West Montrose covered bridge ("Kissing Bridge")
Stone Road bow arch (closed)
1 Line bow arch bridge
Wednesday, August 07, 2013
Bridges in Wellington County and Waterloo Region
Perth Road wooden railroad overpass
West Montrose covered bridge ("Kissing Bridge")
Stone Road bow arch (closed)
1 Line bow arch bridge
West Montrose covered bridge ("Kissing Bridge")
Stone Road bow arch (closed)
1 Line bow arch bridge
Bridges of Waterloo Region and Wellington and Dufferin Counties
A compilation of small or significant bridges in southwestern Ontario, many of which I think are seeing the last of their days.
Tuesday, August 06, 2013
Onus
It's three months today since Bonnie died. That was a Monday; this is Tuesday; but in terms of the numbers on the calendar, it's three months. So, three months ago, I was sitting here about this time making the phone call that would end her life within four hours. I find myself particularly missing her today.
Life goes on, so they say. Today I have to haul ass back out to the airport for a follow-up interview for a job I interviewed for a month ago, wrote off, but the embers are still faintly glowing and now I have to go in and soothe someone's nerves about my technical background. I was charged up about this job early in July but after all this time, I'm really having a hard time not seeing this as an annoyance; likely a pain in the ass that's not going to pan out anyway. I'll have to pay to take the 407. Pay to park. Waste the day in traffic and sitting around waiting for the interview this afternoon, then fight my way home. The job's a long way from here so even if I get it it means a rough commute and likely moving. Do I sound like I'm not really enthusiastic about this job anymore? But I can't afford to tell them to stuff it, so in I go, putting on my game face again.
Life goes on, so they say. Today I have to haul ass back out to the airport for a follow-up interview for a job I interviewed for a month ago, wrote off, but the embers are still faintly glowing and now I have to go in and soothe someone's nerves about my technical background. I was charged up about this job early in July but after all this time, I'm really having a hard time not seeing this as an annoyance; likely a pain in the ass that's not going to pan out anyway. I'll have to pay to take the 407. Pay to park. Waste the day in traffic and sitting around waiting for the interview this afternoon, then fight my way home. The job's a long way from here so even if I get it it means a rough commute and likely moving. Do I sound like I'm not really enthusiastic about this job anymore? But I can't afford to tell them to stuff it, so in I go, putting on my game face again.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
These dreams
It's funny how what you've been watching can shape your dreams. I had one sometime last night that was kind of strange, but indicative.
So, lately, thanks to YouTube, I've been watching a lot of That '70s Show, which I caught occasionally during its run but never got into. I'm really savouring it now. Also, someone put all twelve episodes of I, Claudius up, so I downloaded them and I had them running consecutively on the laptop beside my bed as I slept. The laptop by my bed performs this kind of lullaby nightly.
In the dream, I was on some college campus somewhere. It was an overcast day at the end of the school year, warm and comfortable. I was a much younger, svelter version of myself, in bell bottoms and bare feet (thank you That '70s Show), on a warm asphalt trail that featured several bridges over a pleasant stream. Behind me within earshot were a professor and two male students, and they were practicing lines from I, Claudius. Naturally I was delighted and I quietly practiced the lines with them as I padded along before them. (This was, of course, my mind rehearsing the lines I was hearing from the laptop, brought into the dream. There was some part of me that perceived that, too, at the time.)
Somewhere along the trail I remember encountering a trailside food stand. I bought something there but I'm at a loss to remember what. There was a kind of segue from there to a large, open structure with a lot of tables, like some kind of country style smorgasbord.
From there, it went to a little river valley at night, behind a town road with houses on it, maybe fifty feet from a lively little restaurant. I was there with someone I can only describe as an older version of Penny from the old Inspector Gadget cartoon show, and she and I were using a one of those big syringes to draw off a sample from a test well down by the creek. At first it just drew up alcohol, but then along with it was crude oil. So the well was producing booze and crude. Jackpot. From there, I ended up inside the restaurant, still dressed like before, but with my parents who were more formally dressed. The reason we'd had the test well was that years before, my mother had accepted the mineral rights as part of a magic beans for the cow deal in her retirement plan, and now suddenly the beanstalk had sprung. The discussion was about how to get at the oil (and, I guess, the booze) without disrupting the restaurant.
Anyway, that's it. I thoroughly enjoyed the dream and its carefree, hopeful, and even compassionate aspects. I thought it would be nice to write it down and have a reference for remembering it. :)
So, lately, thanks to YouTube, I've been watching a lot of That '70s Show, which I caught occasionally during its run but never got into. I'm really savouring it now. Also, someone put all twelve episodes of I, Claudius up, so I downloaded them and I had them running consecutively on the laptop beside my bed as I slept. The laptop by my bed performs this kind of lullaby nightly.
In the dream, I was on some college campus somewhere. It was an overcast day at the end of the school year, warm and comfortable. I was a much younger, svelter version of myself, in bell bottoms and bare feet (thank you That '70s Show), on a warm asphalt trail that featured several bridges over a pleasant stream. Behind me within earshot were a professor and two male students, and they were practicing lines from I, Claudius. Naturally I was delighted and I quietly practiced the lines with them as I padded along before them. (This was, of course, my mind rehearsing the lines I was hearing from the laptop, brought into the dream. There was some part of me that perceived that, too, at the time.)
Somewhere along the trail I remember encountering a trailside food stand. I bought something there but I'm at a loss to remember what. There was a kind of segue from there to a large, open structure with a lot of tables, like some kind of country style smorgasbord.
From there, it went to a little river valley at night, behind a town road with houses on it, maybe fifty feet from a lively little restaurant. I was there with someone I can only describe as an older version of Penny from the old Inspector Gadget cartoon show, and she and I were using a one of those big syringes to draw off a sample from a test well down by the creek. At first it just drew up alcohol, but then along with it was crude oil. So the well was producing booze and crude. Jackpot. From there, I ended up inside the restaurant, still dressed like before, but with my parents who were more formally dressed. The reason we'd had the test well was that years before, my mother had accepted the mineral rights as part of a magic beans for the cow deal in her retirement plan, and now suddenly the beanstalk had sprung. The discussion was about how to get at the oil (and, I guess, the booze) without disrupting the restaurant.
Anyway, that's it. I thoroughly enjoyed the dream and its carefree, hopeful, and even compassionate aspects. I thought it would be nice to write it down and have a reference for remembering it. :)
Monday, July 15, 2013
This is who we were to each other
I happened to notice this in the directory for the videos I've shot with the S100. It's a moment in my life with Bonnie... a very sweet one. I would have thought that something like this would have just gutted me, but it doesn't. Yes, it makes me wistful and I long to hold her again. But I'm actually so happy that I casually recorded this moment. She was sleeping beside me and having a dream. I could see her twitch and move. At times like that, I used to try to "talk" myself into her dreams... call to her quietly, tell her she was a good girl, praise her. There was often a noticeable increase in her movements. I'd like to think she was dreaming she was running to come to me. It used to please me that talking to her, even in her sleep, seemed to evoke a response. I was trying to record that when this happened instead.
It was recorded about quarter to ten on the evening of Sunday, October 6, 2012. That was a couple of months after Max died, and I guess about three weeks or so before I noticed the swollen nipple that turned out to be cancer. This video, then, sort of caps off the end of my "normal" life with Bonnie.
Wasn't she wonderful?
It was recorded about quarter to ten on the evening of Sunday, October 6, 2012. That was a couple of months after Max died, and I guess about three weeks or so before I noticed the swollen nipple that turned out to be cancer. This video, then, sort of caps off the end of my "normal" life with Bonnie.
Wasn't she wonderful?
Friday, July 12, 2013
Today in history
Well, today's a day of some import. It's the 13th anniversary of the day I met Bonnie and brought her home to share my life.
It's also my last day employed. We got the news a month ago today that something like 10,000 of us were going by the board. I'm one of them. Obviously blogging about it hasn't been high on my agenda.
I've been to four interviews in the ensuing weeks, three of them since last Wednesday. The first place went with another candidate. I'm still waiting to hear from the other three places. I have a feeling this could be a long prospect. I only hope my resources will match it. If looking for the next thing goes beyond about mid-autumn, or falls significantly short of the salary I've based my life around in recent years, I stand to lose what little I've been able to build.
If I didn't remember the exact day Bonnie became part of my life before, I imagine I'll remember it moving forward.
It's also my last day employed. We got the news a month ago today that something like 10,000 of us were going by the board. I'm one of them. Obviously blogging about it hasn't been high on my agenda.
I've been to four interviews in the ensuing weeks, three of them since last Wednesday. The first place went with another candidate. I'm still waiting to hear from the other three places. I have a feeling this could be a long prospect. I only hope my resources will match it. If looking for the next thing goes beyond about mid-autumn, or falls significantly short of the salary I've based my life around in recent years, I stand to lose what little I've been able to build.
If I didn't remember the exact day Bonnie became part of my life before, I imagine I'll remember it moving forward.
Tuesday, July 09, 2013
That was cool
That was cool a video by Lone Primate on Flickr.
One of the neat things about having a dash cam these days. :)
Monday, June 24, 2013
A love only a mother could face
New dreams
A couple of interesting dreams this weekend I think I can comment on, just for myself.
Saturday I nearly bought a little squirt gun to dissuade Ally and Seth from picking at the carpet, when there are perfectly good scratching posts around (changed my mind; too much about having fun at their expense rather than a real solution). This seemed to come out in a dream. For a moment, at the start of the dream, I thought it was Bonnie, but it was Twinkle. She was creeping around, trying to entice me to chase her around with the squirt gun. I know this was something she absolutely would not have done in real life. :)
This morning I had a strange one I really can't account for at all in which the Borg (of Star Trek fame) arrived on Earth in the 1960s and turned Andy and Oppie from The Andy Griffith Show into Borgs. Not all at once; it was happening slowly, with just little bits here and there like Seven of Nine had through most of the series ST:Voyager. But I remember them stoically packing up to leave to join the collective, with Aunt Bea tearfully making them sack lunches for the trip, and other Mayberry folks coming around sadly to wish them a safe journey. It was more like they'd been drafted than infected with something that was going to turn them into zombies. Anyway, weird... but kind of interesting.
Saturday I nearly bought a little squirt gun to dissuade Ally and Seth from picking at the carpet, when there are perfectly good scratching posts around (changed my mind; too much about having fun at their expense rather than a real solution). This seemed to come out in a dream. For a moment, at the start of the dream, I thought it was Bonnie, but it was Twinkle. She was creeping around, trying to entice me to chase her around with the squirt gun. I know this was something she absolutely would not have done in real life. :)
This morning I had a strange one I really can't account for at all in which the Borg (of Star Trek fame) arrived on Earth in the 1960s and turned Andy and Oppie from The Andy Griffith Show into Borgs. Not all at once; it was happening slowly, with just little bits here and there like Seven of Nine had through most of the series ST:Voyager. But I remember them stoically packing up to leave to join the collective, with Aunt Bea tearfully making them sack lunches for the trip, and other Mayberry folks coming around sadly to wish them a safe journey. It was more like they'd been drafted than infected with something that was going to turn them into zombies. Anyway, weird... but kind of interesting.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
I had a series of strange dreams last night. I'm only really aware of the last three, and only really remember the last two. Two of them involved executions. The last one was a dream about waking up and blogging the two execution dreams. In that dream, I only said a few sketchy things on the blog and was too tired to really write anything. Too bad. I've consequently forgotten what one of the execution dreams was about... though I seem to have a vague sense it had something to do with the American Revolution.
The other execution dream was really odd. It was like some art film from the 1970s. It was set in the kitchen of a house I lived in in the 70s, with everything enamel white. There was a group of Japanese people. The condemned was a young man, about 20, in a suit and tie. He was extremely calm and composed. There was a young woman tending to him, an executioner with a sword, and a few other people there officiating, observing, reporting.
The condemned man was bidden to lie down on a counter with a black block for his neck. When I realized what was about to happen, I ran out of the room. I had some kind of sense it was a dream and I told my brain I don't want to see this, but even though I was out of the room in the dream I was still subjected to an over-the-shoulder view of the first sword strike; the neck opening like a ham steak. I say first because, as I huddled in the stairs that led to the second floor, I could hear the sword fall five or six times. I was appalled at the cruelty of procedure. Despite being where I was, some blood still spattered into the stairwell and a bit onto me. I was wearing a white t-shirt with some kind of Canadian flag logo on it... all red, of course... and I was disturbed by the speckles of blood sullying the shirt.
