Making It Up As I Go Along #639

The quick version.  Updating on a Friday as tomorrow is the start of my CPSIC schedule again.  So for the next month, or so, I’ll be like I was when previously in CPSIC, updating the blog every last day off… Or every eight days.  

I must be completely out of touch now.  For one, I didn’t know there was such a thing as kinderstart… I assume it’s simply preschool renamed.  Or maybe kindergarten renamed… But then for parents of kinderstart children to say that this means their kid is all grown up? What? Is kinderstart a job? I guess it lines up with people retiring and becoming a kid again.  No wonder our world is so messed up.  Children are grown up and grown ups are kids again.

Speaking of messed up world.  I get way too much delight out of the factoid I recently heard where, in Canada, a barrel of oil now costs five cauliflower.  It wasn’t so long ago that cauliflower was a disposable vegetable… Among the left over scraps of a veggie tray that gets tossed during the after part cleanup.  It was also like yesterday when a barrel of oil was the main symbol of national wealth.  You’d daydream of keeping a few barrels out back by the shed in case financial times got tight.  And now, if we lived in a barter system, you couldn’t get six cauliflower for a barrel of oil.  You’d go into the produce market, rolling your barrel, saying “give me a half dozen cauliflower for this”.  And the store owner would be rubbing his chin and coming back with “I’ll give you three”.  Back and forth bargaining would send you home with five.  Black gold doesn’t go so far anymore.

How bad has the NHL gotten? Canadians, in January, don’t seem to really care about hockey.  The All Star weekend includes a fourth line plug who’s more often a healthy scratch and had to be given a leave of absence from his minor league team in order to take part… And Sydney Crosby wasn’t even invited to go.  This hockey season, I’ve already bought tickets for two spring training baseball games in Florida… Yet no NHL tickets for a team that plays within an hours drive of my house.  And I have turned off hockey games on TV in order to watch baseball player position ranking shows more than two months before the baseball season even starts.  All this and still the powers that be in the NHL say the game is as good as ever.  Delusional. 

And that’s about it for a shortened week.  More substance eight days from now. 

Making It Up As I Go Along #638

Going back to the CPSIC shift shortly.  I think it’ll mean I’ll post something again on Friday of this week (the day before I go back to CPSIC) and then will go back to the every eight day posting schedule.  I’ll be on that schedule until early March… So it’ll be temporary.  But a bit all over the place for the next little while.

I think the end of the heavy machinery across the street from me is soon at hand.  Another day or two of digging will likely get the rest of what used to be Mud Creek, and surrounding forest and meadow, to be a valley with a new creek following an artificial course and bare slopes going from it to the forest and street.  The creek will likely be 15-20 feet below the original level.  I assume the valley shape to this new landscape will be to hold heavy runoff from the built up neighbourhood.  Either way, I’m sure it’ll be nice when complete.  For now, I’m just looking forward to no more excavators and giant dump trucks working a hundred feet outside my front door.  

I’d Rather Be Snowshoeing

I’d rather be snowshoeing

Than stuck in here

To feel the soft sink

As I lumber above

Slumbering snakes and toads

Below their snow packed sky

Leaving me as a giant

Traipsing across their clouds

Shrews and mice now tunnel dwellers

Scurrying beneath my feet

As I carve out new roads

Pioneering the whiteness

Leaving new routes

Set for a rabbit’s scamper

Or a coyote’s jaunt 

Patrolling the forest along my tracks

So why sit here clacking keys

As I glare upon the artificial light

Making wishes when at this moment

The room brightens

Out my window

The sun pushed aside a cloud

Or perhaps it was one of the gods

Snowshoeing by above me

Time for me to scurry beneath their feet. 

Making It Up As I Go Along #637

With heavy machinery still doing work across the road (taking them forever to landscape the creek bed area) my treks through the woods and power line corridor have been substantially decreased.  Once they’re done for the day, it’s getting pretty close to dark.  They seem to stop an hour or two earlier on Saturdays, and Sunday is the only day of the week that they’re not doing anything.  So, most of my exercise has come in the form of the driveway.  Lots of shovelling and cleaning up out there.  My back doesn’t appreciate it too much but dad would be quite pleased.  

