Rainbow Dragon's Lair

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
An updatey sort of post:

1. My overall writing productivity has been down these past few weeks, but I have kept up with my story-a-week challenge. Last night I completed story #18 on that front.

2. I still have no workout streak. I danced for the entire concert on Saturday night, then put in some decent hikes over the next three days. Then I returned to the Booming Metropolis and fell right back into my old bad habits.

3. I have kept up with my French study streak. Today is day 1280 on that front.

4. GOBOT, SOOT, and GBOT are also all zeroed as of this morning.

I am in a much better headspace now than I was prior to my recent trip to Cambridge. But I now have only 36 sleeps left before I commence my move. And a lot to get done in that time! The move itself will take 3 days (due to a process designed to minimize the stress on Shelby, myself, and the people who will be helping us), followed by one day to get ourselves organized in our new home. So basically:

June 25: Pack Shelby, myself, and as much stuff as possible into my mother's car. Drive to Cambridge. Help with whatever is needed to get the space we will be moving into in my friend's house ready. Sign contract and get keys for the storage locker.

June 26: Pick up rental van. Buy a refrigerator. Install refrigerator in my friend's house. Drive back to the BM. Load up van. Feed people who are helping me in the BM. Drive back to Cambridge Unload van into my friend's house and the storage locker. Feed people who are helping me in Cambridge.

June 27: Drive back to the BM. Load up van again. Feed people who are helping me in the BM. Final cleaning and taking out of the trash in the BM. Drive back to Cambridge. Unload van into the storage locker. Feed people who are helping me in Cambridge.

June 28: Return rental van. Hopefully take musical instruments to Guelph (where a musician friend will store them for me, so I don't need to store them in the locker). Buy groceries (hopefully before the mad long-weekend rush). Get organized in Cambridge.

June 29: RELAX.

June 30: Finish story for the week. Get two submissions done (if not already done earlier in the month).

July 1: Canada Day festivities in Cambridge. Our first community party in our new home!

July 2: Return my mother's car to the BM. Farewell/good riddance hike in Rondeau.

July 3: Back to work!

I'm not going to worry about my usual metrics too much over the next 44 days. On the writing front, I just want to hold steady with completing one short story a week, plus get a story submitted this month and two in June. I will still track my wordcount, but I likely won't report on or even calculate my deficit again until July 3. I'm going to fall further behind over the next month and a half. I know this. July 3 begins the start of my new normal. I'll make a plan for catching up then.

I'd like to keep up with my daily French study. (It's not the most important thing in my life right now. But that 1280-day-long streak is a powerful motivator.) This will likely be mostly watching French language television programming on CBC Gem for the next month and a half. Nothing wrong with this.

GOBOT, SOOT, and GBOT I am still trying to keep on track the best I can. But if I miss, I miss. I'll get this back on track on July 3 too.

Workouts are likely going to be mostly walking with Shelby, and carrying things for the next little while. Again: I'll do what I can, and get back on track starting July 3.

I will be so, so happy when this move is done!
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Thank you @PetiteSheWolf @graoumia @Maegaranthelas :heart:

I'm still here. Still plugging away at things.

On the workout front I've been doing lots of hiking with Shelby and lots of hauling boxes, crates, and furniture around. That's pretty much it. I wanted to try Primal Strength. But there was just no way to fit it in. Maybe if I find a park with a pull-up bar in Cambridge I'll do it this summer.

Shelby and I will commence our move in 15 days. The list of things that need to get done during those 15 days is long but still manageable.

At the end of May, Shelby and I did our final hike on the Marsh Trail in Rondeau together. This has long been a favourite trail of mine for all of the wonderful wildlife one can see there. I was saddened by all the years it was closed (due to the trail actually disintegrating!). It was rebuilt fully last year and is now officially open all the way to the end again. But the back half of the trail is quite narrow now. And it's lousy with ticks. Shelby and I brought home at least 40 ticks on us from that hike. It was not a good scene.

The one tick I found on my pants before we left the park:

DSCN3496.JPG

Some off the many I pulled off of Shelby in the middle of the night after getting up to go to the bathroom and discovering at that time that no, I had not found all of the ticks before we'd gone to bed and that both Shelby and our bed was by that point crawling with them:

DSCN3537.JPG

Shelby is protected from Lyme Disease by vaccination (all of the ticks I found after this hike were American Dog Ticks, which are not known to transmit Lyme, but Black-legged Ticks, which do, are out there too) and from tick-borne illnesses in general by parasite control medications. But those options are not available for me. And Shelby's skin still got irritated from having so many bites. So, sadly, we will not be back to the Marsh Trail again. (I would do it again by myself or with other humans if I'm ever back in this area in the future after Shelby is no longer with me. But I don't think I would take a dog on the Marsh Trail again. This year has been especially bad for ticks. But with the way the climate is going, our tick situation is likely to get worse in subsequent years, not better.)