When the execution was over I went back to the kitchen. Everyone, including the body of the executed man, had moved into the living room, so I was there with just the young Japanese woman, who was just finishing cleaning up. I complained about my shirt and she hurried to wash it before the blood could set in. I asked her why the man had been executed. She told me he'd ordered some tea or coffee, and had stubbornly insisted he didn't like it. He wouldn't change his mind, so they executed him.
Though the dream wasn't at all funny, I'm suddenly now reminded of this...
The other execution dream was really odd. It was like some art film from the 1970s. It was set in the kitchen of a house I lived in in the 70s, with everything enamel white. There was a group of Japanese people. The condemned was a young man, about 20, in a suit and tie. He was extremely calm and composed. There was a young woman tending to him, an executioner with a sword, and a few other people there officiating, observing, reporting.
The condemned man was bidden to lie down on a counter with a black block for his neck. When I realized what was about to happen, I ran out of the room. I had some kind of sense it was a dream and I told my brain I don't want to see this, but even though I was out of the room in the dream I was still subjected to an over-the-shoulder view of the first sword strike; the neck opening like a ham steak. I say first because, as I huddled in the stairs that led to the second floor, I could hear the sword fall five or six times. I was appalled at the cruelty of procedure. Despite being where I was, some blood still spattered into the stairwell and a bit onto me. I was wearing a white t-shirt with some kind of Canadian flag logo on it... all red, of course... and I was disturbed by the speckles of blood sullying the shirt.
When the execution was over I went back to the kitchen. Everyone, including the body of the executed man, had moved into the living room, so I was there with just the young Japanese woman, who was just finishing cleaning up. I complained about my shirt and she hurried to wash it before the blood could set in. I asked her why the man had been executed. She told me he'd ordered some tea or coffee, and had stubbornly insisted he didn't like it. He wouldn't change his mind, so they executed him.
Though the dream wasn't at all funny, I'm suddenly now reminded of this...
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Seth sitting
He actually struck this pose himself this morning. I was lucky enough to have the camera ready and he didn't get startled by the sound of it coming on or taking pictures. :)
Monday, June 10, 2013
Ripples
I find myself particularly missing Bonnie today. The song Bright Eyes from Watership Down haunts me and I keep seeing in my mind that video of her trying so hard to please me with the box in the bedroom. If it wasn't sinking in deeply before just what's bled out of my life forever with her passing, it's beginning to today. It's like a leaf, spiraling down, has finally landed on the surface of a pond, sending out its sad little ripples in silence.
I think part of it is that it's really been a month now, and it's increasingly at night that it tells. For half my life I've had one cat or another follow me to bed and take her place on the pillow beside me; first Jenny, and after she passed, Bonnie took her place. I'm not sure how long that took but I'm pretty sure even before Jenny died, Bonnie had her place on the bed, somewhere. Max, even Twinkle had their places, though they weren't so insistent about being there, and they didn't follow me to bed as faithfully as Bonnie.
But Seth and Ally... not much. Ally has drifted in a few times as stayed for a bit, but she leaves pretty quickly. Seth seems to think he has no place there, and it saddens me. For years, more often than not, when I woke up, I could reach for Bonnie, and she'd be there. Now she's not, and no one's filing the gap. Despite living with me for a year and a half, Ally is still completely disinclined to take a place on one of the chairs beside me. I knew I had it good with Bonnie, really good, but I always hoped when the time came the others would grow into the space left by her absence. Maybe they will, but right now, it's really not happening.
Seth will sit with me. Ally likes me, I think; she shows it mostly by rubbing against me; something none of the other cats I've ever had was ever into at all. She shows it in her own way, I guess. I can't help wanting it shown in ways I'm familiar with, I guess.
Part of me wants to the take the song Bright Eyes and create a production of photos and videos, mostly of Bonnie, but also of Max and Twinkle and what little I have of Jenny. But I know that would just gut me. As lovely as it might be, it would be deeply lonely and like worrying a sore in my mouth. Wish I hadn't remembered the song today.
I think part of it is that it's really been a month now, and it's increasingly at night that it tells. For half my life I've had one cat or another follow me to bed and take her place on the pillow beside me; first Jenny, and after she passed, Bonnie took her place. I'm not sure how long that took but I'm pretty sure even before Jenny died, Bonnie had her place on the bed, somewhere. Max, even Twinkle had their places, though they weren't so insistent about being there, and they didn't follow me to bed as faithfully as Bonnie.
But Seth and Ally... not much. Ally has drifted in a few times as stayed for a bit, but she leaves pretty quickly. Seth seems to think he has no place there, and it saddens me. For years, more often than not, when I woke up, I could reach for Bonnie, and she'd be there. Now she's not, and no one's filing the gap. Despite living with me for a year and a half, Ally is still completely disinclined to take a place on one of the chairs beside me. I knew I had it good with Bonnie, really good, but I always hoped when the time came the others would grow into the space left by her absence. Maybe they will, but right now, it's really not happening.
Seth will sit with me. Ally likes me, I think; she shows it mostly by rubbing against me; something none of the other cats I've ever had was ever into at all. She shows it in her own way, I guess. I can't help wanting it shown in ways I'm familiar with, I guess.
Part of me wants to the take the song Bright Eyes and create a production of photos and videos, mostly of Bonnie, but also of Max and Twinkle and what little I have of Jenny. But I know that would just gut me. As lovely as it might be, it would be deeply lonely and like worrying a sore in my mouth. Wish I hadn't remembered the song today.
Thursday, June 06, 2013
The weighting game
I've had a weight problem pretty much since I was seven. I like carbs, and I eat when I'm bored, and I eat for comfort. Not too long after I moved out on my own, one of the guys where I was working, the French-Canadian guy who was running our IT department, started making serious headway on Atkin's. He got me on board and over the next seven or eight months, I shed about fifty pounds... not quite half what I needed to lose at the time, but it was the first time in my life I made real progress on losing weight instead of just slowly gaining it. I remember "inheriting" his pants as he shrank in size. That pretty nice all around... a narrower waist, and free clothes.
It didn't last, but just as I was falling off that and gaining weight again, another friend having success in another plan dropped by. This was a big guy, in every sense. He was a head taller than me, and had been about to cross 400 lbs. when started. When I saw him, he was closing in on 300, with a goal to halve his weight, to something just under 200. This was a men's weight loss program in the west end, meeting on Sunday mornings. It was expensive, too. As I recall, over $2000 for the year. But it was a good program. I started in October of 2001 and by August of 2002, I weighed less than 200 pounds for the first time in decades. I literally weighed less at 33 than I did at 14. I remember it was weekend just after Jenny died that I broke 200. By September, I'd reached my goal of 190, and I even managed to chip that down to 185.
I've lived on that success for ten years. But I only really managed to maintain it for a year or two. Since then, I've been putting weight back on. If I look back at my blog here, I can see early entries where I'm sweating hitting 215 and stuff. I wish I'd really taken it in hand back then. But there were just too many treats and I didn't say no nearly enough. I managed to keep it to around a chubby 230 for a long time, but particularly since Twinkle died, I've really let myself go. I'm pushing 270 again, and I'm not happy to report that. It's embarrassing. I let myself down over the years, but it's so easy to do, one little thing at a time.
Anyway, as usual, it's meeting with a friend that's started a new phase. My real estate agent is on a weight loss and management plan that's run by doctors and covered by OHIP. He started it in late March and by mid-May when I saw him, he'd shed 50 pounds (again, we're taking a really big guy here, height and weight). So, I've spent the last week jumping through the hoops to get into it. First, you need to be referred by another physician. Check. And you need blood work done. Check. The upshot of all this was the pleasant surprise of having confirmed, twice in the past week, that my blood pressure is normal (at my age and weight, I'm surprised), and that ever single blood indicator they checked also falls in the normal range. I'm not diabetic or prediabetic; my cholesterol levels are all fine. I suppose I can congratulate myself in that if I've gained weight, I've done it while for the most part eating sensible foods. Just too much of them.
I used to think it was my metabolism. That was my excuse. But I took a test yesterday that measures the output of your breathing at rest over ten minutes and my results were such that my metabolism comes right up the middle; just slightly higher than the centre mark. And that's at 45, when presumably my metabolism has slowed from what it was when I was 30, 20, 15. So much for blaming the plane. My weight problem has always been pilot error. :(
The new plan is rather like Atkin's. It's about limiting carbohydrate intake (really, really limiting it initially) to induce ketosis, and then watching carbs on maintenance. Rough for me, because that's where all my "ohhh yes" foods really are. But I want to lose the weight. I want those sweet days back where I can just wander into a store, see something I like, and buy it. Try things on just for fun again, rather than to be sure I'm buying something that fits. I had that for a few years and it was grand; something new for me.
I should start now, but I have some social things going on between now and Sunday and I'm looking forward to them, uncomplicated. So I've set a deadline for Monday. It starts Monday. Oddly enough, you're supposed to lay off alcohol on the plan, so I'll be back on the wagon I jumped off of around New Year's after two years of basically nothing. If I'd known that, I would have just stayed on it. :) So, I think I'll draw the line on alcohol right now, today, but eat the stuff I was going to eat till Monday. And then, well... lifestyle change.
Wish me luck. :)
It didn't last, but just as I was falling off that and gaining weight again, another friend having success in another plan dropped by. This was a big guy, in every sense. He was a head taller than me, and had been about to cross 400 lbs. when started. When I saw him, he was closing in on 300, with a goal to halve his weight, to something just under 200. This was a men's weight loss program in the west end, meeting on Sunday mornings. It was expensive, too. As I recall, over $2000 for the year. But it was a good program. I started in October of 2001 and by August of 2002, I weighed less than 200 pounds for the first time in decades. I literally weighed less at 33 than I did at 14. I remember it was weekend just after Jenny died that I broke 200. By September, I'd reached my goal of 190, and I even managed to chip that down to 185.
I've lived on that success for ten years. But I only really managed to maintain it for a year or two. Since then, I've been putting weight back on. If I look back at my blog here, I can see early entries where I'm sweating hitting 215 and stuff. I wish I'd really taken it in hand back then. But there were just too many treats and I didn't say no nearly enough. I managed to keep it to around a chubby 230 for a long time, but particularly since Twinkle died, I've really let myself go. I'm pushing 270 again, and I'm not happy to report that. It's embarrassing. I let myself down over the years, but it's so easy to do, one little thing at a time.
Anyway, as usual, it's meeting with a friend that's started a new phase. My real estate agent is on a weight loss and management plan that's run by doctors and covered by OHIP. He started it in late March and by mid-May when I saw him, he'd shed 50 pounds (again, we're taking a really big guy here, height and weight). So, I've spent the last week jumping through the hoops to get into it. First, you need to be referred by another physician. Check. And you need blood work done. Check. The upshot of all this was the pleasant surprise of having confirmed, twice in the past week, that my blood pressure is normal (at my age and weight, I'm surprised), and that ever single blood indicator they checked also falls in the normal range. I'm not diabetic or prediabetic; my cholesterol levels are all fine. I suppose I can congratulate myself in that if I've gained weight, I've done it while for the most part eating sensible foods. Just too much of them.
I used to think it was my metabolism. That was my excuse. But I took a test yesterday that measures the output of your breathing at rest over ten minutes and my results were such that my metabolism comes right up the middle; just slightly higher than the centre mark. And that's at 45, when presumably my metabolism has slowed from what it was when I was 30, 20, 15. So much for blaming the plane. My weight problem has always been pilot error. :(
The new plan is rather like Atkin's. It's about limiting carbohydrate intake (really, really limiting it initially) to induce ketosis, and then watching carbs on maintenance. Rough for me, because that's where all my "ohhh yes" foods really are. But I want to lose the weight. I want those sweet days back where I can just wander into a store, see something I like, and buy it. Try things on just for fun again, rather than to be sure I'm buying something that fits. I had that for a few years and it was grand; something new for me.
I should start now, but I have some social things going on between now and Sunday and I'm looking forward to them, uncomplicated. So I've set a deadline for Monday. It starts Monday. Oddly enough, you're supposed to lay off alcohol on the plan, so I'll be back on the wagon I jumped off of around New Year's after two years of basically nothing. If I'd known that, I would have just stayed on it. :) So, I think I'll draw the line on alcohol right now, today, but eat the stuff I was going to eat till Monday. And then, well... lifestyle change.
