salty

Whenever I have bloodwork done before chemo, the nurse will flush out my port with saline. I always get a salty taste in my mouth and in the back of my throat.

Lately, I have been getting that taste when I am out walking my dogs in the city. I have a lot of winters under my belt but this is the first time I have noticed this. I don't know whether there is more salt on the streets this year or if more of it is being churned up by the extra traffic (there certainly more, along with more pollution from exhaust since the bus trike started five weeks ago). It freaks me out a little.

A couple of week ends ago, I woke up to find out that the power was out in half the house. The living room had no power, the dining room was fine. Our bedroom had no power. The other upstairs rooms were OK. The furnace worked (thank goodness) but the hot water heater did not. The fridge was working fine but the microwave was not. The strangest part was that half the stove was working (three of the elements and the oven were working. The display panel and a fourth element were not) The breadmaker, which was plugged into the stove, was chugging away.

We dithered a bit about what to do until I insisted that we call an electrician (it was a Saturday morning). Three hundred dollars later, he told us that the problem was around a little box outside the house (I believe it's called a "crimp"). If the issue was on one side of the box, Hydro (the electric company) would have to fix it, if it was on the either side than it would be "very, very expensive."

So, after torturing ourselves with some worse-case scenarios, we called Hydro.

Then the power came back on.

Hydro came a couple of hours later and narrowed down the likely problem to some wires that had been corroded by salt (I should point out that we live on the corner of a very busy thoroughfare). They fixed the wires closest to the house but were called away before they could fix the ones by the box on the street (don't you all love my technical expertise in these matters?) they were called to a fire.

The power went off again a couple of hours later.

I called Hydro again but since we still had heat, we weren't at the top of their emergency list.

Hydro came back the next morning, by which time the power was on again.

The guys (the same ones as the day before) fixed the street end of the wires and we have not had a problem since.

And yes, T., we should have called Hydro in the first place.

It's made me wonder, though, about all the salt we must be breathing in (along with all the other pollutants from cars and other things). It can't be good for you.

I'd ask Mr. Internet but I'm too scared.

And it occurs to me that I didn't even think about pollution (let alone salt) when we bought the house more than 10 years ago.