Aside from the tick situation, however, we had a glorious hike. The weather was perfect. And we saw many wonderful things. Including a snapping turtle laying her eggs right in the middle of the trail!

NestingSnapper.png

This was on the back half of the trail, where the trail is quite narrow. I explained to Shelby that we must be very respectful of the turtle and give her as much space as we could while passing. And she did awesome! We had to walk past that turtle twice (the Marsh Trail is out-and-back) and Mamma was not disturbed. She just kept right on working on her nest.

Shelby+Turtle.png

HelloMamma.png

I will try to catch up with what all of you lovely Bees have been up to soon! In the meantime, please give me grace as I slog through the next three weeks. Things will settle down in Rainbow Dragon and Shelby land after that.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
PetiteSheWolf said:
Oops, not the same eyes,
Click to expand...
Right. Turtles do have prominent, bulging eyes like frogs. But they tend to be more to the sides of the face, instead of up on top like with frogs. Turtles also like to float at the surface of the water, with only part of their faces out of the water. But when they do this, it's their nose that is most noticeable. Sometimes the tip of the nose is the only thing I see of a floating turtle. But with a frog--especially a bullfrog--you're always going to see those huge bulging eyes.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Today, for the first time in years, the birds shared the cherry harvest with me. A parting gift, I think, in thanks for all the sustenance this property has provided to them over the years.

cherryharvest.png

Not a huge harvest. (There's lots more fruit still on the tree. But it's a tall tree, and I cannot reach most of it.) But still nice to have.

I don't know that the birds will be able to enjoy the fruits of this land for much longer than I will myself, sadly. Realtors these days all seem insistent that a property must be razed down to monoculture lawn in order to sell it, and my brother (who has sole control over the property now) seems inclined to follow their advice.

The original cherry tree that was here when my parents bought the place is mostly dead now. (It does still have a few live branches, which have fruited again this year. But that fruit is all still green today.) These cherries are from the new tree that was planted by the birds in thanks for all the fruit from the original tree.

newcherry.png
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Thank you @graoumia @Lady Celerity @MadamMeow @PetiteSheWolf @NancyTree

Sorry for the tick nightmares. They truly are not fun, and probably are the most dangerous wildlife in my area.
(Shelby and I are sleeping on white sheets, white blankets, white pillow cases now so that I can better see the things when they do sneak into our bed. That night after the hike in Rondeau was not fun, and having darkly-coloured, patterned bedding was an issue.)
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Friends on Garmin Connect, give me a holler! (Same name on there as here.)

I've not logged anything on Garmin in a long while since my old Forerunner stopped charging way back. Since I'll soon be moving to a new place, where I won't know any of the routes, and where I'll no longer have much space for working out indoors, I figured updating my Garmin gadgetry would be a good investment.

DSCN3571.JPG

This watch has better features for programming multi-sport activities. So I figure I'll be able to use it to take DAREBEE workouts to a park. Also, it has a flashlight (useful for walking Miss Shelby after dark) and navigational features to help one find one's way back to one's starting point (very useful for me in a new town). Also: it is red 💖!

Unfortunately, the new watch is more up-to-date than all of my other technology. Which presented some challenges. When the product specs said it ships with a USB-C charging/data cable I foolishly assumed this meant it shipped with a USB-C-to-USB-A cable. Like all the other technology I own with USB-C ports. But no. It ships with a cable with a proprietary Garmin plug on one end and a USB-C plug on the other. "Just plug it into the USB-C port on your computer to charge the watch," says the documentation. Awesome! Except that my computer doesn't have a USB-C port. None of my wall charging adapters have a USB-C port either. Fortunately, the device appears to have charged just fine from my cell phone.

This of course also means I have no way of getting data from the watch into the Garmin Express app on my computer. So I had to install the Garmin Connect app on my phone. Which works fine. I don't love having to do everything via my phone since my eyes and tiny screens don't get along all that well, and a computer with a real, full-sized keyboard is so much faster than a miniature on-screen touch keyboard. But it works.