Wish me luck. :)
Anniversaries
Well, by the calendar, it's a month today since Bonnie died (though, really, four weeks passed on Monday). Right around now a month ago, I was gearing up to call Dr. Banks. Funny to think I still had the option at that time. I knew I was obliged by Bonnie's condition to do it. But I still had the choice. I'm pretty sure that by now, no matter what I did, she'd be gone. If she couldn't figure out how to drink anymore, that was going to be a pretty awful end over the next week or two.
It's also nine years ago, tomorrow, that Jody died; June 7, 2004. I knew Jody, via the 'net, not quite ten years; about nine years and eight months, give or take. So the next time the anniversary of his death comes around, he'll have been out of my life again for longer than he was in it. Boy, the years are really slipping away. Twenty years ago it still seemed like a basketful of anything. It occurs to me now that, odds are, the basket's more than half empty now.
I'm left wondering now if there'll be anyone counting anniversaries for me after I'm gone. I guess it doesn't matter much in itself; I'll be dead; I won't care. I guess it's the implication that if no one cares after you're gone it's because there was no one left who cared in the years at the end of your life.
It's also nine years ago, tomorrow, that Jody died; June 7, 2004. I knew Jody, via the 'net, not quite ten years; about nine years and eight months, give or take. So the next time the anniversary of his death comes around, he'll have been out of my life again for longer than he was in it. Boy, the years are really slipping away. Twenty years ago it still seemed like a basketful of anything. It occurs to me now that, odds are, the basket's more than half empty now.
I'm left wondering now if there'll be anyone counting anniversaries for me after I'm gone. I guess it doesn't matter much in itself; I'll be dead; I won't care. I guess it's the implication that if no one cares after you're gone it's because there was no one left who cared in the years at the end of your life.
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
The weekend that was
I know it's already Wednesday but if I don't do this, it won't get done. I've spent most of the past month talking about my feelings in the wake of losing Bonnie, and that's probably not completely over—the blog is, to a large extent, a sort of a diary for me—there are still, of course, other things going on in my life, and some of them are fine things and worth sharing with those who pass by, and myself down the road (ha! inside joke there).
Saturday was fun. We headed out to Stratford. P-Doug was holding forth on something so we missed our exit and after that, the exits get kind of sparse, so we had to drive another ten minutes or more into Oxford County to exit at Woodstock and double back on side roads. We arrived in plenty of time for the lecture, which was a really interesting one on Elizabethan pronunciation and how they've pieced it together with about an 80-90% certainty. North American English has actually been more conservative than most British accents and you can hear where the basis of the language here comes from. To me, it sounded most like the way people speak today around Bristol. A lot of the rhymes in Shakespeare's work, and puns based on them, have been lost because of changes in pronunciation. Bawdy jokes, and apparently there were a lot of them, have been lost due to that (hour and whore were once pronounced the same, for example) and the fact that we reverence the works and have lifted them out of the context of plays for the masses. Amazing presentation. We had a stage director from Manchester who's currently working over here at Stratford, three actors from the company, a linguist adviser, and a TV over which an Englishman teaching at the University of Kansas skyped in to address us. At one point he emailed a handout to one of the organizers, who printed it and distributed it... the kind of stuff they said, back in the 50s, the classroom of the future would be like. We got to hear one of the meetings between Romeo, Friar Lawrence, and the Nurse as it probably originally sounded, and it actually wasn't all that hard to follow. Back then, accent was regional, but did not then represent class distinctions; that didn't happen till the 18th century, and became most pronounced in the 20th, oddly enough.
We went to a native art store just around the corner. Been there before. Gorgeous stuff, all of it with federal identifiers to attest to its authenticity. The stuff's expensive. I ended up buying a beautiful print of a cormorant for $125; I need to get it framed.
We hung around at a perfect, perfect pub called Molly Bloom's, and it turns out they have about a half a dozen locations, and the furthest east is Toronto, down on College Street. Everything about the place was just perfect. The food, the ambiance, the music (and its volume level). It was really terrific.
In the evening we saw Fiddler on the Roof at the Festival Theatre. I've never seen it performed live before, though I've seen the movie dozens and dozens of times. It was slightly different from the movie... for instance, there's a song between Perchik and Hodel in the play that's not in the movie, and I don't think the movie suffers for its lack. It was great to see it performed live. P-Doug knew the movie was one of my lifelong top ten, so at the last minute last week he bought tickets. :) Didn't get home till 1:30, though, and I was the one driving.
...Because! at 7 on Friday night, I got a call from P-Doug. He had a flat (right here... lovely spot, though, don't you think?), and his spare, 14 years unused, was also flat. So off I went into countryside in Durham Region, about 45 minutes from home. Picked him up; we drove south to a service station for a tow truck. While we were there, it occurred to me that we could have just brought the spare and filled it. So, back up. Spare off the car. Back down. Fill the spare. Back up. Put the spare on. Then I followed him into town along Steeles Avenue. Whole thing took about three and a half hours, and, of course, meant we'd be using my car to get back and forth to Stratford. :)
And there you have it.
Saturday was fun. We headed out to Stratford. P-Doug was holding forth on something so we missed our exit and after that, the exits get kind of sparse, so we had to drive another ten minutes or more into Oxford County to exit at Woodstock and double back on side roads. We arrived in plenty of time for the lecture, which was a really interesting one on Elizabethan pronunciation and how they've pieced it together with about an 80-90% certainty. North American English has actually been more conservative than most British accents and you can hear where the basis of the language here comes from. To me, it sounded most like the way people speak today around Bristol. A lot of the rhymes in Shakespeare's work, and puns based on them, have been lost because of changes in pronunciation. Bawdy jokes, and apparently there were a lot of them, have been lost due to that (hour and whore were once pronounced the same, for example) and the fact that we reverence the works and have lifted them out of the context of plays for the masses. Amazing presentation. We had a stage director from Manchester who's currently working over here at Stratford, three actors from the company, a linguist adviser, and a TV over which an Englishman teaching at the University of Kansas skyped in to address us. At one point he emailed a handout to one of the organizers, who printed it and distributed it... the kind of stuff they said, back in the 50s, the classroom of the future would be like. We got to hear one of the meetings between Romeo, Friar Lawrence, and the Nurse as it probably originally sounded, and it actually wasn't all that hard to follow. Back then, accent was regional, but did not then represent class distinctions; that didn't happen till the 18th century, and became most pronounced in the 20th, oddly enough.
We went to a native art store just around the corner. Been there before. Gorgeous stuff, all of it with federal identifiers to attest to its authenticity. The stuff's expensive. I ended up buying a beautiful print of a cormorant for $125; I need to get it framed.
We hung around at a perfect, perfect pub called Molly Bloom's, and it turns out they have about a half a dozen locations, and the furthest east is Toronto, down on College Street. Everything about the place was just perfect. The food, the ambiance, the music (and its volume level). It was really terrific.
In the evening we saw Fiddler on the Roof at the Festival Theatre. I've never seen it performed live before, though I've seen the movie dozens and dozens of times. It was slightly different from the movie... for instance, there's a song between Perchik and Hodel in the play that's not in the movie, and I don't think the movie suffers for its lack. It was great to see it performed live. P-Doug knew the movie was one of my lifelong top ten, so at the last minute last week he bought tickets. :) Didn't get home till 1:30, though, and I was the one driving.
...Because! at 7 on Friday night, I got a call from P-Doug. He had a flat (right here... lovely spot, though, don't you think?), and his spare, 14 years unused, was also flat. So off I went into countryside in Durham Region, about 45 minutes from home. Picked him up; we drove south to a service station for a tow truck. While we were there, it occurred to me that we could have just brought the spare and filled it. So, back up. Spare off the car. Back down. Fill the spare. Back up. Put the spare on. Then I followed him into town along Steeles Avenue. Whole thing took about three and a half hours, and, of course, meant we'd be using my car to get back and forth to Stratford. :)
And there you have it.
Tuesday, June 04, 2013
The Trench and The Brotherhood of War
Somehow a movie about a few days in the life of British soldiers in middle of World War I called The Trench escaped my notice for about 14 years, despite the fact that it stars a pre-Bond Daniel Craig. It's a trenchant, mercilessly honest feature about a small group of guys, accents from all over the British Isles, on the lead up to going over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The movie ends with that moment of tactical stupidity, with the results needless for me to say.
In the course of the movie, these young men show everything you would honestly expect to see in these conditions... homesickness, comradery, cruelty, stupidity, cowardice, bravery, and, of course, a fatalistic resignation. There are some good, solid performances here, particularly Craig's tough but fatherly Sgt. Winter. A modern audience, post-WWII and Vietnam, is left to sit watching in anger and outrage as pigheaded orders we know will send thousands needlessly and stupidly to their deaths are blithely issued. Most of the men know it too but hope against hope it won't be as bad as they imagine. Of course, it was.
The movie has a particular resonance for me because my great-grandfather died in the Battle of the Somme. He was a corporal, a little older than most of the recruits because he was a career soldier. He was in the Hampshire Regiment that was massacred at the Battle of Albert, one of the first actions in the larger Battle of the Somme; he died that day, July 1, 1916, leaving behind a widow and two infant daughters, one of them my Irish-born grandmother. Though it would have meant nothing to him, it was Canada's 49th birthday as nation-state.
--------------------------
Another movie I discovered recently was the Korean-filmed (and English-subbed) The Brotherhood of War, which is about the Korean War. The story is told from the point of view of two ordinary young men from Seoul, who are brothers; Lee Jin-tae and Lee Jin-seok... principally, from the perspective of the latter. Like Saving Private Ryan, it opens in the present day at a dig in a battlefield in South Korea. An artifact is found and a phone call is made to an elderly man, who is invited to come around and make an identification. The movie segues back to 1950. Just prior to the start of the war, Jin-tae is a cobbler and shoe-shiner making a living to support his widowed mother, his fiancee and her little sisters, and his own slightly younger brother Jin-seok.
The war begins abruptly and in the course of feeling Seoul, the family encounters an army shanghai gang, and Jin-seok is drafted on the spot and put on a troop train. In trying to rescue him, Jin-tae also ends up drafted. The movie goes on to tell the tale of Jin-tae's heroism in his efforts to earn Jin-seok an exemption from service, and how his heroism degenerates into pure vicious cruelty by degrees. [Spoiler alert! Select text to view] At one point, Jin-tae, who feels betrayed by his South Korean comrades due to the killing of his fiancee, is captured by the North Koreans and turns coat, becoming their celebrated killing machine instead. While I suppose this is strictly possible, it seemed highly unlikely to me and robbed the movie of some of its credibility. It seemed more like a device to force the brothers into actual combat, which it does, before a Luke-and-Darth Vader moment at the end of the film. The movie loses something in making too literal a point about fighting between actual brothers, and faintly insults its audience by suggestion that otherwise, we won't see the metaphoric irony in Koreans savagely murdering other Koreans simply because someone took advantage of the fact that a line was drawn between one group and the other a couple of years before. Still, the somewhat naive twist in the tail towards the end notwithstanding, it's an excellent view of a truly pointless and vicious civil war—one that's technically still on—and a commentary on the dreams and rationalities of mid-20th century Korea. It's also one of those rare opportunities to see an approachable story told from the point of view of a different culture, with slightly different emphases and outlooks, while at the same time experiencing their common humanity. It's worth seeing.
At the time of writing, you can find both of these films on YouTube.
In the course of the movie, these young men show everything you would honestly expect to see in these conditions... homesickness, comradery, cruelty, stupidity, cowardice, bravery, and, of course, a fatalistic resignation. There are some good, solid performances here, particularly Craig's tough but fatherly Sgt. Winter. A modern audience, post-WWII and Vietnam, is left to sit watching in anger and outrage as pigheaded orders we know will send thousands needlessly and stupidly to their deaths are blithely issued. Most of the men know it too but hope against hope it won't be as bad as they imagine. Of course, it was.
The movie has a particular resonance for me because my great-grandfather died in the Battle of the Somme. He was a corporal, a little older than most of the recruits because he was a career soldier. He was in the Hampshire Regiment that was massacred at the Battle of Albert, one of the first actions in the larger Battle of the Somme; he died that day, July 1, 1916, leaving behind a widow and two infant daughters, one of them my Irish-born grandmother. Though it would have meant nothing to him, it was Canada's 49th birthday as nation-state.
--------------------------
Another movie I discovered recently was the Korean-filmed (and English-subbed) The Brotherhood of War, which is about the Korean War. The story is told from the point of view of two ordinary young men from Seoul, who are brothers; Lee Jin-tae and Lee Jin-seok... principally, from the perspective of the latter. Like Saving Private Ryan, it opens in the present day at a dig in a battlefield in South Korea. An artifact is found and a phone call is made to an elderly man, who is invited to come around and make an identification. The movie segues back to 1950. Just prior to the start of the war, Jin-tae is a cobbler and shoe-shiner making a living to support his widowed mother, his fiancee and her little sisters, and his own slightly younger brother Jin-seok.
