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Well, that’s what I get for making plans for Christmas. I take it that instead of a week in the west Highlands, it will be another stay-at-home holiday. Bah, humbug.

So I guess I’d better start planning the menus. These were last year’s; as I don’t have access to the same kitchen appliances, I may have to dial things down a bit. (And, she said in panic mode, I haven’t seen Grand Marnier anywhere on this island. What fresh hell is this?)

Here’s what the news in each of Milton & Orkney was today:

When planning any excursion now, first I check the weather for the next day. Then, the times for sunrise & sunset (there’s no point in heading out at 2:00 p.m. for an afternoon of hiking when the sun is going to set in less than 90 minutes), then the tides tables (I feel so at-one with nature).

Our favorite beach is Scapa, and not just because it’s beautiful, which it truly is. It’s also because it’s a 7-minute drive from home, and there’s ample and easy parking – often parking at the cutest beaches involves watching for the 7′ x 9′ patch of grass just off the road at the end of a bridge, and either nosing in, which means you will be backing out into oncoming highway traffic later, or hoping there isn’t a long line of cars behind you as you pull up, so you can stop, reverse, and take 6 or 8 runs at squeezing the back end of the car between a stone pillar and a hedge. Also, it is a beach where there is always some sand to walk along, even at high tide, and, best of all, all the other walkers are very friendly dog-owners with dogs that entertain and exhaust Scout. An all round win, win.

Today was no exception – we had a great time: Scout chased oyster catchers and seagulls, I watched the freighters in Scapa Flow, and we had a good, long walk. The weather was so nice (read: cool, grey, but not teeming down), that we headed down to South Ronaldsay to the Murray Arms in St. Margaret’s Hope, one of the few pubs that welcome dogs (and boy did they welcome her – Scout hasn’t been fawned over like that in ages). I ‘seafooded out’ on brown crab, and scallops in seaweed butter, and Scout posed in front of the ‘Creel Christmas Tree’ in the forecourt.

We then headed off to a new beach at Hoxa, called the Sands of Wright (North American place names pale in comparison). It was gorgeous; we had it all to ourselves; and if it weren’t for the dead seal at the high tide mark, the day would have been perfect. I was able to distract Scout before she found it, but I think we’ll wait a while before going back (I really want to know it’s been swept out to sea before we return).

With one small exception, a really great day!

I have walked past these climbing stones in the playground of the local primary school at least twice a day since arriving in Kirkwall. At least. Every time I walked past them, if I gave them any thought at all it was: another commercial cartoon themed playground. Based on the Flintstones, obvs.

I don’t know why, but yesterday it suddenly occurred to me: this has nothing to do with Hanna-Barbera. Here in Orkney they don’t need 1960’s cartoons – they have the real thing in their backyard. These climbing stones, in the local Orkney primary school playground, are based on nearby neolithic standing stones: The Stanes of Stenness. Duh.

Neolithic – how cool is that?

As a rule, I don’t like places to be too warm (likely why I chose Orkney over say, the Canaries, or Antigua). So I have been keeping the thermostats at a reasonably cool level (too cold, my niece would say). But unlike central heating at home, where you can feel a difference in temperature within an hour of having adjusted the thermostat, in-floor heating doesn’t work that way. It can take a day or two to notice a change – and where you’re most likely to notice it is in your bare feet. I am loving this radiant heat – even with my preference for not too hot, I can still feel the warmth of the floors as I walk around the house.

Each room has its own thermostat and I’ve been keeping the guest rooms quite cool, with the doors closed, and the rest of the house at a nice, comfortable level. But as the weather grew cooler, the kitchen, with its linoleum flooring, was feeling colder and colder, and I realized I hadn’t seen a thermostat in there. I asked the property manager, who in turn asked the owners, and it seems the kitchen controls are behind the fridge. Behind the refrigerator. Which was why I’d never seen it. Incredibly inconvenient, but I’m guessing that’s the wall it had been on before they renovated the kitchen, and moving it just was too costly. So to adjust the temperature, you have to slide your arm behind the fridge and blindly turn the dial – there is no way to see the controls without pulling the fridge out, which I have no intention of doing. And as I said, you don’t always know right away how much your adjustments are going to impact the temperature in the room, so my first round of adjustments resulted in my walking into the kitchen the next morning and feeling a hot floor beneath my feet – hot enough that the water in Scout’s dish was actually lukewarm. How on earth was I supposed to get this right if I couldn’t see what I was doing?