This week I likely did between 40 and 60 minutes each of four  different days.  It’s currently at bare pavement with likely only about 5 to 10% of the driveway keeping a touch of stubborn ice on it.  And… To all who though my life couldn’t possibly get more boring… I think the new benchmark has been set.

With age must come a greater loss of balance.  I went out walking on a fairly icy path yesterday.  In past years I’d have walked it without a slip.  Yesterday, I twice almost went tits up… The second of those times doing a three second stutter step that would have made me the neighbourhood laughing stock, had it been seen.  I suppose I should consider myself lucky to have had the agility left in my aging bones to have not actually hit the deck.  Give it another twenty years and I’d likely still be out there… Head split open and crows feasting on my remains.

Florida is lining up much as last year’s trip.  I now have tickets to two spring training baseball games.  March 22, in Lakeland, for Detroit vs. Toronto.  Then March 26, in Dunedin, for Toronto vs. The Yankees.  I could actually imagine myself retiring to Florida simply for the baseball.  It has become my ideal way to usher in summer.  

Ice Dance

Skyward right hand

Lowdown left

Scuff scuff shimmy shimmy slip

Neck muscles tense

S-curved spine

Lean lean back then forward dip

Crow head cocked

Gnawing squirrel pause

Foolish foolish silly human drip

Regain control 

bashfully glance to and fro

Muddling muddling how’d I avoid a backflip

Making It Up As I Go Along #636

Everybody, everywhere, is sick.  A friend in Ottawa, another in Newfoundland, and both my mother and aunt in Florida… All sick.  Seeing I had a cold only shortly before most of these people, I feel like the carrier monkey from Outbreak.  

Today it’s windy and raining and four degrees… In Ottawa.  St. John’s winter has followed me.  It makes me feel like I’m home… Only then I find it strange to think that none of my immediate family is anywhere near Newfoundland Right now.  In fact, I’m the closest.  Sister sits in BC and the parents have begun their Florida winter hibernation.  

I’m booked for Florida.  The tradition is on.  After a March visit to mom and dad last year, I’ve booked to go again this year.  Last year I left the day after  dad’s birthday.  This year I’ll be leaving the day after mine.  I’m looking forward to the warmth, sea, southern wildlife, baseball… And possible Cape Canaveral visit.

Three weeks from a CPSIC return.  Back to the twelve hour shift with four days on and four off.  A temporary fill in but one I’m looking forward to.  It’ll be interesting to see if the rotating shifts are harder to take now, after being off of it for around nine months… Or if it’ll make me wish for a return to the old ways.  

The world of texting can make you all the closer to those you communicate with.  But it can also make you feel all the more separated from them too.  One night this week, I texted four people in fairly short succession.  None replied.  I heard back from two of them the next day… But the other two are likely taken hostage or have taken up residence on the International Space Station.  There can be no other explanation.  

Sunday Bliss

Sitting at the window

Unsure of what to say

Watching the droplets running down

As background trees do sway

Gusts of wind caress the brick

Below Me slushes  a car

I think of springtime visits

With family so very far

And at the tree line they do walk

A dog and his master

With he prancing through the snow

And her trudging through wet disaster

Perhaps I should have a dog

To convince me to be out in this

But dryly I sit behind my window

In cozy Sunday bliss.  

         

Making It Up As I Go Along #635

Been a while since I’ve blogged.  Sixteen days in Newfoundland followed by going straight back to the work week.  There was little time left for sitting and contemplating.

Home was good.  Met up with several friends and family members.  Went to three movies (Star Wars twice and Creed).  Saw a hockey game.  And ventured out to Mallard Cottage for a fine meal.