The war begins abruptly and in the course of feeling Seoul, the family encounters an army shanghai gang, and Jin-seok is drafted on the spot and put on a troop train. In trying to rescue him, Jin-tae also ends up drafted. The movie goes on to tell the tale of Jin-tae's heroism in his efforts to earn Jin-seok an exemption from service, and how his heroism degenerates into pure vicious cruelty by degrees. [Spoiler alert! Select text to view] At one point, Jin-tae, who feels betrayed by his South Korean comrades due to the killing of his fiancee, is captured by the North Koreans and turns coat, becoming their celebrated killing machine instead. While I suppose this is strictly possible, it seemed highly unlikely to me and robbed the movie of some of its credibility. It seemed more like a device to force the brothers into actual combat, which it does, before a Luke-and-Darth Vader moment at the end of the film. The movie loses something in making too literal a point about fighting between actual brothers, and faintly insults its audience by suggestion that otherwise, we won't see the metaphoric irony in Koreans savagely murdering other Koreans simply because someone took advantage of the fact that a line was drawn between one group and the other a couple of years before. Still, the somewhat naive twist in the tail towards the end notwithstanding, it's an excellent view of a truly pointless and vicious civil war—one that's technically still on—and a commentary on the dreams and rationalities of mid-20th century Korea. It's also one of those rare opportunities to see an approachable story told from the point of view of a different culture, with slightly different emphases and outlooks, while at the same time experiencing their common humanity. It's worth seeing.
At the time of writing, you can find both of these films on YouTube.
Rechargeable memory
About a week before Bonnie died, my Canon S100 did. Unlike her, it could be resurrected. Two days before she died, I took it in to have that done. It was a lens error problem, which Canon had a policy of repairing out of warranty because the problem was so common. I got the camera back this afternoon.
Bonnie's passing highlighted a couple of things for me, because I spent much of my spare time last week roaming through literally hundreds of thousands of digital photos, looking for good shots of the cats I've lost to bank into the digital frame I bought. Towards the end I came to the S100 shots. I was astonished at the quality of them; a clarity unrivaled by pretty much anything else in my collection except some of the really choice Rebel XT photos. If I'd gotten to regretting the purchase a year and a half ago as essentially pointless, those beautiful photos of her and Max straightened me out. I'm glad I had it fixed, and even more glad I bought it in the first place.
Another thing was the change in Bonnie herself. I kept the SDHC card out of the camera when I took it in, but oddly enough, in that whole month, I never bothered looking at the photos on it. Some were recent enough they weren't stored or backed up, and I saw them for the first time today. For most of thirteen years, I knew Bonnie as a robust, even faintly plump, cat. It was really only in the last two months of her life she was noticeably thin. I spent most of last week re-enforcing my standard memory of her with shots from the bulk of her life, pretty much overwriting my recent perception of her.
Then I saw the shots I took of her in mid-April. I was shocked at the sight of her. This came on gradually, but seeing it this way was like having it happen literally overnight. Here are two shots of Bonnie, both taken with the S100. The one on the left was taken February of 2012, not long after I bought the camera. The second is from April 19th, the Friday before the Monday she went in for surgery, and just a bit over two weeks before she died. Look how loosely her collar hangs on her. That's the exact same collar. The vet techs must have noticed too because when she came back from surgery, it had been shorted to hug closer to her neck again... something I would never have been able to do, because it was like admitting she'd never fill that collar out again. Part of me resents them for doing that, but most of me loves them for making that caring gesture. It was facing the obvious... something I had to do looking through the images on the card today.
Digital photograph was once just a happy lark. It was a way to keep neat things I saw; take possession of them. Share them. Increasingly, though, as the years turn now into decades, it's becoming external memory; a record of things and people (human and otherwise) I've had and lost. It's still fun, but not the simple pure fun it once was. I forgot, when I started, that time would move on, and imbue these photos with a meaning I never intended, or ever hoped for, back then.
Bonnie's passing highlighted a couple of things for me, because I spent much of my spare time last week roaming through literally hundreds of thousands of digital photos, looking for good shots of the cats I've lost to bank into the digital frame I bought. Towards the end I came to the S100 shots. I was astonished at the quality of them; a clarity unrivaled by pretty much anything else in my collection except some of the really choice Rebel XT photos. If I'd gotten to regretting the purchase a year and a half ago as essentially pointless, those beautiful photos of her and Max straightened me out. I'm glad I had it fixed, and even more glad I bought it in the first place.
Another thing was the change in Bonnie herself. I kept the SDHC card out of the camera when I took it in, but oddly enough, in that whole month, I never bothered looking at the photos on it. Some were recent enough they weren't stored or backed up, and I saw them for the first time today. For most of thirteen years, I knew Bonnie as a robust, even faintly plump, cat. It was really only in the last two months of her life she was noticeably thin. I spent most of last week re-enforcing my standard memory of her with shots from the bulk of her life, pretty much overwriting my recent perception of her.
Then I saw the shots I took of her in mid-April. I was shocked at the sight of her. This came on gradually, but seeing it this way was like having it happen literally overnight. Here are two shots of Bonnie, both taken with the S100. The one on the left was taken February of 2012, not long after I bought the camera. The second is from April 19th, the Friday before the Monday she went in for surgery, and just a bit over two weeks before she died. Look how loosely her collar hangs on her. That's the exact same collar. The vet techs must have noticed too because when she came back from surgery, it had been shorted to hug closer to her neck again... something I would never have been able to do, because it was like admitting she'd never fill that collar out again. Part of me resents them for doing that, but most of me loves them for making that caring gesture. It was facing the obvious... something I had to do looking through the images on the card today.
Digital photograph was once just a happy lark. It was a way to keep neat things I saw; take possession of them. Share them. Increasingly, though, as the years turn now into decades, it's becoming external memory; a record of things and people (human and otherwise) I've had and lost. It's still fun, but not the simple pure fun it once was. I forgot, when I started, that time would move on, and imbue these photos with a meaning I never intended, or ever hoped for, back then.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Twinkle's butterfly
I was sure I had blogged about this, long ago, back when it happened, but it seems I didn't. I went looking for it, and I'm really sad I didn't record it when it happened, because it was sublime and I owed it to my future self to get it down.
It happened in the weeks after Twinkle died. It was early in November, and I went out on one of my little photo walks. This one wasn't far. Not all that far from where I live, the Don Valley Parkway crosses York Mills Road. What's now the DVP/Hwy 404 between Lawrence and Steeles Avenues was, till the 1960s and 1970s Woodbine Avenue (and still is, north of Steeles). South of York Mills it was just a little dirt road that died on the heights and never made it down to Lawrence. There are still little hints of it, and I tried to get to one of them on the east side of the DVP just north of York Mills Road, but I couldn't. Fenced off. So I started back.
A monarch butterfly caught my eye and I watched it land in the middle of the strange interchange between York Mills and the DVP. I can't remember now whether it landed in the middle of a lane, or on the line between lanes, but it was someplace generally safe from the tires. I stood there for, I don't know, maybe five minutes, waiting for it, urging it, to take off. But it just sat there. Lights would change. Cars would charge. I kept fearing the worst, but it was never run over. Finally I couldn't take it anymore, and between lights, I went out, picked it up gently, and set it down on the grass on the far side of the sidewalk. I have no idea what happened next. Odds are, it was already dying. But I did what I could.
The butterfly reminded me of Twinkle... her strong tortie banding, black and orange; not subtle like Bonnie's was. I had to stand there watching Twinkle in the middle of her road. There was too much traffic, and urging her was all I could do. But this I could fix. This was in my power to set right, and I did. I can't believe it's taken a year and a half to write about it.
It happened in the weeks after Twinkle died. It was early in November, and I went out on one of my little photo walks. This one wasn't far. Not all that far from where I live, the Don Valley Parkway crosses York Mills Road. What's now the DVP/Hwy 404 between Lawrence and Steeles Avenues was, till the 1960s and 1970s Woodbine Avenue (and still is, north of Steeles). South of York Mills it was just a little dirt road that died on the heights and never made it down to Lawrence. There are still little hints of it, and I tried to get to one of them on the east side of the DVP just north of York Mills Road, but I couldn't. Fenced off. So I started back.
A monarch butterfly caught my eye and I watched it land in the middle of the strange interchange between York Mills and the DVP. I can't remember now whether it landed in the middle of a lane, or on the line between lanes, but it was someplace generally safe from the tires. I stood there for, I don't know, maybe five minutes, waiting for it, urging it, to take off. But it just sat there. Lights would change. Cars would charge. I kept fearing the worst, but it was never run over. Finally I couldn't take it anymore, and between lights, I went out, picked it up gently, and set it down on the grass on the far side of the sidewalk. I have no idea what happened next. Odds are, it was already dying. But I did what I could.
The butterfly reminded me of Twinkle... her strong tortie banding, black and orange; not subtle like Bonnie's was. I had to stand there watching Twinkle in the middle of her road. There was too much traffic, and urging her was all I could do. But this I could fix. This was in my power to set right, and I did. I can't believe it's taken a year and a half to write about it.
Mixed feelings on the mayor
I was going to start off with a Bob and Doug McKenzie joke about Mayor Rob Ford and his brother, city councilor Doug Ford, but someone at Toronto Life magazine beat me to it...
I'm not sure how I feel about all this... the whole sordid "maybe the Mayor smoked crack and made racist and homophobic comments in the company of two druggies who subsequently got shot, one of them fatally" thing.
I've never been a fan of Rob Ford. I'm stunned a city this cosmopolitan, educated, and buttoned-down (yes, in spite of it all, still) could ever vote a guy like that into office. I think he's loud, arrogant, doesn't think beyond the next sound bite, and grew up spoiled by rich parents. Toronto is one of the major cities of North America and not inconsequential internationally, and it needs a serious, full-time mayor. This one spends as much of his time as possible ducking out of council meetings he finds boring to coach a high school football team or stick "Ford for Mayor" magnets on the cars in the City Hall parking lot, and when he's not doing that, he's in court... defamation: defendant, litigant; conflict of interest... on and on. Now this.
My feelings are complicated. He's an embarrassment. I'd like someone else to be mayor. It's not just that I don't like his policies—some of them I do, actually—it's that it's pretty clear he doesn't have the judgement to be the mayor of a city. He's making Toronto look bad. Staffers are being fired or quitting on a daily basis. There are rumours of email deletions and actual warnings to the Mayor not to undertake that. The Premier of Ontario is having to look into the municipal acts to see what options the province might have, should it come to that. It's getting to be like Toronto's own mini Watergate.
But I don't want to believe it. This video hasn't actually surfaced, and as much of goof as I feel Rob Ford to be, I don't want to believe he's that venal or stupid. And I even find myself beginning to resent the way the media have gone after him; particularly The Toronto Star. There's reporting, and then there's vendetta, and The Star has crossed a professional line in my eyes and demeaned itself. I expect this kind of thing from The Sun and its pin-up page. Even The Globe and Mail chooses now to spring a story, supposedly 18 months in the making, that the Mayor's brother Doug, now a city councilor, dealt hash in the 1980s. It's looking less about the dignity of Toronto and its elected offices and more about "getting" the Ford family, and I don't care for that angle.
I want Ford to lose an election, fair and square, to a more progressive and responsible candidate. I don't want him hounded or, worse, torn from office and made into a martyr for the right wing. And speaking of them, aren't they supposed to be the stand-up, do-what's-right, law-and-order people? These are supposed to be the kind of people who'd say "oh, you were are a party in 1975 where someone had a joint in their pocket? Sorry, you can't be my mayor. How could I ever trust your judgement?" But no, his support remains solid in much of the suburbs. I guess if a guy cuts your taxes, hey, that's all that really matters. Apparently their civic pride ends in their wallets.
I don't know how it will play out, but if the Mayor comes through this, it's going to tarnish him, his office, and the city. I think, though, in the course of the next few weeks, he'll bow to the inevitable and resign, and let his crown of thorns become a halo to the right wing. We'll see.
I'm not sure how I feel about all this... the whole sordid "maybe the Mayor smoked crack and made racist and homophobic comments in the company of two druggies who subsequently got shot, one of them fatally" thing.