Figured it out – I slide the phone camera along the wall behind the refrigerator, take a few snaps until I find one actually facing the thermostat and in focus, check the dial, and then slide my arm in and make adjustments. Take a couple more photos to check my progress, and so on and so on. I think we’ve found the sweet spot – the kitchen seems quite comfortable now.

All kitchen fussiness aside, I really do like this form of heating.

I got my first electricity bill the other day, and I freaked out.  It was astronomical, or so it seemed to me.  What with the in-floor radiant heating, the water heater, and the fact that Orkney’s electricity rates are among the highest in the UK (a statistic that makes no sense to me), it was a bit of a shock (pun unintentional).  My immediate reaction was to go around the house, lowering the thermostats, turning off all the wall outlets (UK outlets have little on/off switches), closing the doors to rooms, and hanging my last load of laundry on hangers and rails around the house instead of using the dryer.  LL in Calgary is rolling her eyes right now and saying, “Of course you did, Elaine.  Of course you did.”

I know this sounds like an overreaction, and it’s not like I can’t afford whatever the bills turn out to be each month, but it comes on the heels of many, many instances of flagrant overspending since I arrived here, the most recent incident being earlier that same day.  I had just seen my phone bill in which I had made a call to an International Toll-Free 1-800 number in Toronto.  Turns out my UK phone provider still charges for numbers like those, so I had unknowingly spent $60 on a single phone call to a bank in Canada earlier last month.

You see, since I have landed in Scotland I have spent significantly more money than budgeted for on a variety of items, for four different reasons.  I have overspent due to: 1) ignorance – the aforementioned phone call, and buying large furniture items here in Kirkwall because I needed them quickly and didn’t know there is a haulage company that does a weekly run to Ikea in Edinburgh for a really reasonable fee; 2) stupidity – over tipping a porter on the first day because I hadn’t looked at the denomination in my hand, and buying that handmade toque because I didn’t look hard enough through my luggage for a hat; 3) circumstance – having to make an extra 4-day trip to Glasgow to pick up a replacement bank card after mine was compromised; and 4) intent – buying Kirkjuvagr Gin instead of Gordon’s, and having lunch at The Foveran restaurant instead of eating at home. On top of all of those examples, many other instances, and the phone call, the electricity bill was the straw that broke the banker’s back.

I wrote the landlord asking what a typical month’s rate was – it’s not that I can’t afford the bill in my monthly budget, it’s just that I don’t want to find out I’ve been doing a poor job of managing my usage. Then I spent an entire day going through all my expenses for the last four months, working through a spreadsheet to analyse my up-front costs and build a budget going forward.  The good news: my bill was in line with what the previous residents had been spending and my monthly budget for the next 24 months is absolutely do-able.  The bad news? I have spent waaaay more than I had planned for when it comes to getting settled. 

The day before I left, Sibling 1 asked me if I really thought that by the end of this adventure I would be breaking even, and I blithely assured her that, oh yes, based on my calculations I would be fine, possibly even ahead of the game.  In retrospect, not so much.   

But, I do still have to live. Ergo, the heating is back up, the sheets and towels are in the dryer, and I’m off to buy a new pair of winter boots.  Panic averted.  Or at least postponed.

Step One in Dog Grooming: Spend 30 minutes brushing her and/or cutting away any knots. As I brush her almost daily anyway, there is no need for this rolling into a ball under the desk in hopes I will go away. Pure drama.

