Yesterday we needed to take Tank out for a drive, to keep the battery charged. The battery has been losing power when Tank is left unused for long periods of time. We have been using the car almost exclusively, since it uses far less fuel than Tank. This has worked well for us, because the car was here all day while Attila slept, so that it was always available to me. However, now the car will be away all day, and I will need to drive Tank if I want to venture away from home.
We decided on take Tank to a nearby city, where I would seek a haircut. It has been a while since the last haircut, and my hair was becoming quite unruly. Yesterday I had had enough! Visiting one of the in-and-out chain haircutting establishments is always a crap shoot, some cuts are good, some are not. I think I have found the secret to consistency though, it is to insist that my hair be cut very, very short. Twice this has resulted in acceptable cuts, albeit very very short.
The young woman who cut my hair was an unhappy person. She was pleasant enough to me, but there was a hangdog demeanour about her. I tried several times to chat with her while she cut my hair. My efforts were met with one word responses. I decided, upon paying the bill, to give her a 35% tip, which brought my bill to less than a third of the cost of my last up market salon hair cut. Her reaction was odd, upon seeing the tip she made eye contact for the first time since I entered the establishment. Her look was one of bewilderment. I’d like to think that little tip brightened her day a bit, but I will never know!
We visited Value Village and found the prices to be outrageous for used donated items. We can actually buy brand new items for less! We did not purchase anything at Value Village. We also visited the Habitat store, and noticed a similar trend there, high prices for well used items. The only thing we bought was a length of clothesline which was new and reasonably priced. We liked to go there to look for used and usable building materials, but their present stock did not include much in the way of raw building materials.
Today life on the day shift began. As Attila drove out of the driveway this morning my universe turned on its axis. Everything about being alive felt different this morning. Time itself altered, passing with a different tone, aroma, light, colour. And I am surprised by this. Life has gone from grey scale to glorious colour.
After a cold, cloudy, wet first weekend in decades, Monday morning has arrived cold and sunny. We are waiting for warm, sunny weather, which may arrive next weekend. Weekend, what a beautiful word.
I have plans for the day.
Today I called all the remaining doctors on the list for this area, none are taking new patients, and none are taking names for a waiting list. On the positive side, all of the people who answered the telephones were quite nice, and tried to be helpful despite the bad news they had to deliver. Later in the day I received a call from the clinic where I did manage to get on a waiting list last October. The wonderfully pleasant woman who I spoke with explained that they are trying to hire medical staff, but have not succeeded and are not taking new patients yet. Although I am very near the top of the waiting list, it will be at the very least two to three months before I could get an appointment, but it will probably be much longer. The truly horrific thing about the situation is that there are now 400 people behind me on the waiting list, 400 people in small town who cannot get access to family health care. There is something seriously wrong about that.
I have contacted the office of my former GP, and am trying to get his advice. This is tough because I keep getting the receptionist who repeatedly suggests I make an appointment to come in. I haven’t gotten past her yet, and I may not, but I keep trying. Hopefully the nurse will return my call and present my predicament to the doctor, as it seems I will not be talking directly to him at any point.
One thing was suggested to me, by one of the staff I talked to during my many calls, was to return to the emergency department and request a referral to a specialist for tests. This might work, but will require quite a commitment in time, as the emergency department wait times can be very long if you are not in the midst of an immediate medical emergency.
I intend to keep a record of my experience here in my journal. My story is just one of 400 in this little town. Two months ago there were only 300 people behind me on the waiting list, the number of people falling through the cracks is rapidly rising. I will resolve this for myself, and I hope to build bridges to solutions as I tackle the issue. There are good people aware of the situation, and they are doing everything in their power to resolve it. What is needed now is for people, with enough power to make important changes to the systemic issues, to step up to the plate; that would be the government and significant stakeholders in the health care system. Media involvement, while effective for some personal causes, seldom leads to systemic change, and usually diverts pressure towards quick fixes that offer good PR for those in the public eye.
Iris has two drawers, with very old and damaged drawer liners. Today the old liners were removed, and new liners applied to the drawer bottoms. The drawer liner material used was actually purchased and used in the Argosy Airstream trailer, many years ago. No wonder Mist Cottage is so crowded, we keep so many things that we might need someday; if we wait long enough we just might need all of it.