I've never been a fan of Rob Ford. I'm stunned a city this cosmopolitan, educated, and buttoned-down (yes, in spite of it all, still) could ever vote a guy like that into office. I think he's loud, arrogant, doesn't think beyond the next sound bite, and grew up spoiled by rich parents. Toronto is one of the major cities of North America and not inconsequential internationally, and it needs a serious, full-time mayor. This one spends as much of his time as possible ducking out of council meetings he finds boring to coach a high school football team or stick "Ford for Mayor" magnets on the cars in the City Hall parking lot, and when he's not doing that, he's in court... defamation: defendant, litigant; conflict of interest... on and on. Now this.
My feelings are complicated. He's an embarrassment. I'd like someone else to be mayor. It's not just that I don't like his policies—some of them I do, actually—it's that it's pretty clear he doesn't have the judgement to be the mayor of a city. He's making Toronto look bad. Staffers are being fired or quitting on a daily basis. There are rumours of email deletions and actual warnings to the Mayor not to undertake that. The Premier of Ontario is having to look into the municipal acts to see what options the province might have, should it come to that. It's getting to be like Toronto's own mini Watergate.
But I don't want to believe it. This video hasn't actually surfaced, and as much of goof as I feel Rob Ford to be, I don't want to believe he's that venal or stupid. And I even find myself beginning to resent the way the media have gone after him; particularly The Toronto Star. There's reporting, and then there's vendetta, and The Star has crossed a professional line in my eyes and demeaned itself. I expect this kind of thing from The Sun and its pin-up page. Even The Globe and Mail chooses now to spring a story, supposedly 18 months in the making, that the Mayor's brother Doug, now a city councilor, dealt hash in the 1980s. It's looking less about the dignity of Toronto and its elected offices and more about "getting" the Ford family, and I don't care for that angle.
I want Ford to lose an election, fair and square, to a more progressive and responsible candidate. I don't want him hounded or, worse, torn from office and made into a martyr for the right wing. And speaking of them, aren't they supposed to be the stand-up, do-what's-right, law-and-order people? These are supposed to be the kind of people who'd say "oh, you were are a party in 1975 where someone had a joint in their pocket? Sorry, you can't be my mayor. How could I ever trust your judgement?" But no, his support remains solid in much of the suburbs. I guess if a guy cuts your taxes, hey, that's all that really matters. Apparently their civic pride ends in their wallets.
I don't know how it will play out, but if the Mayor comes through this, it's going to tarnish him, his office, and the city. I think, though, in the course of the next few weeks, he'll bow to the inevitable and resign, and let his crown of thorns become a halo to the right wing. We'll see.
Milestone
I've been blogging now since a couple of months after Jody died back in 2004. Getting on for nine years now. I used to blog just about everything... Nova Scotian comedian Ron James made a joke about blog entries. "I just washed my hair and now I'm eatin' chips!" Well, I was never that bad, but I did post a lot early on. Then it trailed off. It's picked up again a bit this year, and I just noticed this morning that I had 40 entries for May. I checked, and it's official: more postings this month than any other. If I wanted a tribute to Bonnie, I guess that might be it.
And this is 41.
And this is 41.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Ask me if Ikea... :)
When I was shopping at Ikea on Sunday I was surprised to find them advertising, of all things, their Swedish meatballs, when there was a minor flap recently that they'd shipped some that were actually horse meat. (Yes, I know, some people don't care; but a lot of people do.) I thought it might be funny to 'shop in a new slogan for them. :)
Remembrances
Last week I bought a glass display table at Ikea and on Friday Larry helped me assemble it. Since then, I've added an LED lamp and a 15" digital picture frame that changes photos of my lost cats, Jody, and Georgette once an hour. Sunday afternoon I moved the urns and photos over, and I put the frame up on Monday evening. Larry brought me the LED bulbs last night and now it's pretty much complete.
Yesterday when after I got home the photo rotated to this one of Bonnie, taken around the time Jenny died, I think. At 15" it was virtually life-sized. I would have thought that would bring me down, but it didn't. It was very nearly like having her around again, in a casual, hey-how-you-doing, I-acknowledge-you-without-much-fuss kind of way. I'm glad now I got the frame. I think it's going to be important in re-enforcing my memories of how Bonnie and Max, in particular, looked an acted. Neither one has been gone even a year yet.
Yesterday when after I got home the photo rotated to this one of Bonnie, taken around the time Jenny died, I think. At 15" it was virtually life-sized. I would have thought that would bring me down, but it didn't. It was very nearly like having her around again, in a casual, hey-how-you-doing, I-acknowledge-you-without-much-fuss kind of way. I'm glad now I got the frame. I think it's going to be important in re-enforcing my memories of how Bonnie and Max, in particular, looked an acted. Neither one has been gone even a year yet.
The naming of the cats
I've noted here a number of times that I've never in my life named a cat or dog and had the name stick. But I've given them tons of nicknames, though.
I thought I'd listed the nicknames for the cats over the years, but it seems I really only did it for Max. I can't find references to the others anywhere on here. This was just going to be an update for the new ones, but I think I owe it to be nauseating about them all.
Cat's name: Jenny
Nicknames
Jennifer
Refinnej ["Jennifer" backwards; supplied by Michelle one evening]
Gentlefur
Violin Voice
Cat's name: Bonnie
Nicknames
Pumpkin (Punkin)
Pumpkin Girl (Punkin Girl)
Pumpkin Bum (Punkin Bum)
Pumpkin Niceness
Pumpkinny (Punkinny)
Pumpkinny-Wumpkinny (Punkinny-Wunkinny) [this comes from an episode of Blackadder and is really the basis for all the pumpkin references]
Bon
Bon Bon
Little Girl ("Are you bein' my girl? Who's being my girl?")
Cat's name: Max
Nicknames
Wee Fellah/The Wee Fellah
Wee (Maxy-Wee)
Weasel
Wheezy
Squeezy
Squeezle
Squeeze
Squeezicus
Squeezicus Rex
Squeezicus Max/Maxicus
Squeezorama
Squeezetastic
Cat's name: Twinkle
Nicknames
Twinkly
Twinkly-Dinkly [Twinkle, unfortunately, didn't live with me long enough to have been encumbered with a long list of foolish nicknames.]
Cat's name: Ally
Nicknames
Alison
Alison James [play on "Alice in Chains"]
Alligator
Gator
Alberta
Albertasaurus
Sweetie
Sweetie-Sweetie
Little One [of her, Max, and Bonnie, she was by far the lightest until Bonnie really started shedding her weight this winter; she was and is a third or a quarter the weight of Seth]
Little Little One
Cat's name: Seth
Nicknames
Sethy
Sethy-Wethy
Sethticus
Sethticus Giganticus
Big Fella/The Big Fellah
Use the Scratching Post, Not the Carpet, You Idiot; What's Wrong with You? It's Right There! [unofficial]
I thought I'd listed the nicknames for the cats over the years, but it seems I really only did it for Max. I can't find references to the others anywhere on here. This was just going to be an update for the new ones, but I think I owe it to be nauseating about them all.
Cat's name: Jenny
Nicknames
Jennifer
Refinnej ["Jennifer" backwards; supplied by Michelle one evening]
Gentlefur
Violin Voice
Cat's name: Bonnie
Nicknames
Pumpkin (Punkin)
Pumpkin Girl (Punkin Girl)
Pumpkin Bum (Punkin Bum)
Pumpkin Niceness
Pumpkinny (Punkinny)
Pumpkinny-Wumpkinny (Punkinny-Wunkinny) [this comes from an episode of Blackadder and is really the basis for all the pumpkin references]
Bon
Bon Bon
Little Girl ("Are you bein' my girl? Who's being my girl?")
Cat's name: Max
Nicknames
Wee Fellah/The Wee Fellah
Wee (Maxy-Wee)
Weasel
Wheezy
Squeezy
Squeezle
Squeeze
Squeezicus
Squeezicus Rex
Squeezicus Max/Maxicus
Squeezorama
Squeezetastic
Cat's name: Twinkle
Nicknames
Twinkly
Twinkly-Dinkly [Twinkle, unfortunately, didn't live with me long enough to have been encumbered with a long list of foolish nicknames.]
Cat's name: Ally
Nicknames
Alison
Alison James [play on "Alice in Chains"]
Alligator
Gator
Alberta
Albertasaurus
Sweetie
Sweetie-Sweetie
Little One [of her, Max, and Bonnie, she was by far the lightest until Bonnie really started shedding her weight this winter; she was and is a third or a quarter the weight of Seth]
Little Little One
Cat's name: Seth
Nicknames
Sethy
Sethy-Wethy
Sethticus
Sethticus Giganticus
Big Fella/The Big Fellah
Use the Scratching Post, Not the Carpet, You Idiot; What's Wrong with You? It's Right There! [unofficial]
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
This love was mine
This was recorded exactly seven years ago today, as it turns out... May 28, 2006, in the spare room of the place where we used to live. It's also the room where Jenny died in her sleep, August 15, 2002.
Look at all the silent meows I'm getting from Bonnie! I can't believe it. I've never gotten even one from another cat yet, so far as I know. Just her.
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Still Yellow... still
I listened to Yellow by Coldplay for the first time in several years this afternoon. I'm delighted it remains one of the most beautiful and moving songs in the world. Letting its lyrics fall like tears is the closest I come to devotion. It makes me want to believe in a God like that.
Time to leave the song alone for a while. As I've said here before, I never want that song to become ordinary for me, or lose its power to move me to tears. It's a treasure having a song that can do that for me and I don't want to squander it.
I've expressed my feelings on the song a few times now, and I'm amazed that nearly a decade after I first heard the song, it still has the same power it did then, and six years later, and eight years later. I'm astonished to note that the second post about it was written exactly three years ago today.
Time to leave the song alone for a while. As I've said here before, I never want that song to become ordinary for me, or lose its power to move me to tears. It's a treasure having a song that can do that for me and I don't want to squander it.
I've expressed my feelings on the song a few times now, and I'm amazed that nearly a decade after I first heard the song, it still has the same power it did then, and six years later, and eight years later. I'm astonished to note that the second post about it was written exactly three years ago today.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Bonnie, home for good
When was the last "normal" day with the three cats I bought with me here? I look back at a comment that Twinkle hadn't been herself since the previous Tuesday. I seem to recall associating noticing she wasn't well with my dad's birthday. If that's so, Sept. 27, 2011, was our last (apparently) normal day together, the four of us. One by one they've gone. Now of us four, there's only me.
Bonnie returned home today, in a way. About 12:30 this afternoon I took the elevator down to meet the doctor in the lobby. She handed me a blue box, the third such box I've received since October, 2011. This one contained a ceramic pawprint and an urn that holds all that remains of my little Pumpkin Girl. We spoke for about ten minutes, near the conclusion of which, a man of retirement age came in, spotted my shirt, and interrupted us with "HMCS Haida?" Threw the vet and I both for a loop. The man went on to revealed he'd served on the ship, the last of its class remaining and now a floating federal museum, in the early 1960s, including the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a strange moment of deep sorrow splashed with a quirky happy coincidence.
Larry had the day off and he was upstairs in my living room. I brought what was left of my sweet Bonnie back home. In the elevator, alone for a moment, I hugged the box and was finally moved to tears. I had Bonnie back. Not the way I would ever have wanted, but... she was back.
So we put on a movie, Almost Famous, and with a few belts of maple-flavoured Crown Royal in Diet Pepsi, we set to work assembling the glass cabinet I bought Wednesday night as a newer, more fitting home for the cats and human whose remains I've gathered in the past 11 years. We built it in the living room over about half a hour or so, and moved it to the dining room where the bookshelves were till a few months ago. I haven't moved everything over yet. I think that's for tomorrow. For tonight, Bonnie is resting on the top shelf of the armoire in the dining room, at the far right side, along with Jody, Jenny, Twinkle, and Max.
I hope that's as many of these things as I'll have for a while.
Incidentally, and I mention this just in passing for future reference, this afternoon Larry also helped me assemble the bed frame that I got from Bolt, though that took only about five minutes. So, for the first time in at least I year, I have a bed properly off the floor again. In a way, I'm glad I the bed was lower. It made it much easier for Bonnie, and she never had an issue getting onto the bed. I remember just before Jenny died, she couldn't manage it anymore, and wanting her to feel normal again, I put her up onto it. She immediately decided she wanted down, and before I could catch her and help her, she awkwardly threw herself off and into the wall. At least Bonnie never suffered that indignity.