I also invested in some bifocal sunglasses (necessary for me to be able to actually use the watch these days, due to the aforementioned lack of compatibility between my eyes and tiny screens).

shades.png


Don't know how much I'll log on the watch over the next couple of weeks since we're heading into a significant heat wave here, and most of my activity for the next couple of weeks is going to be dancing and hauling stuff. But look for me to start showing some activity on Garmin in July for sure.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Somebody asked me at the Boreal concert last month how many calories I burn during a concert.

I have no idea. It's not something I track. My new watch reckons it can track it for me though.

June21-DanceParty.png

Le Vent du Nord is a pretty high energy band. I expect this is a higher than normal calories/minute rate for dancing for me.
Also: I probably should figure out how to tell the watch not to track GPS during dance workouts. :LOL:
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Shelby and I made it to Cambridge!

Our stuff is not all here yet. My friend who we moved in with and I went back to the Booming Metropolis today and brought a van full of gear. We moved all the biggest, heaviest things, and everything from today's haul that's going in the storage locker is tucked away there safe and secure. Unfortunately, the two big cupboards I'm bringing into my friend's house to store all our things in here are still outside in the van. Getting them into the house will be the hardest thing, since there are stairs here. After that, it's back to the Booming Metropolis to fill up the van again. The second haul should be easier than today's, since it's smaller, lighter weight things left to bring now. And it's pretty much all going to the storage locker (where there is an indoor loading bay, smooth concrete floors, elevators, and nice big dollies for moving everything around). Unfortunately, it's not all organized and packed. That's going to cost some time tomorrow. And I'm going to need to go back with the car on the weekend to finish cleaning up and gathering the last few things. But we're in good shape to bring the remainder of the big things tomorrow (necessary, because I only have the rental van for 48 hours), and the storage locker is in good shape to receive everything. So our move is on track overall.

On our hike last night Shelby and I saw two white-tailed deer. A doe and her fawn. Mama deer was very brave. She moved herself between her fawn and us. Then she stamped her hoof. Then she snorted at us. Very loudly. Shelby and I got the message and moved on. Lots more wildlife on today's hike too. I'll try to post some photos once the move is complete.

Thank you to everyone who's still checking in on us. I do appreciate it! I'll be back to posting more regularly and checking in on all of you lovely Bees again soon!
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
...and Shelby and I are back in the Booming Metropolis. Our plan to move to Cambridge fell apart. (There were risks to my friend involved in crowding out her house so much that I could neither put on her nor afford to mitigate.) Unfortunately, I made the decision not to move there AFTER renting a storage locker in Cambridge and moving most of my physical possessions into it. So that's going to be a not-fun problem to deal with at some point. But not today. The more immediate problem is that I've been asked to vacate the property in the Booming Metropolis by tomorrow. And that is now no longer possible. A friend is helping me work on a couple of alternative plans. But nothing is solid on that front yet. Fun times. I will report more when I can.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
STRESS!!!

But still alive.

Tomorrow is likely to be a very bad day. But Shelby and I will survive it.

An individual who is related to me by blood is being unnecessarily nasty and callous towards me and Shelby.
But we have WONDERFUL friends who are helping us as best they can.
We will get through this!

Will post more when I can.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Shelby and I survived our stressful day.
The individual mentioned above had a change of heart and did not do the horrible thing he had threatened to do to us.
Our house hunt continues.

I have an application in to one place I went to view last weekend which would be great if we can get it. Unfortunately, a lot of other people think the same thing. So fingers crossed, but there's definitely no guarantee there.

Today I heard from a former colleague who is planning to move back to London and is looking to buy. She would look to purchase a house with a separate apartment that could be rented out, if I was interested in renting from her. (Which I definitely would be! This would be a great solution for Shelby and me too!) No guarantee here either, since she doesn't have a place yet. But it's another potential good option.

We've still got a long road ahead of us. But I am breathing a little bit easier tonight.
 
Maegaranthelas

Maegaranthelas

Well-known member
Bard from The Netherlands
Pronouns: They/them
Posts: 622
"I sing and I know things"
I'm glad the potential bad thing didn't happen, and I hope you find some stability soon :heartsit:

Also it took me a minute to realise you meant Fake London (that's what the youtube channel Not Just Bikes calls it) :chuckle:
I was confused for a sec how a colleague moving to the UK was going to help you. But I hope that pans out<3
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Thank you @MadamMeow @PetiteSheWolf @Maegaranthelas :heartsit:


@Maegaranthelas "Fake London" LOL. I forget sometimes when communicating with an international audience that I should specify. We have a lot of place names here named after British places. Locals here assume one means the local place (unless the context is obviously referring to the UK*) even when the UK place is far bigger and better known internationally.

