Making It Up As I Go Along #659

Well last week’s blog got preempted by the Olympics.  I was surprised with how much of the games I ended up watching.  I had no interest going in, but once things started up, I found myself curious at first… And then drawn in as time went on.  Well, drawn in with limits.  I got sick to death of beach volleyball.  That seemed to be the always constant of the games.  And I ignored the opening and closing ceremonies.  I just couldn’t be bothered with them.  I also wasn’t a big fan of how the games were televised.  It just felt to me as if the TV was little more than advertising for how you can watch the events via live streaming.  There was more time spent giving us background on people and updates on where you can go to see this or that (be it what TV channel or what was available via apps) then there was spent on the actual events.  In the end, I more or less stuck to CBC and ignored the Sportsnet and TSN coverage.  It was just easier that way.  

Speaking of sporting events, Sportsnet is ramping up the advertising for the upcoming World Cup of hockey.  I simply couldn’t care less about it.  It’s a money grab by the NHL and its players association.  Twice before they’ve started up a World Cup, proclaiming how it’ll be a regular event and be the grand showcase of hockey.  And twice before it fell by the wayside.  A once a decade World Cup isn’t worth my time.  This is just them looking for a cash cow so that they can pull the NHL out of Olympic hockey.  I hope the final is the North American Young Guns (so stupid) vs the Rest of Europe (so very stupid) and nobody tunes in to watch.  

A few blocks into my CPSIC return and it’s been going pretty smoothly on my body.  I got used to the overnights again pretty quickly and the afternoon naps before those overnight shifts have been easy enough.  I think my favourite part of being on the shift is how little I need to use an alarm to get up out of bed.  Six out of eight days, I can just get up when I wake naturally.  I can ease into the day.  It’s so much better than going to bed knowing you must be up within six hours… Or five hours… Or whatever the number is as you lay in bed, hoping to soon fall asleep.

In exactly three weeks… From this very minute… I should be in the air somewhere near Montreal.  I’m heading home again for the annual September trip.  And this year there’ll even be a few days camping in Terra Nova Park.  Haven’t done that in more than twenty years.  I’ve come to really enjoy the September trips home.  The city is running normally then.  Not as touristy as a summer trip home.  The weather is still usually pretty nice and it’s just generally a nice, relaxing time.  I’ll probably be exhausted at the start of this trip.  My flight is just before 10:00 in the morning and I work the night shift the night before.  I think I’ll have just enough time to go home, shower and change, and then call the cab for the airport.  

Accepted Garbage

Construction sites are the most disgusting spaces this side of a dump.  In many ways, they are a dump actually.  I’ve been walking through the new neighbourhood lately.  Watching new homes going up and seeing the area slowly transform from woodland and fields to suburb.  

At this stage of things, where some units are now being lived in while neighbour units are still construction sites…  Where a new lawn still shows sod lines and, across the street, mounds of dirt remain as a constant source of neighbourhood dust… This is the stage where the garbage is most noticeable.  

The dirt fringes of these new neighbourhoods become the dumping ground.  Metal bands that once kept palates of bricks together now sit discarded among the rubble.  Some of these bands have laid out here so long that they’ve begun to rust with the weather.  Slabs of concrete, discarded fragments of wood beams, and left over pieces of PVC tubing also litter the dirt mounds.

But the garbage goes beyond this.  We get to see the garbage of the construction workers themselves in these places.  Which coffee company is winning the hearts of the workers?  Count the paper cups and find out.  So many Tim Horton’s and McDonalds coffee cups litter the edges of the site.  There’s a Pepsi tin here… A Gatorade bottle there.  An old construction helmet lays discarded as if it’s a reminder of a fallen soldier on the battleground.  

So much is strewn around everywhere but I never have seen a cleanup crew.  A water truck may slowly soak streets on a Friday afternoon as it tries to battle the dust of the area.  But the garbage remains day after day… Week after week… And month after month.  