Bonnie returned home today, in a way. About 12:30 this afternoon I took the elevator down to meet the doctor in the lobby. She handed me a blue box, the third such box I've received since October, 2011. This one contained a ceramic pawprint and an urn that holds all that remains of my little Pumpkin Girl. We spoke for about ten minutes, near the conclusion of which, a man of retirement age came in, spotted my shirt, and interrupted us with "HMCS Haida?" Threw the vet and I both for a loop. The man went on to revealed he'd served on the ship, the last of its class remaining and now a floating federal museum, in the early 1960s, including the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a strange moment of deep sorrow splashed with a quirky happy coincidence.
Larry had the day off and he was upstairs in my living room. I brought what was left of my sweet Bonnie back home. In the elevator, alone for a moment, I hugged the box and was finally moved to tears. I had Bonnie back. Not the way I would ever have wanted, but... she was back.
So we put on a movie, Almost Famous, and with a few belts of maple-flavoured Crown Royal in Diet Pepsi, we set to work assembling the glass cabinet I bought Wednesday night as a newer, more fitting home for the cats and human whose remains I've gathered in the past 11 years. We built it in the living room over about half a hour or so, and moved it to the dining room where the bookshelves were till a few months ago. I haven't moved everything over yet. I think that's for tomorrow. For tonight, Bonnie is resting on the top shelf of the armoire in the dining room, at the far right side, along with Jody, Jenny, Twinkle, and Max.
I hope that's as many of these things as I'll have for a while.
Incidentally, and I mention this just in passing for future reference, this afternoon Larry also helped me assemble the bed frame that I got from Bolt, though that took only about five minutes. So, for the first time in at least I year, I have a bed properly off the floor again. In a way, I'm glad I the bed was lower. It made it much easier for Bonnie, and she never had an issue getting onto the bed. I remember just before Jenny died, she couldn't manage it anymore, and wanting her to feel normal again, I put her up onto it. She immediately decided she wanted down, and before I could catch her and help her, she awkwardly threw herself off and into the wall. At least Bonnie never suffered that indignity.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Due diligence
So... this is about the last of it. Bonnie comes home tomorrow, as such.
Not counting everything in between, it cost about ten times as much to say good-bye to her as it did to say hello, all those years ago. But at least there was hello, and every wonderful, loving moment in between.
Not counting everything in between, it cost about ten times as much to say good-bye to her as it did to say hello, all those years ago. But at least there was hello, and every wonderful, loving moment in between.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Loops
Every morning it's the smell of this place. It really is like breathing in the bitter, acrid scent of Twinkle's death over and over. It adds a bitter edge to every time I come here, because it's uniformly disturbing even without that association, but the fact is, it has it.
They do a trial period for working from home to make sure it goes smoothly. I'm thinking of setting a date for mid-July. It's when I'm kind of thinking of getting a kitten. Maybe I shouldn't, though. I'm going to have to paint the place at least, and two cats is enough to deal with trying to show the place. I'll have to think about it.
This morning I can't stop dwelling on Bonnie's last moments. Sense of betrayal, even though analytically I know we were really down to no realistic options. Extend her life; let her life to the end with some dignity. Pick one. It wasn't going to be both. But I invited a lady to come over and end her life. Me. I chose that. Obviously I didn't do it to save money. I did it to save her from dying by inches... which, I have to face it now, she had been, for weeks. Months. But no matter how I try to wrestle with it, it still doesn't sit right.
What I remember was how hard it was just to get that first needle into her. There was almost nowhere for it to go, and so it was hard. And I remember she raised her head and protested, gently but clearly. And it was as clear as if she's spoken English. "Ow, come on. Not another damn needle. I've had enough of those in the past month. Give me a break." And it was, really, pretty much the last thing she ever did. She relaxed again, drifted off into a sleep so deep even squeezing her paw didn't stir her, and then came the other needle.
I kind of wish that had been as quick as with Max. But with Bonnie, she lived about another five minutes, though I couldn't see her breathing. With Max, it was over. There wasn't time for me to sit there, second-guessing myself. With Bonnie, there was. All the while, there was this sad, pleading little voice inside my head, urging me, She's still alive... maybe they can still reverse this. Maybe you can still have her tomorrow. There's still time. Say something.
But louder, firmer... Tomorrow? Another day where, for whatever reason, she can't even drink water? And clearly, hasn't been eating, even at night when you can't see her? Who was I kidding? Just myself. Tomorrow is another day of hunger and diminishment, and now the torture of a thirst she can't slake. No, this is the right thing to do, and it has to be now. Tough it out...
I still don't have her ashes back. And it feels like the longer that takes, the harder it's going to be when I do get them. I'm trying to make plans for a new glass case for the now ponderous collection of the loved and lost, human and feline, I'm sharing my home with. They now outnumber the living. But I suppose in general that's always been true.
They do a trial period for working from home to make sure it goes smoothly. I'm thinking of setting a date for mid-July. It's when I'm kind of thinking of getting a kitten. Maybe I shouldn't, though. I'm going to have to paint the place at least, and two cats is enough to deal with trying to show the place. I'll have to think about it.
This morning I can't stop dwelling on Bonnie's last moments. Sense of betrayal, even though analytically I know we were really down to no realistic options. Extend her life; let her life to the end with some dignity. Pick one. It wasn't going to be both. But I invited a lady to come over and end her life. Me. I chose that. Obviously I didn't do it to save money. I did it to save her from dying by inches... which, I have to face it now, she had been, for weeks. Months. But no matter how I try to wrestle with it, it still doesn't sit right.
What I remember was how hard it was just to get that first needle into her. There was almost nowhere for it to go, and so it was hard. And I remember she raised her head and protested, gently but clearly. And it was as clear as if she's spoken English. "Ow, come on. Not another damn needle. I've had enough of those in the past month. Give me a break." And it was, really, pretty much the last thing she ever did. She relaxed again, drifted off into a sleep so deep even squeezing her paw didn't stir her, and then came the other needle.
I kind of wish that had been as quick as with Max. But with Bonnie, she lived about another five minutes, though I couldn't see her breathing. With Max, it was over. There wasn't time for me to sit there, second-guessing myself. With Bonnie, there was. All the while, there was this sad, pleading little voice inside my head, urging me, She's still alive... maybe they can still reverse this. Maybe you can still have her tomorrow. There's still time. Say something.
But louder, firmer... Tomorrow? Another day where, for whatever reason, she can't even drink water? And clearly, hasn't been eating, even at night when you can't see her? Who was I kidding? Just myself. Tomorrow is another day of hunger and diminishment, and now the torture of a thirst she can't slake. No, this is the right thing to do, and it has to be now. Tough it out...
I still don't have her ashes back. And it feels like the longer that takes, the harder it's going to be when I do get them. I'm trying to make plans for a new glass case for the now ponderous collection of the loved and lost, human and feline, I'm sharing my home with. They now outnumber the living. But I suppose in general that's always been true.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Victoria Daze
A lot of things in my life have pivoted around Victoria Day, or thereabouts. I moved out on my own in May; thirteen years later to the day, Bonnie died. I took possession of the place I'm living in now in May. Drove a car by myself alone for the first time in May (long ago!). Did... something else... for the first time in May. :) Ahem. (Again, long ago.)
Last night as I sat up there watching local folks send up fireworks all over the neighbourhood, I wondered if maybe I might be watching the next set from a different home. I suppose it's up to me. If I want to make that happen, I'm pretty sure I can. The primary obstacles seem to be lethargy on my part and unrealistic expectations. If I accept what I can do, and then push the first domino over, it'll happen.
So we've just come through another Victoria Day weekend, which is the unofficial "official" start to summer in Canada. It was a pretty busy one for me.
Saturday P-Doug had these tickets to an unusual sort of outing... a gathering of urban food trucks... y'know, chip wagons... on the Peller Estates winery in Niagara Region. So it it was this odd conjunction of sampling some of Ontario's prize-winning Niagara wines along with trucks that were selling wood-fired pizza and fish and chips. P-Doug and I had a few samples of white wines interspersed with trying a rubbed chicken sandwich and chicken tikka masala over chips (first curry I ever had, about 15 years ago now, was over chips). We were there about two hours. Parking was across the road and just about a kilometer away. The walk there and back, decorated with flurries of dandelion fluffy, did us good, P-Doug said.
I should point out the the first stop, however, was a huge book warehouse we've been to before. It used to be a yard for repairing steam locomotives, I'm told. I picked up a couple of puzzle books for my dad, and for myself, an excellent book about B&W digital photography (tricks on wringing great monochrome shots out of colour images), and autobiographies of William Shatner and Michael Moore. From there, it was off to Peller Estates and the ring of chip wagons. :)
After that we drifted north up the Niagara Parkway along the river toward Fort Erie. Eventually we passed the Falls... funny, there was a time that would have locked my attention but this time it was just a few casual glances. Well, it's not the same passing it in a car with it 100' away and 300 people blocking the view as it is getting up and there and barely having the nerve to step up the the retaining wall.
We got to Fort Erie and drove down a street even I remembered, with a Chinese restaurant on it that we've frequented a few times over the years. He and I didn't go there this time; he was looking for a corner store to get something to drink. A bottled water and a couple of small ice cream cones later we were back on the road. Toronto saw us having the baked wings and carrot sticks at the Three Monkeys. Nice capper.
Sunday it was my turn to go pick him up. I got him about 12:15 and we headed west to Dig's place for a BBQ. Bolt asked if I could pick him up on my way through Oakville. The traffic on the Queen Elizabeth Way that had been so clear on Saturday was a mess on Sunday; sheer volume of traffic, no accidents. We left the highway at Winston Churchill Blvd. and took Upper Middle Road across Oakville, but there was no avoiding getting back on the QEW to head to Dig's. It was slow going but it was moving as we crossed Burlington. I took the exit to the 403 for a couple of reasons. One was that I wanted to drop in on my folks for a couple of minutes to drop off the books for my dad. The other was that with the traffic still grinding on the QEW, it looked like the fastest way to get to Dig's was to take the expressways up the Mountain and back down to Stony Creek. And that's what we did. We arrived at about 2:30, which was over two hours after I got rolling.
Everybody who was invited eventually showed up. It was Dig and his missus, and me and P-Doug and Bolt, and eventually Larry dropped in. Burgers and sausages. Lots of conversation over five hours or so. Did everyone some good, I think.
After that we stopped in at Bolt's "new" place and hot tubbed in the back yard for a couple of hours. It's nice when the warm weather has finally gotten rolling but it was still chattering teeth time getting out around quarter after ten. Drove back to Toronto, dropped P-Doug off, went home, hit the hay.
Yesterday, Victoria Day, I'd promised to come back and help Bolt move some of the last of the significant furniture from his parents' place, which sold in April. We threw some stuff out in the bin in the driveway, but mostly moved and/or disassembled wardrobes and bureaus he wanted to keep. The wardrobe was the biggest hoot, oh yeah. Taking the doors and the back off it, getting it up out of the basement, getting it into the back of his pickup... all the while his sister was there, distracting him about who should keep what little nick-knack. For once, instead of standing around like a lump, I was proactive and kept moving whatever I could manage on my own, without being asked to... just using my head. I'm kind of proud of that; it's kind of a new feature in my character in recent years and I'm trying to cultivate it. Anyway, the fun started when we got it back to his new place. He wanted it upstairs. But the stairs, and their walls and ceilings, all got together on the first landing and said "nope.". Getting it to the point it got stuck wasn't too hard... but getting it unstuck, well... that was a different story. Eventually he had to get a screwdriver and loosen one of the sides just so we could get it back down off the stairs. He was pretty disheartened and on the verge of taking it back to dump it in the bin and just keeping the mirrored doors as wall decorations, but I reminded him of its stated sentimental value and he took my advice and we just put it aside in the back yard till he could get his new place in order and figure out what, if anything, he wanted to do with it. In pretty short order he was making plans for using it to store the robes he wants to get for his hot tubbing guests.
A couple more trips back and forth saw us move another bureau and a bookshelf his father had inherited from the U of T where he was an engineering professor. The wood was stamped T. Eaton and Co., which means it was manufactured by Eaton's, a long time ago. These days, that alone marks it as a piece of Canadian history.
Though it wasn't my intention, I came out of it a little ahead, too. First of all, Bolt paid for lunch, which was chicken shawarma at a place he frequents for lunch. I also got a rake and a spade he was throwing out with an eye to our recent project of improving P-Doug's back yard. And I got the queen size bed support rails he was about to get rid of (he only wanted the Mennonite-carved headboard), to replace the ones I threw out about a year ago. Having a bed that's not on the floor like a hippie flophouse, I think, will slightly improve how my place shows when I get around to putting it on the market.
