Now he's gone up to shower before he goes to a friend's house. Norm has gone out for chicken wings and beer with the hockey coaches. My constant companion at home--our dog Skipper--is sitting here dissatisfied. She's been very nice about lounging around with me all day, but now she'd like a walk in the park.
It is dark and freezing out and I haven't been feeling well today, for some reason, which is why I missed my son's game. So I had a lazy day at home losing myself in The Thirteenth Tale, an engrossing novel I once bought at an airport bookstore but did not have time to read on vacation.
The dog was curled up beside me as I read the entire book and now here she is, at my feet, making the occasional little woof and gesturing with her head toward the door. I must explain that the dog believes she is my personal trainer. I have been getting chubby this winter and have not kept up with our usual twice-daily walks.
I hate walking on icy sidewalks, but worse are heavily salted pathways. We go along at a good pace until the dog freezes in place and holds her paw up in the air for assistance, which happens frequently, lately. I have to stop and feel for a chunk of salt in the dog's paw before we can continue. I've tried putting boots on her, but it's hard to find a good fit for my dog; the boots tend to be either too small, or fall off.
Experts have recently advised against putting boots on dogs, as they apparently put canines at greater risk of electrocution in winter. Damp boots will conduct electric current more efficiently than a bare paw. Electrocution is apparently a hidden hazard of city/suburban living in the winter, especially now that infrastructure repairs in many cities have not been attended to because of cost-cutting. The problem is that a loose or arcing underground wire can't be seen above ground, but errant electricity can be conducted through slush to a dog--and to its owner via a leash.
A large dog recently died in the west end of Toronto after stepping on slush near a metal plate hiding faulty wiring for a traffic signal light. A dog-owner subsequently reported that his pet had survived shocks endured when walking on a park pathway; the dog had stepped into slush that was nowhere near the kind of metal plate near traffic signals that is said to be most hazardous--but the slush was conducting errant electrical current from an underground wire somewhere nearby.
I promise the dog I will walk her tomorrow, in the morning. In the meantime, I'll put on my son's big boots over my slippers and go stand outside in the backyard with her for awhile. She's leery of the big raccoon that's living in the neighbour's pine tree. She will stand and bark forever before venturing off our deck. I'll be back in a second.
The snow is deep in the backyard, and I've had to shovel a path for the dog through the snow to the garden. While I was at it, I kept shoveling and made my way around the house, where I found a huge thick icicle, like an elephant's tusk, on some wires leading into the house. The junction box is near a vent that spews warm exhaust from the fireplace. I guess over time the moisture has frozen ever-thicker on the wires.
It's good that I went out and noticed it, and managed to carefully remove the ice, or the wires could have become disconnected due to the icy weight. I also brushed the snow off the gas meter and cleared a path to it, in case the meter reader should come. Luckily, there are no spears of ice hanging off our roof above the meter.
A TV news report warned that it's important to check for large icicles above a gas meter, since in the past, gas meters have been severed from incoming gas pipes by falling icicles. No one wants gas spewing out beside a building.
We did have a gas leak danger once, in our old house. The gas meter was located in the basement. The kids were all playing, I was working in the kitchen, and the mailman came to the door with a letter. He told me he could smell gas, although I couldn't detect it. I phoned the gas company anyway. They recommended I take the kids outside until they could get there (luckily this was in the summertime) and they found a slight leak. They repaired or tightened a connection. The repair men told me that should I suspect a leak, I could dribble liquid dish detergent over the meter's joints-- if the detergent bubbled, that would mean gas was leaking.
He stressed that it's always a good idea to call the gas company if you ever smell the "rotten egg" smell that signifies the presence of natural gas. Natural gas is actually odourless; the sulfurous smell is added to the gas to alert you of its presence.
I currently have a gas furnace, gas stove and a gas fireplace that is very cozy to curl up beside when reading a book. I think gas is usually a safe and relatively economic option for home heating, but I might find an excuse to be outdoors if a contractor comes to work on the gas lines inside my home.