* Even then one needs to be careful. If you said to someone from SW Ontario, "I went to see Big Ben in London," they'd be as likely to think you'd met up with a large person named Ben than that you'd visited a famous clock tower.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
I did not get the apartment I had applied for which I mentioned above. I don't think the landlord even considered my application. There were a lot of applications in ahead of mine.

In hindsight, this may actually have been a good thing. The apartment in question is a basement apartment. I had welcomed this fact because basements = cooler temperatures, and I do not like to be too hot. (Hot environments cause me to experience hypotension, which has led to syncope on three separate occasions now when I failed to voluntarily lower my head quickly enough.) The heat can be hard on Shelby too, now that she is older. But two days ago, London, Ontario experienced torrential rainfall, and a lot of basements flooded. The 2nd and 3rd photographs, and the 2nd video on this page show intersections ~ 2 blocks from the apartment I had hoped to rent. Yikes! So now I'm thinking living arrangements where our entire living space would be below grade are perhaps not such a great idea.

It is NOT easy to find rental accommodations in Ontario right now!
Vacancy rates are close to zero.
There are a lot of dishonest, predatory, immoral landlords out there. There are also a lot of outright scams.

I have seen ads where a person renting a 2-bedroom apartment is seeking a roommate to pay half the rent. Seems fair, right? Except the ad says, "You cannot work from home because I work from home and the apartment is too small for two people to work out of it." Umm... So I'm supposed to pay the same rent as you, but I can only use the space to sleep in whereas you're going to occupy it all day? Pass.

I have seen similar ads where a person is renting out a room in their house, with the stipulation that the tenant must show proof that they have a job that requires them to leave the house every day. "Because I like my privacy," one ad said. Gee. Then maybe running a rooming house isn't a brilliant choice of income generation for you!

There are also a lot of places that rent out rooms with no kitchen privileges. How are the tenants supposed to eat?
And places that are hanging a sheet down the middle of one room and renting it out as two.

I'm not looking for a room in someone else's home. (In my friend's home I was willing to try it. But not in a stranger's home.) None of those spaces accept dogs, and Shelby and I need more space than that in any case. But these types of room-only rentals are a lot of what's out there.

Amongst rental properties that are separate apartments, most do not allow pets. Of the ones that do allow pets, most do not allow large dogs. (Shelby counts as a large dog, by their standards.) Almost all of the few apartment buildings that do allow large dogs also allow smoking. They also tend to be the run-down buildings in sketchy, underserviced neighbourhoods. Smoke-free and large-dog-friendly apartments in well-maintained buildings in walkable neighbourhoods that I'd feel safe living in are few and far between--and pretty much all have long waiting lists! Also: every landlord wants to see proof of income. Which I do not have. They want to see previous landlord references. Which I also do not have. Most units rent out through online application forms that don't have space on them to explain Shelby's and my situation.

So it's tough.

Meanwhile, the person who has sole power of attorney over our mother's assets is choosing to believe his made-up fantasy of what house-hunting is like for us instead of the truth I have explained to him of what it is actually like. This person controls what happens to the house Shelby and I are at present still living in. (He's not attempted to evict us yet. But he has threatened that he may do so at any moment with no notice.) He also controls what happens to the only means of transportation I have for travelling to potential rental properties to view them and meet with potential landlords or their reps. (He threatened to deprive me of this means of transportation last Friday, which would have stranded me in the Booming Metropolis and made it impossible for me to continue my search for a new home. There is no public transportation here, and sending money to secure a unit one has not seen with one's own eyes is 100% not safe.--Remember those scams I mentioned above? There have been multiple instances of would-be-renters sending money to secure a tenancy and then showing up on move-in day to discover the unit they thought they had rented does not exist and the supposed-landlord has disappeared into the wind.--Fortunately, he relented at the last moment, and I still have transportation for now. But he forced me to suffer through a huge amount of completely unnecessary stress for 12 days due to his threat.)