After that we went to Philthy McNasty's for supper, which was fajitas but with a new twist I got to introduce Bolt to. Bolt was diagnosed with diabetes last fall and I have to say he's taken it seriously. He's lost something like 20-30 pounds since then, and he's pretty scrupulous about watching his sugars. I can't remember where it was now... ah, yes, now I can; The Occasions Restaurant in the Beaches, I think... where they serve something like fajitas but instead of using tortillas, they bring you half a head of lettuce and you just wrap everything in the leaves. It's a nice, crunchy change and since there's not much to lettuce, it was a good replacement for the flour in tortillas. We talked the restaurant into cutting a head of lettuce in two for us and ate the chicken fajitas on that instead. Bolt was pleased and he's armed with a new idea for enjoying something he likes without the down side.
I got home about 9 and dumped the bed rails beside the bed. I'll have to see about assembling them sometime this week. I'll see if I can get Larry's help with that. But anyway, that was the weekend that was. Busy busy busy. Which kind of kept my mind off the fact that it's been two weeks now since Bonnie died; two weeks since I was just planning to get her stitches out on Tuesday and had to make that long-dreaded decision on Monday instead. It kind of reminds me of Linus's observation to Charlie Brown at the end of A Boy Named Charlie Brown after he's narrowly lost a national spelling bee competition: "But did you notice something, Charlie Brown? The world didn't come to an end." Well, I guess it did for Bonnie. But I, and the rest of the world, are still here, and we have to keep chugging, at least for a while yet, and this weekend past, I did.
Last night as I sat up there watching local folks send up fireworks all over the neighbourhood, I wondered if maybe I might be watching the next set from a different home. I suppose it's up to me. If I want to make that happen, I'm pretty sure I can. The primary obstacles seem to be lethargy on my part and unrealistic expectations. If I accept what I can do, and then push the first domino over, it'll happen.
So we've just come through another Victoria Day weekend, which is the unofficial "official" start to summer in Canada. It was a pretty busy one for me.
Saturday P-Doug had these tickets to an unusual sort of outing... a gathering of urban food trucks... y'know, chip wagons... on the Peller Estates winery in Niagara Region. So it it was this odd conjunction of sampling some of Ontario's prize-winning Niagara wines along with trucks that were selling wood-fired pizza and fish and chips. P-Doug and I had a few samples of white wines interspersed with trying a rubbed chicken sandwich and chicken tikka masala over chips (first curry I ever had, about 15 years ago now, was over chips). We were there about two hours. Parking was across the road and just about a kilometer away. The walk there and back, decorated with flurries of dandelion fluffy, did us good, P-Doug said.
I should point out the the first stop, however, was a huge book warehouse we've been to before. It used to be a yard for repairing steam locomotives, I'm told. I picked up a couple of puzzle books for my dad, and for myself, an excellent book about B&W digital photography (tricks on wringing great monochrome shots out of colour images), and autobiographies of William Shatner and Michael Moore. From there, it was off to Peller Estates and the ring of chip wagons. :)
After that we drifted north up the Niagara Parkway along the river toward Fort Erie. Eventually we passed the Falls... funny, there was a time that would have locked my attention but this time it was just a few casual glances. Well, it's not the same passing it in a car with it 100' away and 300 people blocking the view as it is getting up and there and barely having the nerve to step up the the retaining wall.
We got to Fort Erie and drove down a street even I remembered, with a Chinese restaurant on it that we've frequented a few times over the years. He and I didn't go there this time; he was looking for a corner store to get something to drink. A bottled water and a couple of small ice cream cones later we were back on the road. Toronto saw us having the baked wings and carrot sticks at the Three Monkeys. Nice capper.
Sunday it was my turn to go pick him up. I got him about 12:15 and we headed west to Dig's place for a BBQ. Bolt asked if I could pick him up on my way through Oakville. The traffic on the Queen Elizabeth Way that had been so clear on Saturday was a mess on Sunday; sheer volume of traffic, no accidents. We left the highway at Winston Churchill Blvd. and took Upper Middle Road across Oakville, but there was no avoiding getting back on the QEW to head to Dig's. It was slow going but it was moving as we crossed Burlington. I took the exit to the 403 for a couple of reasons. One was that I wanted to drop in on my folks for a couple of minutes to drop off the books for my dad. The other was that with the traffic still grinding on the QEW, it looked like the fastest way to get to Dig's was to take the expressways up the Mountain and back down to Stony Creek. And that's what we did. We arrived at about 2:30, which was over two hours after I got rolling.
Everybody who was invited eventually showed up. It was Dig and his missus, and me and P-Doug and Bolt, and eventually Larry dropped in. Burgers and sausages. Lots of conversation over five hours or so. Did everyone some good, I think.
After that we stopped in at Bolt's "new" place and hot tubbed in the back yard for a couple of hours. It's nice when the warm weather has finally gotten rolling but it was still chattering teeth time getting out around quarter after ten. Drove back to Toronto, dropped P-Doug off, went home, hit the hay.
Yesterday, Victoria Day, I'd promised to come back and help Bolt move some of the last of the significant furniture from his parents' place, which sold in April. We threw some stuff out in the bin in the driveway, but mostly moved and/or disassembled wardrobes and bureaus he wanted to keep. The wardrobe was the biggest hoot, oh yeah. Taking the doors and the back off it, getting it up out of the basement, getting it into the back of his pickup... all the while his sister was there, distracting him about who should keep what little nick-knack. For once, instead of standing around like a lump, I was proactive and kept moving whatever I could manage on my own, without being asked to... just using my head. I'm kind of proud of that; it's kind of a new feature in my character in recent years and I'm trying to cultivate it. Anyway, the fun started when we got it back to his new place. He wanted it upstairs. But the stairs, and their walls and ceilings, all got together on the first landing and said "nope.". Getting it to the point it got stuck wasn't too hard... but getting it unstuck, well... that was a different story. Eventually he had to get a screwdriver and loosen one of the sides just so we could get it back down off the stairs. He was pretty disheartened and on the verge of taking it back to dump it in the bin and just keeping the mirrored doors as wall decorations, but I reminded him of its stated sentimental value and he took my advice and we just put it aside in the back yard till he could get his new place in order and figure out what, if anything, he wanted to do with it. In pretty short order he was making plans for using it to store the robes he wants to get for his hot tubbing guests.
A couple more trips back and forth saw us move another bureau and a bookshelf his father had inherited from the U of T where he was an engineering professor. The wood was stamped T. Eaton and Co., which means it was manufactured by Eaton's, a long time ago. These days, that alone marks it as a piece of Canadian history.
Though it wasn't my intention, I came out of it a little ahead, too. First of all, Bolt paid for lunch, which was chicken shawarma at a place he frequents for lunch. I also got a rake and a spade he was throwing out with an eye to our recent project of improving P-Doug's back yard. And I got the queen size bed support rails he was about to get rid of (he only wanted the Mennonite-carved headboard), to replace the ones I threw out about a year ago. Having a bed that's not on the floor like a hippie flophouse, I think, will slightly improve how my place shows when I get around to putting it on the market.
After that we went to Philthy McNasty's for supper, which was fajitas but with a new twist I got to introduce Bolt to. Bolt was diagnosed with diabetes last fall and I have to say he's taken it seriously. He's lost something like 20-30 pounds since then, and he's pretty scrupulous about watching his sugars. I can't remember where it was now... ah, yes, now I can; The Occasions Restaurant in the Beaches, I think... where they serve something like fajitas but instead of using tortillas, they bring you half a head of lettuce and you just wrap everything in the leaves. It's a nice, crunchy change and since there's not much to lettuce, it was a good replacement for the flour in tortillas. We talked the restaurant into cutting a head of lettuce in two for us and ate the chicken fajitas on that instead. Bolt was pleased and he's armed with a new idea for enjoying something he likes without the down side.
I got home about 9 and dumped the bed rails beside the bed. I'll have to see about assembling them sometime this week. I'll see if I can get Larry's help with that. But anyway, that was the weekend that was. Busy busy busy. Which kind of kept my mind off the fact that it's been two weeks now since Bonnie died; two weeks since I was just planning to get her stitches out on Tuesday and had to make that long-dreaded decision on Monday instead. It kind of reminds me of Linus's observation to Charlie Brown at the end of A Boy Named Charlie Brown after he's narrowly lost a national spelling bee competition: "But did you notice something, Charlie Brown? The world didn't come to an end." Well, I guess it did for Bonnie. But I, and the rest of the world, are still here, and we have to keep chugging, at least for a while yet, and this weekend past, I did.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Summer On Four Paws
I noticed this a few days ago on Flickr. It's from November, 2005, as winter was setting in, and it must have been among the first things I put up. I'd pretty much forgotten about it. It's nice to know I already had this kind of regard for her long before we were even half way through our journey together.
Summer On Four Paws
Awake, asleep, alike
Morning light squeezes through the blinds, spread fine across the ceiling
Her purring is the sunlight on my neck;
The brushing of her tail over my arm,
the aimless spring breeze
At my arm, the whispered promise
of warmth and life reborn
to a land where water's sharp as glass:
She is summer,
sleeping close by.
Summer On Four Paws
Awake, asleep, alike
Morning light squeezes through the blinds, spread fine across the ceiling
Her purring is the sunlight on my neck;
The brushing of her tail over my arm,
the aimless spring breeze
At my arm, the whispered promise
of warmth and life reborn
to a land where water's sharp as glass:
She is summer,
sleeping close by.
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Pinning pictures
I have an email pen pal in Australia, and I was trying to go through photos last night to show him pictures of the people I'm talking about in emails to him. But the computer was slow and cranky and I gave up... not before noticing I took an astonishing number of photos of my cats over the years. Good for me.
It surprises me that Max and Bonnie really did look different when they were younger. They were more wide-eyed and didn't quite have the edge that they took on. They don't look quite like themselves, back ten or eleven years ago. If I may say so, I think Bonnie grew noticeably prettier, and Max took on a rugged, handsome air he didn't quite have at first. I wonder if I'll think the same of Ally and Seth someday.
Anyway, I mentioned here last week how I used to get into grudge matches with Bonnie over her ancient habit of peeing on my bed, and how after one bout, I went out and got her a silver and amber pendant as a gesture of apology and a reminder to myself whenever I looked at her from then on. I happened across photos of her from July, 2003 where it doesn't look like she has it, and then a handful from August 4 that seem to make a point, in some shots, of showing it. Thanks to those photos, I have a pretty good idea when I got it for her. I knew it was in the summer, and I knew it was on a weekend. August 4, 2003 was a Monday. So it's a good bet that I made that gesture August 2 or 3. Bonnie wore that pendant for the rest of her life, nearly ten more years. Right now it's on her last collar, sitting on the shelf by the ashes of Jody, Jenny, Twinkle, and Max, waiting for her return.
The one thing I can say about this photographic hobby and how I've held onto pretty much every photo I've taken since 2003 is that if I'm willing to put in the time to go look, I can usually use those photos to pin down dates and give a context to my life in the past 10 years or more that I would otherwise probably have lost to the murk of fallible memory.
It surprises me that Max and Bonnie really did look different when they were younger. They were more wide-eyed and didn't quite have the edge that they took on. They don't look quite like themselves, back ten or eleven years ago. If I may say so, I think Bonnie grew noticeably prettier, and Max took on a rugged, handsome air he didn't quite have at first. I wonder if I'll think the same of Ally and Seth someday.
Anyway, I mentioned here last week how I used to get into grudge matches with Bonnie over her ancient habit of peeing on my bed, and how after one bout, I went out and got her a silver and amber pendant as a gesture of apology and a reminder to myself whenever I looked at her from then on. I happened across photos of her from July, 2003 where it doesn't look like she has it, and then a handful from August 4 that seem to make a point, in some shots, of showing it. Thanks to those photos, I have a pretty good idea when I got it for her. I knew it was in the summer, and I knew it was on a weekend. August 4, 2003 was a Monday. So it's a good bet that I made that gesture August 2 or 3. Bonnie wore that pendant for the rest of her life, nearly ten more years. Right now it's on her last collar, sitting on the shelf by the ashes of Jody, Jenny, Twinkle, and Max, waiting for her return.
The one thing I can say about this photographic hobby and how I've held onto pretty much every photo I've taken since 2003 is that if I'm willing to put in the time to go look, I can usually use those photos to pin down dates and give a context to my life in the past 10 years or more that I would otherwise probably have lost to the murk of fallible memory.
Coming and going
I've said I'm not eager to work from home, but given that I don't work here with anyone, it hardly seems any different.
