Red, White (and Blue) Tape

I've been battling bureaucracy over benefits. Frustrating, hair pulling, mind boggling, screamingly maddening - but a minefield of unexpectedly laughable conundrums.

Bureaucracy: the right hand can't even talk to the left!

Get this, the Canadian government actually has policies that prevent one agency from talking to another. So when you are told you need to provide documents from Immigration and Border Services and Old Age Security, you have to deal with all three separately to get what you need for the fourth.

On the good side: some pitying souls were aware of this quagmire and created an agency called Service Canada that does nothing but smooth your path through the labyrinth.  

And there is an office in my tiny town.

Unfortunately, I didn't know about it until I'd had some freakishly frustrating days negotiating automatic phone mazes, making sense of unhelpful uncivil servant instructions & scrounging for 40-year-old records, etc.

The reason I didn't know about it is a perfect Catch 22: they are forbidden to advertise hours, location or have a local phone number. (They explained the government didn't want them to not be available when someone called or tried to come into the office.) Knowledge of their existence is totally word of mouth.

Now that I have found Service Canada, I can laugh. I still won't get benefits for perhaps six months, but the advice from the very polite and helpful young man was that if it takes that long, call my MP (congressman) and I'd get it in weeks (!) This, as he was making copies of my records to send (for free) to the proper offices and calling those offices to ask for an extension to my application (and getting through immediately).

You have to love a government that is so aware of their bollixed up bureaucracy that they create an agency to untangle it - for those who are in the know.

That's just Canada - I deal with the US next year. Wonder if there's  a Service America to help me out.

Companion Animal Companions

Ezy now, whats we gots in da pockets, eh?

The chip-munks were a riot, and one of the better parts of that hike above Lake Louise was seeing them in the photos, 'cause they're mostly too fast to appreciate in person. It's what animals do to people that really makes me grin.

From going all mushy at a kitten or puppy to putting dogs in baby carriages while owners go on walks, I get giggles from people reacting to what they now call companion animals (surely an upgrade from mere "pets.") 

And owner behavior includes my own. 

Just yesterday, I asked a worker to help me get a glass tabletop down the stairs to my basement apartment. The very nice young man was inside helping me get it settled firmly on the tricky base (from a thrift store, so a few blemishes to work out) when I spotted my indoor cats (well, Cowboy used to be outdoor until his last vet bill for a mangled front claw topped $500) edging toward the open door. By the time I got to them, they were in the backyard - which is a bombsite because the owner is expanding and there are piles of wood, rocks and debris everywhere. The two dogs were barking their heads off in their kennel and when I added my orders to get back indoors, the kitties scrambled.

I got Cowboy back, he's 16 and happy to stay near food and water these days, but middle-aged Miss Kitty vanished as fast as Mr Mistophoeles.

I was stricken. I searched in vain for her black tiger stripes in the rubble. Looked over the neighbor fences. We are a mountain community and yards filled with native plants instead of mown lawns made this a bit insane, but I tried. In desperation, I crammed Cowboy in his harness and took him out as a lure. No dice. As he is suitably slow at 107, I picked him up and walked him around the neighborhood to where I would have run had the dogs panicked me. He enjoyed the outing, but was useless as far as attracting Miss Kitty. I was spotted by neighbors who wondered if I'd gotten a puppy and was carrying it around -- or was just deranged. 

Trying not to cry, I remembered the time Cowboy escaped from a screen window and stayed gone for three days. He finally returned, much the worse for wear, and meowled at the door. She'll come back, I told myself.  But a dark voice replied: The dogs bark all the time, she won't come near the yard. And she lives in cougar country, much bigger and way meaner. I protested: Someone will find her and take her in. My negative side just cackled: And keep her, since she has no collar, 

No collar, I thought, but she has a microchip!

But I hadn't updated her microchip information - yikes. I grabbed Cowboy and took off for home, creating even more fodder for the gossips gandering at my odd behavior. 

I spent an hour finding the websites for the kitties, since they had different microchips. I'd saved the letters with the tag numbers, one so old it didn't then have a website. I navigated the most confusing conglomeration of sites ever and it took forever to find one that had a member login window, but I finally got them both updated. Whew! 