The hunt continues. But I'm now applying for apartments that aren't available until September 1. And I don't know if Shelby and I will be able to remain where we are for that long. So there's another added stress! But I have to just put it out of my mind for now. Keep working on trying to secure a long-term housing solution. If I can do that, sorting out interim housing, if necessary, will become much more manageable. (I already have a solid offer for a place Shelby and I could stay until the fall. But it's in a remote location, so would require me to maintain access to the car in order for it to work. Which we've already seen is not something I can count on.)

Anyhow... We're still here. Still breathing. And for now still have a roof over our heads and Internet access and a vehicle with which to continue our search for a new home.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
Thank you @NancyTree , @PetiteSheWolf , and everyone for your continued support.

@NancyTree so far my only "lucky find" has been the property manager of the one place I went to look at two weeks ago.

If I cannot get past the online forms most landlords ask prospective tenants to fill out, I am lost. The forms want to see proof of income. Like: they actually want you to upload scans of pay stubs. Which I obviously don't have. I have money with which to pay rent. But it's not current income. So no dice with those landlords. The forms also want previous landlord references, with an email address for said landlords. The only place I have rented in the past 20 years was a townhouse for one year, which I rented from a large rental corporation. They loved me there. But the people from that company who knew me don't work there anymore. The company does not provide a contact email address. And when I called them yesterday for help, the current office staff was not able to find any record of my having lived in their unit at all. (I was the lease-holder and sole tenant. The rental was definitely in my name. The record of it is lost.) Prior to that, I owned my own home for five years. Of the landlords I had prior to that, two are now dead. The others I no longer have any record of and cannot even remember their names. But without providing contact information for previous landlords, these online rental applications are all, "Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200." I literally cannot submit the applications, because the forms won't accept the information I'm able to provide.

But the one place I had applied to (the basement apartment) asked prospective tenants to make first contact by answering open-ended questions only. No form requiring specific data in specific fields. So I wrote to that place, explaining my situation. I got a viewing of the apartment based on that, and had a very good rapport with the property manager who showed me the unit. She obviously likes me and is sympathetic to my situation. She thinks I would make a good tenant and has been advocating to her boss, the landlord, on my behalf.

The first unit I looked at with this property manager was, unfortunately, already lost before I even saw it. There were just too many applications already in ahead of mine. But when I was following up on the status of my application there, I discovered this same landlord had a new listing that would be even better for me and Shelby. And I was able to get my application first in line there.

There are still challenges with this place. The landlord is obviously nervous about my lack of current income. He's obviously nervous about renting to someone with a large dog. But I had an opportunity to participate in a conference call with him and his property manager yesterday, in which I tried to reassure him as best I could. The property manager also advocated for me and for Shelby during the call. So there is some hope there. But also still challenges. (At the end of the phone call the landlord said the next step was for them to run a credit check on me. I said no problem. But it turns out this is a problem. The landlord wants to use an online service that requires me to request my own credit check on his behalf, but the service is not just an authorization for a credit check. It's a whole rental application system. That requires me to upload scans of current pay stubs, and input email addresses for previous landlords. I cannot get to the page where I would need to authorize--and pay for, which is BS, but let's put that aside for now--the credit check. The property manager is now working to help me find a way around this problem.) Anyhow... I'm going to view this place today, and am still hopeful it will work out.

If it doesn't... Honestly, I don't know what I will do. My circumstances are a real obstacle to securing rental accommodations. Yet they are so unusual, no organizations that help people secure housing are set up to help me. At all. I have called multiple such places. They have no idea what to do. (At one place it took me four attempts to get the person I was speaking with to understand that I do not require social assistance of the type that is available to people who are destitute with no other resources. Don't need it. Wouldn't qualify for it. And it would be wildly inappropriate for me to even try to apply for it. This person just would not believe me.)

Nevertheless, I persist.
 
Laura Rainbow Dragon

Laura Rainbow Dragon

Well-known member
Bard from Canada
Posts: 1,908
"Striving to be the change."
I went to see the other place today. This one is in Wortley Village, which is my first choice for a neighbourhood to live in.

The unit is beautiful. And bigger than I had expected. (In Wortley one expects nice. A lot of properties there still have their original hardwood. And I knew from viewing the other property with this same landlord that his places are well-maintained. But Wortley places can also be very small--especially when they've been broken up into apartments, as this place has.) And there's a lovely little back yard for Shelby to relax in. (Shared with the other tenants in the building. But that's just two other people.) It's quiet and secluded, and there's a fire pit to keep the humans warm on cool spring/autumn nights.

It's not a done deal yet. But the property manager is still talking very positively about me getting the place.
 
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