a day trip to and from Halifax

Cabin Fever- the term usually used in the dead of winter when one is snowbound-but mine came after a long bout of wicked summer heat ( the thermostat reached over 100F yesterday).   Add to that a perfect storm of things that keep me tied to the house like this last month of trying to figure out why Babu was off his food and,  just for good measure, a succession of other things gone wrong.  There I was: fit to be tied. (What a funny but apt expression.)

Ironically, it all fell apart once I realized the cause of Babu's poor eating and his escalating jitters that were not typical of his playful kitten modus operandi. That's not uncommon, losing one's thread just at the moment things are turning around: kind of like not being able to do the last lap of a race, or more likely (in my case) not being able to apply my left brain for one more minute.

I was proud, nonetheless, that I correlated the crawling of his skin along his spine and frantic biting himself followed by power-licking to Hyperethesia, a syndrome caused by heavy metals collecting in the fatty tissue that surrounds the nerves along the spine. I always knew that Babu was getting more fat in his raw lean ground beef than Muji in the same product cooked (because I skim the fat off Muji's) but I thought the extra fat would be ok for an active boy like Babu. Muji is usually my canary in the mine, so to have Babu sick was odd and the clear difference was their food. On top of that Babu was preferring cooked to raw, a new behaviour but something that he inherently "knew".

Adding good fats such as coconut oil and small fish oil to chelate the bad fat from his system plus tiny quantities of homemade fresh cilantro tea administered with a syringe after he eats worked for a few days, but then he seemed to have the symptoms again and was clearly fussy about his food still, so we took him off the olive oil that I put in his evening meal and began, intuitively, to give him back and neck massages, quite vigorous ones which he, surprisingly, loved- and the symptoms went away. Relief for all.

Somewhere at the beginning of this new protocol, was when I lost it. I only have so much "nurse" in me I guess, and Wally scurried us off to Halifax last Saturday where my Photo Essay begins:

We headed off to our favourite salvage store, but noticed this new shop in a renovated auto garage:

Workshop & Co. on Maynard St., newly opened only 5 weeks earlier.

Intrigued by the unusual galvanized metal cans that turned out to be Portugese olive oil drums

we made our way inside to what I can only describe as "our kind of place".

It was timely as we had ony just begun to discuss putting a Mediterranean slant

onto our eventual kitchen renovation the week before.

Upon crossing the street from this exciting and inspiring new find,

we found this unusual observer sitting out in the summer sun: a one-eyed cat

I have a penchant for being too friendly with animals so that they start following me, so I only spoke kindly to him as I took his picture. Clearly he is an outdoor pet judging by the notch in his ear.

We wandered into our original destination: Renovator's Resource and found these cool iron plates that Wally thinks may have come off a boiler or even a woodstove.

It was Gay Pride Day in the city and we got ourselves into a serious traffic jam near the entrance to the Halifax Public Gardens

So we ditched our plan to visit a few design shops in that area and detoured past this wonderfully ornate home dressed up like an Easter egg.

This deceptively peaceful looking cottage actually sits on Queen St. at the corner of Sackville St., a very busy street across from which rises Citadel Hill.

We were on our way to yet another design shop.

We had a lovely day out, bringing a picnic that we enjoyed in the shade of a sweet little corner of St. Mary's University. As well, we made the usual stop at DeSerres to pick up another couple of Inktense watersoluble pencils. I have a crush right now on their Sea Blue, a deep inky teal.

(You may take that as a hint of what's to come as I'm quite tired of my diverted creative energy.)

As evening fell, we headed home, racing a huge black cloud that was emitting lightning.
I never did get a very good shot of it as it was too dark to register,
on top of which I would have had to shoot past Wally who was driving.

Aiming for that blue patch of sky beyond us, we saw an odd opening in the clouds to the left

Pretty weird, eh?

The power lines in the bottom left help to give a sense of scale to this otherworldly layering of clouds

Passing through a long rock cut, we were beginning to have our doubts that we would beat the storm

Sometimes we seemed to edge closer to its blackness as you can see in the upper left corner

and then the road would turn again

and this once distant cloud seemed to loom like a monster squatting over the road

It seemed to be grimacing at us

then, just as quickly,  began to dissolve

and the road would turn towards the black cloud again just to keep us from getting too complacent

The sky continued to be rather busy

and then another bit of ominosity would loom

It's hard to describe the awesomeness ( a word I rarely use) of this ever-changing sky

You would never know, except for my absolutely assuring you, that this serene pond photo was taken within a few moments of the last shot

And as we enter the lowlands of the Avon River near Windsor, what do we see in the distance

but the crazy mushrooming of a thundercloud that foretells of things to come

There is more to come, but as it is getting quite late for me, I will have to pick this story up another day. As always, thank you so much for dropping by and giving me the benefit of the doubt that I will one day get back to sharing my artwork with you.

til then

all good wishes and intentions