The triumph was shortlived as dark thoughts of cougars and cars (she didn't even know how to cross a street!) and winter coming any day and kind people who would think her a stray and keep her (the best scenario, for her) flooded my mind. 

Tears flew and I blamed once free Cowboy who had lured her outside where she has never been comfortable. He looked remarkably sanguine and innocent and content -- how could he? - when with a hop, Miss Kitty jumped out from behind the bookcase, where I had looked for and not seen her: innocent, no longer afraid and fresh after her three-hour snooze. 

I had entertained the neighbors, given Cowboy a refreshing outing and updated the info on the kitties' microchips. As the companion of a companion animal: pretty normal behavior. 

I hold a grudge against Cowboy: he knew all along she was there, all he had to do was tell me.

Is Miss Kitty laughing at me or think she's still hiding from the big scary dogs?

And as soon as I understand cat speak, I'm going to tell him that.

You never hike alone...

Haiiii-ya! Karate-munks entertaining the tourists, mostly hikers, at Lake Louise:  Plain of Six  Glaciers Teahouse.

One of the many things that make my heart sing is hiking and I got a lot of chances to sing this summer. For one thing, I was trying to get in shape to celebrate my birthday at the top of a rather steep local peak. At least, I call it steep. Some locals run up and down it to work up an appetite for breakfast.

Did I say young locals?

Others climb it with ropes and metal appliances that keep them from falling down its sheer cliffs to their sometimes eternal regret. Also young (mostly).

I just looked up one day and thought I would love to be able to say Been there. Also to see what the world looks like from the top. It's hard to miss as it towers above town, so I got reminded every time I looked up. I managed to inveigle my son and daughter-in-law to go with me, and two very good buddies who stayed with me all the way  to the top.

Since then, I have been hiking a lot,  finding more opportunities and doing trails I would never have considered before. I don't mind sweat, aching joints, cold feet from glacial streams, lungs pumping hard for enough oxygen, sweaty and sunburned skin. I don't necessarily like them, they aren't my favorite part, but they go with the territory.

I've hiked by myself and with groups. Either way, I'm never alone cause there's everything from the clown chip-munks  pictured above and below to butterflies resting on wild orchids to bears too busy eating berries to pay humans any attention.  Or flowers. Or petroglyphs or rocks or pink and blue coronas as the sun peeks over a peak. I'm surrounded by such stuff.

I love looking for stuff. My favorite part is taking photos. I grab shots of animals and trees and rocks and mountain peaks, light, color, patterns -whatever catches my eye. Then I get to go home and have fun looking at what I brought back.

Like these ground squirrels called chipmunks who literally steal stuff from tourist's pockets (I have photos) or look cute to beg for food (and if none is offered, snatching it from open backpacks, off plates, out of purses). 

I don't think there's ever been a hike I didn't like, even the ones that hurt or made me dizzy from altitude sickness or were packed with people like sardines. Every one of them had some fun involved. 

And what's life without laughter?

I's tole yu an tole yu, no stealin less I sez go!

It's about time...

The views were spectacular, but it was a slog all the way up and didn't get any less steep on the way down...which is why level ground felt so great!

All right, all right already! I am so glad to get this blog started. Of course, I already started it a while ago, but got blogged down in my other one, When I'm 64, which was a farewell to youth and hello to official Old Age. Not that that's over and I (literally) climbed that mountain, it's about time to get down to enjoying it.

Life, I mean.

Not that I wasn't, but I found the 64 thing weighing heavily around my neck toward the end. It's about time to get back to what passes for normal around here. A lot of the comments I got were that age is in your mind anyway. Tell that to my old bones as I dragged my bod up the steep side of that birthday mountain. And no, it wasn't easier on the other side (which is a sheer cliff), we slogged back down the same way we went up and it was just as steep!

Level ground never felt so good, nor food so scrumptious. I've been busy hiking more mountains since and it's always the same: pain goes away eventually, but memories are forever.

So stay tuned.