The downside of the trip was I spent the last six days of the sixteen fighting a cold.  So I went approximately two weeks between a case of the flu in Ottawa and a common cold in Newfoundland.  The poor old immune system has taken a beating.

I got back to Ottawa near midnight on the 28th (going into the 29th).  My cab drove up to the house with green grass showing and only small dustings of snow.  In less than two hours, it was a world of white out there.  It continued on through the entire day of the 29th and resulted in my first snow day from work since I moved to Ottawa.  

Yesterday was my first snowshoeing trek of the new year.  I was out for an hour and it really did feel like my first time.  I got home sweaty and lead legged.  Still, it was good to be out getting some exercise in the woods.  

At the same time that I was snowshoeing, my parents were on a plane heading to Florida.  I was never much of a Florida fan.  Always figured there were more places than that to go get away from winter.  But after last March’s visit there, I can see why people are drawn.  Be near friends and family in warm weather with many things to be able to do and see… I could have been convinced to give up the snowshoes for a plane ticket yesterday.  Especially now that tonight is coming with frostbite warnings.  

There has been many highlights to the last few weeks.  

I love Christmas shopping with mom and dad in downtown St. John’s.  Walking along Water Street.  Ducking in to small shops.  Turning up a walking lane way to be able to have lunch in a favourite pub.  We pretty much knew what we were getting each other.  In some cases, getting the gift receiver to try on a sweater or size up a bag that ends up wrapped and under the tree.  But it doesn’t matter.  Downtown ventures like this beat the mall any day.

Mallard Cottage is the best restaurant for me.  It’s a night of coziness.  You head down to Quidi Vidi Village, all tucked away from the urban sprawl of the rest of the city.  You then slip in through the door of what looks to be a small home.  You are then either seated in fireplace warmed rooms where seating more than half a dozen would make for a crowd or you slide into the larger room where you can watch the work of the kitchen staff while still maintaining a quiet chat.  

There’s something magical about Star Wars.  From the blaring trumpets announcing the bold yellow title upon a background of stars, to the World War I style dogfights of fighter ships.  Seeing an unknown alien just sitting in the corner of a bar for a drink or listening to a droid “beep boop” on to its human master… It’s nearly impossible to not enjoy a Star Wars night at the movies.  Though it seems many have tried.  Since watching the film twice already (I don’t rule out a third viewing before it leaves cinemas), I’ve watched internet writers and bloggers pick it apart.  Star Wars is one of those things I just let myself be immersed in.  Some scenes in it drive my imagination.  Other scenes bring me back to my childhood.  I simply don’t want to look for faults in the movie.  Though, to be fair, I have a hard time watching the 2nd instalment in the franchise.  That was indeed a fairly painful movie.  But each of the other six simply bring me sci-fi happiness.

My trips home are never long enough.  I can be home for a long weekend or I can be home for three weeks.  No matter what, I leave having not done all I had hoped to do.  Be it missing out on a visit with a friend or not having gotten to a favourite place to hike or walk.  I’m always left sitting at the gate at the airport gently shaking my head at the fact that I missed out on one thing or another.  I guess that’s why I still call it home.

That said, St. John’s is becoming a less pretty city as time goes on.  Sure, downtown is as good as it gets and a ten minute drive past the city limits has you overlooking the sea from jutting cliffs that rise several hundred feet into the air.  But the main streets of the city are busier and each trip home sees fewer forested enclaves and more parking lot encased box stores.  And, especially along the busier streets, home owners are more likely to use lawns for extra parking than gardens or trees.  Still, there’s something solid about being able to return to the neighbourhood where you grew up and to enter the house of your childhood.  It makes me very much of homebody on visits back home.  I always have to make sure to set aside several days of these trips to do nothing but linger around the house.

So all in all, another successful trip home.  Sure I’d have loved to meet up with several friends that I missed.  Or to see other friends more than the one time we got together.  But I loved my time home regardless.  And if you have to catch a cold for a week, I can think of no better place to do it than in the house where I grew up with parents there willing and able to take care of their sniffling, coughing boy.