a quilt my friend Dianne in South Carolina sent us when we moved here, in preparation for living in the 'Frozen North'. So thanks Dianne, it is coming into its own tonight. We shall have to be very close tonight to stay warm and toasty.

Well, our initial offer was rejected, and we rejected the sellers counter-offer, then he rejected our counter offer, but we have finally agreed on a price, the paperwork has been signed and sent to lawyers, and the deposit has been paid. So, hopefully by mid March we will own our land.

All we need to do now is organise checking the well/septic tank (although we will have paperwork to show they are certified by the powers that be) and get the building permit paperwork sorted out. These are clauses in the contract, so need to be done. What we need to get is a permit allowing us to build on site, but without having to produce all the blueprints of the building, as they haven't been done yet, so I've got a busy day tomorrow running around. I think the UK term is Outline planning permission. We know what we want to build, and have 'Blueprints' of examples of what we plan, but nothing official. We shall see.

Been busy researching on 'Frost protected shallow foundations' which seem to be the way to go, for two reasons. Firstly, they allow for a slab on grade to have 16 inch foundation rather than 4 foot, and secondly they will keep the heat in the house rather than leaching it to the ground. We need to convince the local planning officer that it is acceptable practice before proceeding. Thankfully, I have found plenty of information on the internet to support this, including referrences to the Canadian building codes, so that should be ok.

Picture above shows the current school project, 6 foot by 10 foot building with 8 foot walls. We have to include 2 windows and 2 doors in the layout. Currently stuck where it is, as we have run out of stock. Hopefully we'll get more on Monday and can continue. Seriously thinking of buying the one we're making for use as a power shed for the new build. Would be perfect for the battery store.

Will update tomorrow after meetings.

Just been back up to the plot to do some measuring. Need to make sure that the size of house we are planning on building will fit on the leveled area on site (looking at 50 foot by 30 foot)
Whilst pretty sure it would fit Ok, we've been doing some research on the web to check distances foundations must be from the well and septic tank.

After lots of checking, we have confirmed that the house will comfortably fit in the space and in fact could be a bit deeper, maybe up to 35 foot, which will allow for more square footage.

First photo is Gemma and Oliver, the second shows where the septic tank is, and also shows the power/phone pole.

So, next thing will be to make an offer on the plot and take it from there,

Lots of snow on site, and lots of animal tracks. Now, I'm no tracker but I can recognise deer tracks when I see them. Certainly tracks from lots of smaller animals. Also potentially Bear tracks as well, although I prefer to think they might be Sasquatch !! Oliver (the dog) was having a whale of a time sniffing around, but eventually decided that it was time to go home as his paws were getting cold. We have bought him boots for the cold weather, but we only have 3 of the 4 left at the moment, as he managed to lose one a couple of weeks ago. Talk is to get him a nice warm coat as well, but I keep saying he already has one, so we'll see. Photo to follow if that happens.