The Perfection of Random Chance

Randomly Placed Staples: Power Pole on Davenport Road

The circumstances around the sad passing of Bruce's mom left me a bit short of time to shop for perfect gifts for the folks assembling on Christmas day.

So this is what I did:

• I sat down with the Lee Valley Christmas gift catalogue, selected seven items I liked that were all reasonably priced, and called the store.
• When I learned that most of the items I liked were out of stock, I ordered the two items they still had that were on my "A" list, hung up the phone and plowed through the catalogue to find "B" list gifts.
• I called again and made my second order.
• The combined total of what Lee Valley had and what I liked still left me one gift short. So I headed over to Church Street, wandered into David's Tea without an agenda and emerged with the seventh gift.
• I went to Lee Valley and picked up the rest of the gifts, brought them home and wrapped them all. After they were wrapped and I'd started to forget which was which, I put tags with numbers one through seven on the gifts.
• Then I wrote the numbers one to seven on little cards, and put each of those in an envelope with a Christmas card expressing Bruce's and my fondest holiday wishes. I did not put names on the envelopes.
• On Christmas Day, I explained to the seven giftees that we were playing a version of Secret Santa. They could randomly draw one of the seven Christmas cards and, whatever number they had in the card, that was their gift. After everyone had opened their gift and everyone else had a chance to take a good look at it, anyone who wanted to could swap.
• There were no swaps.

Thanks for reading!

Have a Happy New Year!

Karen

Happy Holidays

Christmas Cactus Blossom; Allan Gardens Cactus House

I'm off work this week, so I took the opportunity to make an appointment with my non-surgery related doctor for my annual check up. The clinic is always busy and wait times used to be a real problem, but, they seem to be working on that because I was ushered into a room not long after my actual appointment time, and then sat and waited in there for about ten minutes.

While I waited, my attention focused on a poster on the wall that featured how to say hello in different languages. For example, the poster explained that in France, people say "bonjour". To represent France, the poster showed a famous landmark - the Eiffel Tower - and a rendering of a young woman wearing a traditional outfit - a lace-trimmed blouse, an apron and a white, flared bonnet.  

I was struggling with the spelling and pronunciation of the Russian word for hello when my eyes strayed to the picture for the United States of America, where everyone says "hello" to say "hello."

The representative image for the USA was a farm girl wearing overalls holding an orange cat in her arms and standing in front of a barn and silo. 

A quick review of the other countries - Mexico, Russia, Greece, China - all showed the same thing - people in situations and clothes absolutely unlike how people in those countries actually look and live, but instantly recognizable as the "traditional" identity of those countries.

This immediately put me in mind of Christmas.

Here's a traditional picture of Christmas at the Allan Gardens:

Here are a few pictures of Christmas at the corner of Yonge and Dundas:

Ho ho ho.

Have a happy holiday season and all the best for the New Year!

Karen

Mourning

Ken Clarke, Marna Clarke and Bruce Clarke, March 21 2009 at our (2nd) wedding.

From the first major loss, every next one recalls all that came before. Losses accumulate, each nestled in the others, blending in a blurred-edge reassurance that life truly is precious.

My dad - always anxious to start trips early - went first. Then my grandmother, then a trio of two aunts and one uncle in rapid succession all in 1989. Then there was a pause. More than a decade passed without anyone I knew closely slipping the bonds of the mortal coil. In 2005, Mom died. The very next year, a man I barely knew who worked in my office suddenly passed away. I went to his funeral and wrote about it in November 2006:

My newly-established group of near-strangers/co-workers at the Ministry of the Environment had this week to collectively cope with the sudden and unanticipated death of a colleague. 

I had met him – his name was Shiv Sud; he was from India, had a wife, two beautiful daughters 18 and 20 years old, and a son 8 years old .... 

... Shiv’s Hindu service was held on Saturday, November 11, in the Crematorium Building at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I got there what I thought was fifteen minutes early, but the chanting had already started.... The man sitting next to me knew the chant. I listened to him for a while, got the gist and chanted along until we all stopped to listen to speeches. 

One speech came from Shiv’s daughters. Well, one daughter sobbed out in a clear, strong and heart-broken voice a beautiful speech about her father while her sister wept on her shoulder and while a man – an uncle or friend of the family – reached over a couple of times to press a giant white handkerchief to her face to dry her eyes.

The counselor called into our offices to help the staff manage Shiv's passing had mentioned that even people who did not know the deceased co-worker might return in these times to unexhausted wells of grief from other losses in the past.   

I was overcome at Shiv's service with grief for Mom and Dad.  

The death of Bruce's mom, Lois Marna Clarke is the most recent reassurance of how precious is life. She passed away early in the morning on December 13, 2016. She'd been in the hospital a month already. We were all hoping - and expecting - her to recover from bones fractured in a fall. But, instead, for any number of causes that could have just as easily happened at home, she suffered a bowel rupture, became septic, survived a last-ditch surgery in an attempt to save her life, but died about twelve hours later.

Here's the link to the funeral home page.

Thanks for reading.

Karen

Last Thing Friday Afternoon

Yet another little truck. Where does he keep them when they're not locked to a bike stand?