One thing I won't miss is the smell. Let me set the stage here.
I started working here, in this office, less than 48 hours after Twinkle died. I'd been working from home while our office was transitioned. My stuff had been sitting here about a week. But with her gone, there was really no more reason to work from home. It was more or less at that time, too, that I decided to hell with the bus. Why spend more money than I would on gas to stand around waiting, brave the cold, sometimes not get a seat, leave myself without the ability to run little errands at lunch time or on the way home, and spend more of my life getting to and from work? So, that morning, I drove in. I was one of the first people on the floor. I had no idea where my desk was and I slightly scared a woman working on the floor when I suddenly appeared, asking about a seating map. I found my spot, shared with a 2' concrete pillar. I had to open a box and start putting things together there in the dark at 6:30 in the morning, late in October. More than anything at that moment I wanted not to have to be alone with my thoughts, but I was. It would be most of an hour before I could even get the laptop up and going.
But the thing that really caught me, and remains the thing that brings me right back to that dismal moment every morning when I walk in here, is the smell. Swear to God, it's like the maintenance staff comes up here at 3 in the morning, unwraps a fresh Barbie doll, and sets its hair on fire. In some places it verges on nauseating. And every morning, that's the smell of that morning walking in here after watching Twinkle gasping for breath in her litter box, dying. Besides the constant association, whatever it is, it can't be healthy. That's one thing I won't miss in working from home, anyway.
One thing I won't miss is the smell. Let me set the stage here.
I started working here, in this office, less than 48 hours after Twinkle died. I'd been working from home while our office was transitioned. My stuff had been sitting here about a week. But with her gone, there was really no more reason to work from home. It was more or less at that time, too, that I decided to hell with the bus. Why spend more money than I would on gas to stand around waiting, brave the cold, sometimes not get a seat, leave myself without the ability to run little errands at lunch time or on the way home, and spend more of my life getting to and from work? So, that morning, I drove in. I was one of the first people on the floor. I had no idea where my desk was and I slightly scared a woman working on the floor when I suddenly appeared, asking about a seating map. I found my spot, shared with a 2' concrete pillar. I had to open a box and start putting things together there in the dark at 6:30 in the morning, late in October. More than anything at that moment I wanted not to have to be alone with my thoughts, but I was. It would be most of an hour before I could even get the laptop up and going.
But the thing that really caught me, and remains the thing that brings me right back to that dismal moment every morning when I walk in here, is the smell. Swear to God, it's like the maintenance staff comes up here at 3 in the morning, unwraps a fresh Barbie doll, and sets its hair on fire. In some places it verges on nauseating. And every morning, that's the smell of that morning walking in here after watching Twinkle gasping for breath in her litter box, dying. Besides the constant association, whatever it is, it can't be healthy. That's one thing I won't miss in working from home, anyway.
Booze power
Here in Ontario, the provincial government holds an essential monopoly on the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages other than beer (which is a private monopoly), via the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, generally known as the LCBO. The first long weekend of the short Canadian summer is coming up... Victoria Day, also known as "May-Two-Four", both because Victoria Day, always the third Monday in May, buzzes around and sometimes falls on that day, and because "a two-four" is local slang for a case of 24 bottles of beer. It's the weekend that the cottages open up, you see.
The union to which LCBO workers belong has chosen this moment to strike. Odds are, at midnight tonight, they will be going on strike. The radio stations are telling us to expect long line-ups as people stock up in advance of the province going dry (at least for wine and liquor) till who-knows-when.
I do drink again; after taking two years off, I decided to start enjoying beer when I go out again. But I'm not keeping it around the house, so I'm not really inconvenienced by this all that much. I have a strange relationship with unions... I'm pro-collective bargaining; I think it's an important feature of a democratic society and the only real hedge we still have against the rich simply siphoning off every drop. But I hate strikes! I hate the inconveniences. The disruptions. So I was kind of miffed when I heard about this, in the abstract.
Recently, though, I heard the practicalities of it. There are a lot of people working for the LCBO part time. Many of them took the jobs in the understanding that, shortly, they'd be full time. Some people have languished in part time positions at the LCBO for years. The issues of the strike seem to be job security and putting more of the current workers on full time. I think these are laudable goals. I stand behind them.
Every time some politician or right-wing newspaper wonk gets on his soap box and recommends selling the LCBO off to the private sector... like one of his big business buddies, say... we hear the same old song about how the LCBO is actually a money-spinner for the province, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue every year. Okay, fine. We pay slightly higher prices and have no competition, but we have two advantages: a wide variety of items since the LCBO is one of the world's largest single buyers of wines and spirits, and the revenue stays in the province and goes into the till. So I say, if we're making good money off of it, let's put some of it into giving the people keeping the lights on and the shelves stocked a decent wage and standard of living. In my mind, any good business should accomplish that before anything else.
The union to which LCBO workers belong has chosen this moment to strike. Odds are, at midnight tonight, they will be going on strike. The radio stations are telling us to expect long line-ups as people stock up in advance of the province going dry (at least for wine and liquor) till who-knows-when.
I do drink again; after taking two years off, I decided to start enjoying beer when I go out again. But I'm not keeping it around the house, so I'm not really inconvenienced by this all that much. I have a strange relationship with unions... I'm pro-collective bargaining; I think it's an important feature of a democratic society and the only real hedge we still have against the rich simply siphoning off every drop. But I hate strikes! I hate the inconveniences. The disruptions. So I was kind of miffed when I heard about this, in the abstract.
Recently, though, I heard the practicalities of it. There are a lot of people working for the LCBO part time. Many of them took the jobs in the understanding that, shortly, they'd be full time. Some people have languished in part time positions at the LCBO for years. The issues of the strike seem to be job security and putting more of the current workers on full time. I think these are laudable goals. I stand behind them.
Every time some politician or right-wing newspaper wonk gets on his soap box and recommends selling the LCBO off to the private sector... like one of his big business buddies, say... we hear the same old song about how the LCBO is actually a money-spinner for the province, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue every year. Okay, fine. We pay slightly higher prices and have no competition, but we have two advantages: a wide variety of items since the LCBO is one of the world's largest single buyers of wines and spirits, and the revenue stays in the province and goes into the till. So I say, if we're making good money off of it, let's put some of it into giving the people keeping the lights on and the shelves stocked a decent wage and standard of living. In my mind, any good business should accomplish that before anything else.
What you keep
Look at this.
What you're looking at is a daily reminder of my grandmother. Hard to believe, right? A bit silly. When she died way back in 1989, and we went to Montreal to help clean out her apartment, this happened to be something I picked up simply out of practical need. And for some reason, I've had it ever since. It's been in bedrooms, bathrooms, and five or six different offices and desks in the past almost 24 years. I've had it more than half my life. The original lens cleaner in it is long, long gone, replaced by Windex and then more actual lens cleaner.
It's amazing that this is what her life comes down to, for her grandson. The only other thing of hers I know for sure I have is a letter from the British Ministry of Defense that summarizes her father's service record, which told me just enough that I was able to work out which regiment he was in, and that he died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. That, and the opportunity to acquire Irish citizenship by foreign birth registration, which I did back in 2002. (Which reminds me; I really need to get around to renewing my passport; it lapsed over a year ago now. Had that in the works when Twinkle got sick.)
I really don't have anything else of hers that shows who she was, what she cared about, what she took an interest in. I was just getting to know her as a person, rather than as a grandmother, when she died, and I've always regretted we didn't have a few more years. She was the last of my grandparents. With her, that generation passed in my family.
You'd look at this bottle and just see it as one more incidental nick-knack in the jumble of pens and paperclips here on my desk. You'd never know the bottle is anything special. Without me to provide the context, it's not. It's kind of sobering when you think about it that way. Unless you're someone hugely famous, your life and its meaning is given context by the people who know you and care about you. And after them, we're lost in the pond as the newer, stronger ripples supersede us.
The internet's still a relatively new thing in human society and sometimes I wonder if this blog will long survive me if I just leave it up, and if anyone decades or centuries after I'm gone will ever come across it and take a passing interest in it. It strikes me that that would be rather a deeper personal legacy than my grandparents were able to leave behind, anyway.
It's amazing that this is what her life comes down to, for her grandson. The only other thing of hers I know for sure I have is a letter from the British Ministry of Defense that summarizes her father's service record, which told me just enough that I was able to work out which regiment he was in, and that he died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. That, and the opportunity to acquire Irish citizenship by foreign birth registration, which I did back in 2002. (Which reminds me; I really need to get around to renewing my passport; it lapsed over a year ago now. Had that in the works when Twinkle got sick.)
I really don't have anything else of hers that shows who she was, what she cared about, what she took an interest in. I was just getting to know her as a person, rather than as a grandmother, when she died, and I've always regretted we didn't have a few more years. She was the last of my grandparents. With her, that generation passed in my family.
You'd look at this bottle and just see it as one more incidental nick-knack in the jumble of pens and paperclips here on my desk. You'd never know the bottle is anything special. Without me to provide the context, it's not. It's kind of sobering when you think about it that way. Unless you're someone hugely famous, your life and its meaning is given context by the people who know you and care about you. And after them, we're lost in the pond as the newer, stronger ripples supersede us.
The internet's still a relatively new thing in human society and sometimes I wonder if this blog will long survive me if I just leave it up, and if anyone decades or centuries after I'm gone will ever come across it and take a passing interest in it. It strikes me that that would be rather a deeper personal legacy than my grandparents were able to leave behind, anyway.
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Coming to more grips
There was something I realized I forgot to mention this morning in terms of coping with losing Bonnie, and that is that almost immediately, literally within an hour or two of her death, I was being tasked by Dig and his wife with a way to take control of the debt that's been on my back since Twinkle became sick. Suddenly, in all that despair, there was light, a way, a path. Something constructive to take my mind off what had just happened and been going on for weeks, months. I had a project and I grabbed it with both hands. I suppose finding a new place to call home is a part of that. That's going to be strange... surrendering the place Bonnie lived in and breathed her last, and never seeing it again. But on the other hand, never having to see it again, not being forced by my circumstances to glance to my left and see, a foot away, the place she died, every day.
I've talked about how I held up when I faced Bonnie's illness and, finally, having to spare her from suffering by ending her life. Those were, in some ways, practical matters. There was emotion in them, of course; I can tell you right now that if the doctors had said, "yes, we can lick this and she'll have another two good years, but you'll have to come up with another five thousand dollars," I'd have done it without flinching. Even ten thousand dollars. She meant more to me than just the meaner living paying that debt off implies. But over top of it all were the clinic, sensible decisions I was making, without getting balled up about the money. It's not trivial, and obviously it worries me, but I felt it was the right thing to do. But what's got me scared now is when her ashes come back. When there's nothing I can do for her, and everything she was is gone and all that's left is some dust hidden inside something about the size of a coconut in my hands, and that lively, loving girl is set on the wardrobe shelf to sit and collect dust forever... when there's no clinical, hopeful, or morally necessary decision to be made that will stiffen my spine, I wonder then. Will I cry at last? Or close my eyes, sigh, and accept this too?
At this point, I'm honestly not sure which I'd rather. But there'll come a moment when I'll feel both, and I'll have to force that river down one channel or the other.
I've talked about how I held up when I faced Bonnie's illness and, finally, having to spare her from suffering by ending her life. Those were, in some ways, practical matters. There was emotion in them, of course; I can tell you right now that if the doctors had said, "yes, we can lick this and she'll have another two good years, but you'll have to come up with another five thousand dollars," I'd have done it without flinching. Even ten thousand dollars. She meant more to me than just the meaner living paying that debt off implies. But over top of it all were the clinic, sensible decisions I was making, without getting balled up about the money. It's not trivial, and obviously it worries me, but I felt it was the right thing to do. But what's got me scared now is when her ashes come back. When there's nothing I can do for her, and everything she was is gone and all that's left is some dust hidden inside something about the size of a coconut in my hands, and that lively, loving girl is set on the wardrobe shelf to sit and collect dust forever... when there's no clinical, hopeful, or morally necessary decision to be made that will stiffen my spine, I wonder then. Will I cry at last? Or close my eyes, sigh, and accept this too?
At this point, I'm honestly not sure which I'd rather. But there'll come a moment when I'll feel both, and I'll have to force that river down one channel or the other.
Zap!
Crop of a frame capture from the dash cam on the 401 eastbound on my way to the car dealership this morning.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
This is Ally. She's not exactly cuddly. She can be sweet, but only on her own terms. I like her fiestiness; it makes her an interesting character. But she makes my arms ache to hug Bonnie again. And I never will.