Next, it will be time to load the trailer. The first task is to research how to distribute the load weight in the trailer to optimize towing, there are a lot of sites offering advice on this subject. Next, a list of needed items needs to be drawn up, just the essentials to begin with. It has been over 20 years since the last camping trip, so this list will require a lot of thought. Once the check list is complete, the items need to be collected from storage and sorted according to weight, then placed strategically into Iris.
Attila arrived home after work, and reports that he is pleased with the job and the people. That is great news. The day job is a temporary one that we hope will eventually become permanent. In the meantime, we intend to enjoy this day shift experience to the maximum, while we have it!
Worldly Distractions
Weather
7°C
Date: 9:00 AM EDT Monday 16 May 2016
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Tendency: rising
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 6.8°C
Dewpoint: -4.9°C
Humidity: 43%
Wind: WNW 34 gust 44 km/h
Quote
“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”
Samuel Johnson
1709 – 1784
Ah, the wasted years of my youth, when Olive Oyl was my heroine!
I had a misadventure with a haircut the other week. I wanted a simple bob and asked that the hair in front of my ears be cut shorter as I react to any kind of oil in my hair and my face breaks out. Not sure where things went wrong but even though I told the stylist that I wanted my hair cut long enough that the ends would curl under in the back I instead walked out with a boy cut, right down to the back of my neck being shaved. Of course, by the time I could tell what she was doing it was too late to say stop so now I’m letting it grow out. Ah, well.
Can’t help but shake my head over the lack of doctors. Canada is wonderful with its socialized medicine. Now if they could only keep doctors to practice the medicine.
BTW, DH told me something well after the fact that I wanted to pass on to you. When he was trying to get help for younger son DH was never interviewed, per se, by the TV station. He wrote an email to the TV station, the local newspaper, then copied his MP, the local opposition (I may not understand how the gov’t works well enough and be getting that wrong) and the leader of the opposition. He says that he quickly got a phone call from the TV station. They asked him a few questions and that was that. Within an hour he had a call from the doctor he’d been trying to see.
I had to smile when he told me that later the doctor told him no need to go through all that, and DH said yes there was as that was the only way he’d gotten to see the doctor.
Sorry I didn’t relate that before. DH has a tendency to communicate things rather piecemeal at times so I didn’t get that part of the story until the other day.
Anyhow, just wanted to say that as I was unknowingly leaving a large hole in my tale that misrepresented what had happened. Feel free to ignore.
I have only ever had one hairdresser who was skilled and consistet Teri, the rest have been unpredictable, sometimes with disastrous results. I plan on going for the very, very short boy cut from now on. It has a few advantages, it lasts longer, it dried quickly which is a bonus in the winter, it uses less shampoo, and showers don’t take nearly so long. 🙂
Hope your last haircut grows out nicely for you.
The doctor shortage is appalling. I wonder too, if they have no idea what their receptionists are doing. Meanwhile, I’m glad Attila likes his job.
I’m not sure what the story is about our failed health care here in Ontario Joan, but in my opinion it is reaching crisis proportions and will be life threatening for some people, not for me at the moment, but that is just luck. It is beyond the doctors alone, there is something the public doesn’t know about how the money for our universal health care is being spent. I don’t know what is going on either, but I do know that this is the new appalling normal for Ontario health care.
I think a lot of people deserve a reduction on their taxes since they can’t access health care.
Attila is very happy with the job. Usually the honeymoon period for a job is about three months, before the downsides really become glaringly obvious. However, since he has been with the company since last October, he may skip all of that and just carry on liking his job.
You’re thinking right along the lines I’ve thought before, if people can’t access the health care system they shouldn’t have to pay that portion of the taxes. I’ve also wondered what would happen if you felt the need to sue the gov’t for return of the funds, since you couldn’t access the system.
Interestingly, I had this page come up as a sponsored post on my Facebook, today. http://www.ontariosdoctors.com/p2_cw/
Glad that Attila is still enjoying his job. Hey, it’s a long weekend coming up. Does he have the three day weekend? That would be so fun for you guys, when you’re not use to having weekends.
Thanks for the link Teri, very interesting. I wonder if a class action suit could be filed against the Ontario government I think I know around 400 people around here who would probably participate in that.
We don’t know if Attila will get the long weekend, we have our fingers crossed! It would be grand. Enjoy your long weekend!