Two doors down from my friend's house, in an old, established city neighbourhood, there is an empty lot where a large family home used to be. Its remains were razed after an explosion that killed a wife and mother of two who'd been talking on her cell phone in one of the bedrooms, when the house blew up. The accident had occurred when new gas lines were being connected to her home. The worker survived, but the loss of this woman was a horrible tragedy for her family, friends and neighbours.
My friend, her home rocked by the explosion two doors down, ended up hosting all the emergency and rescue workers who came into the neighbourhood on that day. She said it really made her realize how suddenly tragedy can occur. She also never neglects having her furnace and fireplace annually serviced and safety-checked, before the onset of winter.
In addition, make sure eavestroughs are cleared out in the fall. When water is blocked from moving off the roof dangerous icicles can form. The presence of icicles should tell you where you need to do some maintenance work in the spring.
Another caution about older homes and severe cold conditions--unless your pipes and walls are well-insulated, you might have to leave a faucet constantly, slowly dripping in the unplugged sink that's in the lowest location of your home. This will prevent your pipes from freezing and causing plumbing damage as well as damage to your walls.
The pipes froze last week in the old house my daughter is sharing in Ottawa. The house is heated with electric radiators, but the house is cold and frost drifts in under the basement bedroom baseboards. None of the students renting rooms in this house knew about leaving the water constantly running and were perplexed when they suddenly had no water. The plumber had to pay an emergency visit that night--luckily, the landlord paid the plumber's bill.
Skipper has given up hope of a walk and is now curled up on the boot tray by the kitchen door. Of course there are no boots on the tray, since I'm the only one here. When I come home last, I know everyone is safely at home when I see all the the boots, kicked willy-nilly in front of the front door, but I am less accepting of this when I'm carrying loads of groceries inside and trip over a boot.
I suppose this is our winter household defence system against intruders--who needs an alarm when you have so many hazards in the front hallway that a burglar in the dark couldn't possibly survive? It would be better if we could just kick our boots onto a boot tray in the coat closet. Unfortunately, whoever designed this house wasn't thinking when he placed the coat closet not near the front door, but down the hall outside the kitchen. Perhaps he meant us to squeeze our bulky winter coats and boots in with the mops and brooms, since there isn't a broom closet in the kitchen or anywhere else.
I don't know why houses are designed with spacious front halls when what everyone really needs is a large mudroom/sports equipment airing room/coat and boot and broom closet! But I'll post my thoughts for designing a perfect house another time.
Back to boots.
I like my son's big "Joe Fresh" black boots, which I bought on sale at a grocery superstore. They are not his favorite footwear. The boots are clunky but have a big, deep tread. My son, whose baby feet once fit in the palm of my hand, now has the longest feet in the family. His boots are almost too big for our narrow deck steps. In my son's boots, I have to walk down them sideways--why build steps so narrow? But I can slip my feet into these size 12 boots without taking off my thick, furry boot-like slippers.
Women living anywhere near a snow-belt area need boots designed for Arctic weather conditions. "Fashion" leather boots with high heels are useless for anyone who actually travels above ground. Only the moles who live above the subway line and shop and eat in the stores lining the city's underground pathways can wear winter fashion boots.
I should never have thrown out my old black Sorels. I tossed them because they looked so shabby after years of taking the kids tobogganing. I replaced them with a pair of blue supposedly waterproof Cougars, but the fabric uppers split in two places after one winter season and they now leak. I am currently wearing a pair of Ugg clones I bought in Nashville; they are so comfortable and warm because of their sheepskin lining. I feel like a bear padding around in them. But, although I have sprayed waterproofing solution on them several times, they just soak up melting snow.
What I want is a pair of woolly-lined boots with a really waterproof outer shell and a heavily-treaded sole made out of old snowtires! And no laces--I want to slip my feet into them. Does anybody make such perfect boots?
An elderly friend of my mother's slipped while clearing the pathway in front of her house early this past Christmas day. She hit the back of her head on the concrete, but when she realized she was in danger of freezing to death, managed to drag herself up a step and into her house, where she lay on the floor for hours before she could find the strength to get up. "Luckily," she said, "I was wearing my diaper."
