Making It Up As I Go Along #599

That Time of Year

It’s that time of year

When a snowfall warning steals headlines

When the countdown is on at work

When daily routines are measured as lasts

Last grocery trip is made

Fridge stocks dwindle

Milk cheese and perishables

Five days left to get it bare

Last round of dayshift

Prodding myself to make it

Only two more predawn wakeups

Almost done until the New Year

Last nights at work come soon

Ending my Ottawa year quietly

Manning a dark office alone

Contemplating the journey home

Last visits with mainland friends

A pub of pints and tales

Laughing our way towards next year

Knowing next year is only weeks away

But it’s also a time for firsts

The first breath of salty sea air

First greetings with parents

First steps in childhood home

The first tree ornament to be hung

First walk about downtown streets

First home cooked meal

And first moments of well watched Christmas movies

Just a few more days of lasts

Until the first of the firsts

Flies me home

To begin again

DAYS…

--- It’s cold on Tuesday.  I walk to the caf for lunch and it’s not so bad… but coming back, with the wind in my face… thank goodness it was warm food I got.

--- The rest of Tuesday and Wednesday is pretty normal times for dayshift.

NIGHTS…

--- Fair amount of SICAR to do first night.  So plenty of looking at shoe impressions on snowy roads and paths all across the country.

--- Also get Thai food for the first time in months. 

--- Night two is pretty quiet and is a nice way to slide into the days off.

SATURDAY…

--- Long walk in the woods.  It’s the best time of year for this.  Ground is frozen so it’s good for walking anywhere… no muddy places to worry about.  But it isn’t so cold that you can’t manage.  Lots of layers and I’m trekking all over.

SUNDAY…

--- Another good walk and some quiet times around the house.

MONDAY…

--- Lee Valley trip.  It’s madness there but they at least have another cash open for those just getting stocking stuffers… so I’m in and out pretty good. 

--- The highway isn’t so nice though.  I swear the only time I can drive on the highway successfully is at 5:30 in the morning before dayshift.  Any other time the road is literally stopped dead with construction traffic.  Takes close to 40 minutes to drive to Lee Valley.  No traffic would get me there in about twenty.

--- Little grocery store trip after Lee Valley and go to Telus and get a new iPhone.  Weird not to use my old one still but it was getting unreliable with the battery life.  For me to go out away from the house and have the battery anything less than 80% was taking the risk that the phone would die while out and about.  Internet searching was getting slower on the old phone too.

Making It Up As I Go Along #598

DAYS/NIGHTS…

--- Work is pretty run of the mill.  Fairly busy on Monday.  Less so Tuesday.  Alone for the first three hours of nightshift on Wednesday.  Had some A & W for a treat on Thursday. 

--- Lost power for an hour on Monday due to strong winds all day.  It was already gone when I got home.  Everything being very black for several blocks.  It came back on about twenty minutes after I got home but my pizza order was already made by that point.  I didn’t want to have cereal for supper after a twelve hour day. 

FRIDAY…

--- A trip to Canadian Tire.  Got some storage shelves for the laundry and storage rooms.  And there’s my Black Friday shopping all done.

SATURDAY…

--- 45 minute walk and a fair bit of hockey on TV. 

SUNDAY…

--- Walk for just under an hour.  See a heron, big woodpecker, and between sixteen and eighteen wild turkeys out in a farmers field.  Didn’t bring my camera though.  Oh dear.

--- Watch about three quarters of the Grey Cup.  They tried to make the opening ceremony too much like the Olympics.  I mean announcing the people who carry the Canadian flag into the building?  Overblown silliness.

--- My biggest complaint about the CFL has always been the showboating.  Every play ends in a player prancing around all proud of himself or trash talking the guy either he was covering or who was supposed to cover him.  I miss the days of catches being made and treated like no big deal… of sacks being treated like “I’ve done this lots of times before and will continue to do it so no big deal.”… and of touchdowns being celebrated with teammates in a spontaneous fashion.  Too many now veer away from oncoming teammates so that they can do some sort of choreographed dance/skit/charade all unimpeded for the camera.

MONDAY…

--- Thirty-five minute walk and also a trip for groceries.  Brought the camera on the walk this time… of course, I see nothing.  Still a nice, peaceful time.

Walk of Time

Living trees have turned to columns of wood

As remnants from an ancient civilization

To be traversed respectfully

Like the Greek Parthenon or a ruined Turkish library

Shuffling through inches of leaves

Dead and browning upon the ground

Turning brittle and crispy under foot

Breeze swayed green a lifetime ago

Highpoints of the trail sit bare as mountain peaks

Having broken the leaf-line we step upon frozen caked mud

Outcrops of soil perched atop pillars of ice

Each step crunching through the delicate land

As Japanese Godzilla feet

Plowing through mud modeled Tokyo

Once hidden nests exposed

Lodged within a limbs nook

Had been bustling with downy peeping life

Now lays disheveled and abandoned

The quiet of the place broken

As a jittery squirrel leaps and bounds

Scuffling through the leaves for snacks

As an frantic child at Christmas

Digging through discarded holiday wrap

Searching for that precious small treasure  

That lays somewhere down beneath

Soon will come the snow

Burying muddy Tokyo in glacial ice

Fossilizing the fragments of leaves

And filling the ruins of the unsheltered nest

Until only a knot of snow remains

In the Skeletal column of wood

All buried in pure white

For the millennia until Spring melt chips away

As a natural archeologist

Unearthing hints of a bygone age

With new leaves budding

Turning the columns to life again

Where hidden birds peep for meals

And those soil topped ice pillars

Have turned to the muddy floor of great floodwater lakes

My sloshing footsteps left to sink and slip

As tree top squirrels

Scurry through branches

Collecting great feasts of nuts.