Again, I coughed half the night and got up feeling as if I hadn't slept at all. I have now spent more than half the day on the sofa in my nightie, usually under the cat. I really must go to choir practice tonight, so I’ll have to get dressed eventually.

At the same time I can recover the recycle bins, although the neighbours here are far less fussy about that than they were in Stratford. I guess once you’ve decided that a stack of tires beside your door is okay, what’s a trash bin or three between friends?

I now have shelves in the study closet, so the file boxes are off the floor, and the curb ramps in front of the garage door are spiked into the asphalt. Marc the contractor’s dad, an old-style Franco-Ontarien named André, came by to do the deeds for a small consideration, paid in cash of course. He could not resist scolding me for not having a plastic mat under the desk chair to protect the hardwood floor, even when I pointed out that the chair (with me on it) has been rolling back and forth for six weeks without so much as a scratch. “Better get one anyway. Just to be sure.” He also solemnly warned me about travel to the States. “You don’t wanna go there for a few years yet.”

I read in the New York Times that Canadian visits to the USA have declined nearly 80 percent from this time last year, and are still dropping. I guess André Durocher has his finger on the pulse of the nation.