Is this what we have to look forward to when we get old?!
Her doctor told her that there is something you can attach to shoes and boots--like tire chains made for footwear--available in health care specialty stores. They can help prevent slipping on ice. Since she lives alone, this woman should also have an alarm bracelet or necklace--pushing the button sends an alert to the person manning the alarm monitor system, who calls your next of kin or 9-1-1. There is a charge for such service.
There's another important safety consideration, whether or not you have elderly people living with you, and that is--in an emergency, would an ambulance stretcher have a clear path to your door?
Recently, my mother called for non-emergency ambulance transport to take my father, who cannot walk, to a medical appointment. He has a light transport wheelchair but my parents' house has front stairs and no wheelchair ramp.
When the attendants came with the stretcher, they said they couldn't take it into the house because the path to the door runs parallel to the house and snow was piled up alongside the path. They would have to step into a snow pile to turn the stretcher ninety degrees to take it up the stairs. So they left the stretcher on the driveway and suggested my father should try using his walker to get to the door. He accomplished this, but he cannot take more than a few steps without being exhausted. They said they would support my father, holding him up under his arms, while he tried to "walk" down the steps.
He managed to cross the threshold before he started to collapse; the ambulance attendants could not support him. Luckily, my dad's transport wheelchair was close and I managed to shove it through the doorway and position the seat beneath him so that he collapsed into it. Then the ambulance attendants asked me to help them "bump" him down the stairs to the driveway, where I was asked to hold the stretcher, to keep it from rolling down the hilly drive, while they tried to hoist my father up from the wheelchair onto the stretcher.
My seventy-three year old mother and I and the two attendants managed to get the stretcher into the ambulance.
While my parents were gone, I shovelled the snow away from the path into the front yard, and trampled down the snow, hoping this would give them the five or six feet of clearance the attendants said would enable them to turn the stretcher to get it up the steps.
In the garage, I found my dad's old pruning shears and cut a low-hanging pine tree branch that the attendants said was impeding their use of the driveway. The branch cleared the roof of my van so it did not touch the roof of the ambulance; however, they'd said the load of snow on the branch could possibly have slid onto the stretcher.
Think of this when you're pruning in the fall, shovelling your drive or planning your landscaping in the spring--keep a clear and wide path to your door. If there's ever an accident or someone in your home needs medical attention quickly, you don't want to have to be out shovelling the front lawn or pruning obstructing branches of bushes planted nearby.
As it turned out, the ambulance attendants did take the stretcher along the path to the stairs upon their return, and turned the stretcher onto the front lawn, but they still didn't want to lift the stretcher up the steps. So they transferred my shivering dad, who was wearing a jacket and flannel pajama bottoms, into his transport wheelchair on the snowy front lawn, then they both lifted the chair from the bottom as I pulled from the top and we thumped the chair up the steps.
My father said he would never again leave the house if he had to go through something like this.
Unfortunately, the following week, his doctor said my dad had to return to the hospital for a lung x-ray.
This time, I called a private ambulance transport service, AmbuTrans. This service, although much more expensive, had been recommended to me by a physiotherapist friend as being one of the most reliable. The AmbuTrans attendants did a wonderful job. They brought the stretcher directly into the house, transferred my father to it inside, covered my dad with a warm blanket and got him to and from his x-ray appointment with no trouble or discomfort. Some things are worth paying for, if you can.
There's going to be another big snowstorm this week. I don't know where we will put all the snow! Usually, a thaw between snowfalls manages to control the height of the snow piles, but the cold weather is holding.
In London, Ontario, my daughter has gone out to a "charity ball" in a little dress and heels--no stockings, apparently no one wears pantyhose anymore. In Ottawa, my middle daughter has just made it safely home after watching her college hockey team play. Here in the kitchen, Skippy lies on the boot tray, her face on my polar fleece glove, her back against my old running shoe. It's almost time for bed. Have a warm and safe winter night.
