I don’t have a lot to say today, seems my words are blocked and can’t get from my head onto the page. So instead here are some pics from my garden to calm your mind. Red currant Pulsatilla (has gone over since this photo was taken) The cherry tree in bloom and covered in bees. It’s now moved on to the leafy stage. Anemones that we planted and thought they were dead until they popped…

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Lately I’ve been working on my book proposal. It’s a daunting task that I break into smaller tasks that are manageable on a day-to-day basis, in between naps and taking dogs out etc. Writing is heavy mental work. I can feel the point at which the cognitive load is too much for my tiny brain and I can’t work on it anymore for the day. To add to my frustration is that I have the…

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Things are much the same as usual for us here at home. We get our groceries once every two weeks, go for walks in the neighbourhood, and connect with friends online via Google Hangouts or Zoom. What’s interesting to report is the number of women in positions of authority during this pandemic. In Canada, of the provincial and federal chief medical officers, ten are women. Here in BC we are lucky to have Dr. Bonny…

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It seems like the days meld together into one as we physically distance ourselves from our community and our neighbours. We have done two grocery runs in 4 weeks, wearing masks we made early in the pandemic. Apparently they’re now recommending people wear masks while out in public, though the WHO suggests it’s more for people who are sick to avoid infecting others than for people wearing them to avoid getting sick. Sundial in the…

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On Saturday night the deer raided the garden. They stripped the leaves off the rose bush, munched on the fresh green shoots of the daylilies, nibbled at the marble-shaped sedum shoots, and mauled the flowering pulsatilla. Then they had the temerity to leave a pile of scat right in the middle of the perennial garden. The next morning I went out to take my daily garden pictures, which I plan to turn into a time…

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(Yes I took my title from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Love in the Time of Cholera.”) I read somewhere that people were keeping a record of what’s happening to them and to society during the pandemic, so that they have something to look back on when this time is over and we go back to “normal” (if such a thing is even possible). I thought this was a great idea – everyday people, documenting their everyday…

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Emily St. John Mandel’s first novel, Station Eleven, starts with a pandemic. One of the main characters receives a phone call from a friend in health services who warns him that things are not looking good. He stocks up on seven carts of groceries and goes to his brother’s apartment, as his brother is wheelchair-bound, and they lock the door and watch the news until the worst is over and most people have either died…

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Last month, the federal government tabled their report on Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). They had worked to incorporate some changes to the original document suggested by Quebec, and have now come up with a final document. The problem is, it focuses only on physical ailments, not mental ailments. So if you are looking for MAID as someone with a physical ailment like MS or late-stage cancer or any number of situations where death or…

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A few years ago I wrote about the “spoonie” hypothesis. Basically it defines individual spoons as units of energy, and notes that each person is allocated a different number of spoons per day, and that each person requires a different number of spoons to do specific tasks. So, for example, I have a mental illness that makes me fatigued a lot of the time, so I have fewer spoons to start with than someone who,…

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How many of you use TikTok? It has about 500 million users, 41% of whom are between the ages of 16 and 24. I don’t use it, but from what I understand, you can use it to make 1 minute videos, though most are only 15 seconds. Yesterday I discovered that science communicators have gotten into TikTok in a big way – especially chemists! They’ve been recording videos of chemistry experiments and other chemistry related…

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