I’m left to wonder what lays beneath my yard?  My property was also once a dirt pit.  Are there Pepsi tins beneath my lawn? Is there a discarded hammer head tucked in against my foundation?  If you dig up my driveway, will there be a treasure of discarded 2x4 ends and nails strewn about?  

I know there’s a lot of garbage created while a neighbourhood gets built.  But shouldn’t there be some level of care taken by the workers?  Is it so hard to spend the last ten minutes of the work day just cleaning up your discarded coffee cups?  Shouldn’t old bits of PVC and those metal bands from the palates be tossed in a dumpster?  And what of the fallen construction worker?  That guy who left his helmet on the field of battle.  Will there be a monument in his honour?  And which house foundation sits silently and secretly… As his final resting place.   

Making It Up As I Go Along #658

Back on the good shift.  Though I may not feel this way when I watch people leaving work at 3:00 tomorrow.  But after just going through my first four days off, once again, it felt good.  Two day weekends carry too much pressure to fit stuff in.  Groceries… Movies… Going out to a pub… There are only a couple of days to squeeze any of it in.  Four days off… You can take a day or two to reset batteries or just be lazy around the house and there’s still two days for other things.

The Olympics are back.  I must say, so far I’m surprised with the amount I’ve watched.  I had absolutely no interest going into these games and completely ignored the opening ceremony stuff.  But I’ve been watching a fair bit of the rowing, swimming, rugby and beach volleyball.  Rugby 7s would be really good if an entire game didn’t take just fifteen minutes to play.  Two seven minute halfs are just too short to be completely legit.  

Social media and politics make for a really bad combination.  It’s just too easy for people to spout off without really thinking about that which they’re spouting about.  You just keep seeing way too much anger and irrationality on a daily basis.  This leader is Hitler… That leader loves Sharia Law… If this person gets in we’re all doomed… And that person “isn’t MY Prime Minister”.  It’s all extremist.  And it’s all garbage.  I wish people would share less loony and just go for a walk or something instead.  Life’s too short to be eaten up with so much hate.  And, for the love of God, check facts before posting stuff.  All it usually takes is a quick Google search to see that it’s not actually Hillary Clinton posing for Halloween in “black face”.  Barrack Obama still isn’t coming for your guns.  Justin Trudeau has never, nor has any plans in the future, to let in half a million refugees.  These are all lies told by hateful twits.  And if you believe it, you’ve been duped.  All it does is make you look stupid.

Anyway, enough of that.  

Booked for another trip home.  Hadn’t planned to book again so quickly but Porter had too good a deal.  So ten days in September will be a nice time around the good ol’ city.  Hopefully it’ll be warmer than it was in my week around town in July.  But either way, it should be a fairly relaxed, less hectic time.  I find I’m always catching up on sleep in Newfoundland.  Even on days off around Ottawa, I don’t sleep much beyond six hours.  But once I get home to the sea air, my night’s sleep jumps up close to eight hours most nights.  So I’m about five weeks away from more sleep, family meals, downtown strolls, and lunches and evenings with long time friends.

Building Burbs

The suburbs are building up.  

Most days, my summer walks are now along sidewalks.  I walk along the edge of someone else’s lawn while they sit in their driveway, barbecuing this evenings meal.  

I’m walking with two minds.  One looks to the future and imagines what the finished product will be like.  Knowing most will never know, or think about, what their neighbourhood was like before.  The other mind remembers back to my original walks.  When I’d cross the street and not feel concrete under my feet again for the next hour.  I crossed over that narrow border between civilization and nature.  I lived a stones throw from a beaver.  I watched a deer cross in front of me, huffing at me from the safety of the woods.  I crossed paths with a coyote as I snowshoed and startled turkeys into a dried creek bed where they ran for their lives ahead of me.

Today I can walk along and see the house which stands where I once found a moose skull.  I see the beginnings of the roadway where a grouse once scooted past me, leaving me only time for a Sasquatch photo (out of focus and dark) as mosquitos attacked my hands and neck.  In another year, I’ll be able to drive my car past that spot as I remember the rain soaked pools carpeted by a bed of yellow and red leaves.  