Step Two: The shaving. This is done on a soft sheet, on a carpeted floor, with a well-guarded electric dog groomer, so again – the look of contempt I am getting is not called for in the slightest. I mean, it’s not as if she knows I accidently used a shorter blade on one leg than anywhere else, making her front right leg look withered and misshapen. After an hour of this, the bulk of the work was done. We both needed a break – I went and had a cup of tea, and she went and sulked in the bedroom.

Step Three: The extremities. Now we move on to everyone’s favourite part: the paws, private areas, ears, face, and tail (actually, I only remembered the tail as I was typing this – I don’t think either of us is ready for yet another re-visit, so it will have to wait until I’m mentally prepared. Maybe the weekend.). This involves shorter blades, closer work, and a great deal of patience on both our parts. Scout never fights me as we’re doing any of this – she just gently turns her face away, or draws her paw back, or sits down when I have the razor perilously close to her, well, you know, her bits. Blessedly, she sits completely still as I cut around her eyes – wise dog.

Step Four is actually a two-parter: Cleaning up the shaggy bits and uneven fur, and cleaning up the room. The former is a 2 or 3 day process – I leave the scissors out on the coffee table, and anytime she drifts by and I notice an unruly tuft of fur, we have a little snipping session. The latter is also a 2 to 3 day process, but that’s just because even after what seems like a thorough vacuuming, I keep seeing little bits and pieces of fluff. Everywhere.

Someone once complained to me about the cost of dog grooming – you know what? The professionals deserve every penny they charge. This is my final result – it’s been several hours over the last two days, I think the ears are uneven, I can see a couple more patchy spots, and I haven’t even tackled the tail. Robin & Maria at Pet Makeover in Milton: we miss you!

My hairstylist Enzo once chastised his parents for buying a slow cooker because, as he said, “You’re retired; you’re home all day. You can just cook whenever you want.” I do get his point, but I do love slow cookers. I’m a morning person, so I like doing all the prep before lunch and then having a lovely dinner waiting. I can make a bigger batch, and freeze a couple of portions for later. And as I’m only cooking for one these days, I only need a smaller unit.

So I ordered a Swan Retro Slow Cooker online (yes, I had tried to shop local, but the only ones I saw were six-litre monstrosities). It arrived this morning and I started unpacking it from its nice big box. It was the lid that was the first clue that I may have misjudged. Then I removed more and more packing material to unveil the cutsiest, teeniest, darlingist little cream coloured crockpot. Scout came through from the sitting room to see what the giggling was all about.

I’ve put the coffee mug on the counter for scale – that’s a normal-sized 400 gram can of tomatoes in there. I have no one to blame but myself; I guess I was too caught up in the cute retro look to read that it was called a “Compact Slow Cooker”, not small, or to see the words “1.5 litre capacity” right there in the description.

Here’s my dilemma – I really wanted to be able to do some batch freezing (as I do with my 3-litre unit at home), and I do think all it will take is one can of chickpeas and a can of tomatoes and this thing will be full. But it is adorable – I mean, just look at it. And maybe making smaller batches is okay. And I did watch that documentary on how much of returned Amazon items just go straight into landfill. Hmm.

Yeah, I’m keeping it – I owe it to the planet not to return it. Off to make Obi’s Moroccan Harira!

Sitting reading the local newspaper this afternoon – the front page headline of this week’s Orcadian was about a local quarry; page 2 had an article on increased funding for mental health; and on page 5 there was a story about a man who had fallen off the main harbour pier one night last week and was rescued by the harbour master.

And then, tucked away in a tiny corner on page 7 there was this article about an unexploded ordnance. That’s a bomb. A bomb. On a beach. Less than 10km from here. That Scout & I have visited.

They blew it up three days later.

Kinda makes you wonder just how often this happens, for it to be an after-thought on page 7.

We woke up to the first snow of the season this morning – not what I had expected after yesterday’s gales. The temperature is still quite mild (3 degrees) so it was a lovely walk. One of those “A year ago this week” streams showed up in my Google Photos – guess which was a year ago this week in Ontario vs today? And while we’re going down memory lane, the third photo is 9 years ago this week – Scout’s first day in her new home.