I don’t see fireflies across the street anymore.  The thick brush was trenched out where they once flickered.  In it’s place is now a creek valley.  

Dozens of frogs and toads would come to my yards in past summers.  Now I spotted one small one, hopping frantically across my front step… As if he’s lost and in search of woods. 

But despite the buildup, I’m still near nature.  This summer I’ve seen a garter snake swimming in a ditch, on the hunt for frogs and fish.  The crickets still call to each other every night.  Muskrat have come back to the freshly dredged second pond, and geese raised goslings within view of my spare room bedroom window.  

So each day I continue to walk with two minds.  One remembering the moose tracks left along muddy patches.  While the other wonders how this neighbourhood will look in another five years.  As I look forward to seeing the park, advertised by billboard today, as I walk by where that moose skull once lay.

Making It Up As I Go Along #657

I’m officially finished with the five day work weeks again.  Last week’s round of evenings being my last full week in Latents.  This week will be a three day week there (having a stat holiday today and taking this coming Friday off).  So it is now an official return to CPSIC schedule blogging.  Every eight days… More or less… Rather than every Sunday.  Though it will be a Monday posting next week as well.  I’m simply running a day behind this week.

Really, not much went on this past week.  Evening shift at work meant it was pretty quiet in the office while I was there.  It also meant I didn’t do much outside of work.  A little TV and grocery shopping was about it.  And for the holiday weekend, the only people I’ve actually sat and talked with have been thousands of kilometres away, talking to me on the phone.  Several days of quiet have been nice, after a busy last month… But I probably shouldn’t enjoy such times as much as I do.  I see people on TV talking about how people are social animals… How we need contact with others.  And I see politicians harp on about needing to do this or that for the benefit of “our children”.  And it’s at those times that I’m left to think I should feel guilty about pleasant solitary times.  The people on TV seem to be telling me that I’m wasting my life.  But the people on TV also give voice to Donald Trump… So maybe I’m not the one who’s got it all wrong after all.  

The Living Room Clock

The rhythmic tick of the clock transports me

From my landlocked living room seat

To an ancient harbour

Several decades ago

Where my father combs knots from my bed ravaged hair

And my grandmother works dough in the kitchen

While a previous batch begins to waft aromas from the oven

Aromas that penetrate every corner of the house

Yes, faintly, in an upstairs bedroom

But just enough to stir the soul

And with hair now as managed as a summer’s father would care

I am drawn by the smells

We all are

This is why the kitchen is the heart of an outport home.

Fed

I return upstairs

Drawn to the bedroom window

Speckled with dabs of white paint

Remnants of a previous year's painting 

Where the clapboard became a fresher coat of white

I sit at the window

While my bedside clock ticks

Morning seconds becoming minutes

Drifting into hours

I sit at rain soaked glass

Peering out at the sea

Seeing the clapboard white foam 

Where shallow rocks

Break frigid waves

Where open ocean meets sheltered harbour.

New rains sweep in on gusts

Joining the window rivers

With cymbal like regularity

As if the winds are great breaths

Paused for an inhale

Before the next round

Further attacks the glass.

There will be no outdoor play today

Toy car roads have been washed away in the yard

The half buried boulder near the corner of the house

On sunny days a dinky fortress

With crevices for my sports cars, dump trucks, and police cruiser to park

Today it’s a slugs paradise, with each crevice filled by the morning deluge.

So today I’ll invent makeshift games

Listening to the metallic clink

As I haphazardly shift marbles about the tin Chinese checker board

I’ll drive the dinkys up the stairwell 

And park them under the sofa

I’ll listen to my grandmother humming hymns as the bread bakes

While my father runs amongst the raindrops

Going across the street

To talk with Joe.

But for now I sit at that window

As the bedside clock ticks away

Until I return once again

Landlocked in my living room

Decades traversed in an instant

As my clock continues to tick

Seconds

Becoming minutes

Turning to hours

As more days

Continue to pass the years.