At 5:15 yesterday afternoon, I hung up the phone after a short chat with the person we call the Accommodations Specialist. He'd just given me the good news that he'd found a solution to a problem that had really upset one of my staff. I was grateful for that, and resolved that my very next step would be that I would go onto the online system and make the change the Accommodations Specialist advised.

Instead, as I looked up from my desk, I saw two other members of my staff hovering around my door. I invited them in. They started talking even before they sat down. They were impaled on the horns of a dilemma involving four separate processes with four different timelines that all depended on one thing that almost no one knows how to do. Could I tell them the answer, like, right off the top of my head.  Giving it my best shot I suggested they should check with the one person on the staff who actually does know how to do that one thing that almost no one knows how to do. Satisfied, they left.

I turned back to my computer to go online and make the change discussed with the Accommodations Specialist. A person from the assistant deputy minister's office, wearing felt antlers festooned with bells, came to my door wanting to know if "the letter" was ready. "The letter" was what I had been working on when the Accommodations Specialist called me. It was still on my screen, about four sentences short of completion. As the person stood at my shoulder, bells tinkling softly, I finished the letter, added a note for context at the beginning, and fired it off to the antlered person and several others who had been waiting for it since Friday morning.

As I sent the e-mail with the letter, I remembered that I needed to broadcast an e-mail about another member of my staff who had taken a new position elsewhere in the Ministry. My staff's new boss had already sent out the announcement from his side, and every minute I left mine unsent shamed me more deeply. My notice was not quite completely drafted, so I took a minute or two to polish it up, another minute or two to find the group distribution list, and hit send.

I was actually at the online site to make the change discussed with the Accommodations Specialist when another member of my staff came to my door. She asked me a question I completely down to its last detail did not understand. I hazarded as a response that staff were well enough on top of the situation that they could make a good decision and that I would support it.

The phone rang. Another Director from another Ministry was not patiently waiting for something I'm not sure we had promised to send. I left my desk to find the staff who could help with request. I found them. They sent the other Director's object of desire.

By the time I got back to my desk, there was an e-mail from the other Director saying, in sum, "thanks, Sucker!"

Simmering just a bit from my fellow Director's scam, I finally got to make the change to the online system that would solve my upset staff member's problem and make my life a little bit brighter.

That wrapped up, I closed all the open windows on my screen. Just as I turned off my computer, I looked at the little clock in the lower right hand corner. 

It said 5:30.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Neighbourhood Embellishments

For the past three or so weeks, this little tractor has been chained to the bike stand right outside our front door on Sherbourne Street. Two weeks ago, one morning as I was leaving for work, I saw a tall man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, walking toward me, carrying a "top prize at the fair"-sized stuffed bear. When he got to the tractor, he put the bear in the seat and removed the chain. Realizing I was staring, I headed off to work and did not see what happened next.

This blinged-up motorcycle has sat in front of "Wildside" - a retail outlet for drag queens on Gerrard Street - for years. 

This festive display at the corner of Gerrard and George streets is brand new this week.

Thanks for reading! 

Have a great week!

Karen

Sic Transit Sleep Country

The blinds, door trim and light fixture inside the closet still have to to go up. The pictures still need to go back on the walls. I still have to arrange for a free consultation with California Closets (or, possibly, Simply Closets), but we have the wrapper off the new light fixture and the bed is back where it belongs, and not in pieces scattered throughout the house.

The bed is also sporting a new mattress that we got from Sleep Country Canada (I apologize for triggering an ear worm).

The last time we went to Sleep Country has got to be at least fifteen years ago. We still have the bed. It's in our guest bedroom. It's what I slept on during my convalescence and it's what we've both been sleeping on while we've been renovating. The frame has always been a piece of crap, but the mattress, a Sealy, is still good.

I recall several things about that first Sleep Country experience. One was the sales guy, just brimming with bed-related information, who talked to us for what seemed like forever before steering us toward the test beds. Another was, at a bit more than two grand, the box spring, mattress and frame constituted the single largest furniture purchase we had made to that date. The price was so big, in fact, that the next time we bought a bed, we went to IKEA because we did not want to spend that much again.

Because the world's a funny place, the IKEA bed frame was a pretty good piece of furniture but the foam mattress was crappy. I wanted to get a new bed after the renovation, or at least a new mattress. A new Sleep Country location opened up on Bay Street just south of Queen's Park where I work, and it felt like all the stars were aligning.

Last Saturday Bruce and I stopped in at that Sleep Country, got nothing like the detailed sales pitch we had before, but did discuss the old bed at length - clearly stating several times that it was an IKEA foam mattress - and picked a mattress that I am sure I will love as much as the Sealy, if not more.

The other thing I love about Sleep Country is that they'll take away your old mattress. The IKEA foam pad is currently wedged up against the wall in our guest bedroom. It's not a pretty sight. I was looking forward to it being gone.

The sales rep for our second Sleep Country bed happily added the fifteen dollar fee for the mattress removal to our total bill and said the new mattress would be delivered Friday.

Two nice young men showed up at our door last night with our new mattress and hardly trashed the place at all as they brought it in. When Bruce showed them the old mattress to take away, they said, "we don't take IKEA foam mattresses."

After some discussion, they pointed to the information on the brochure that the sales rep handed to us after we had completed our transaction. There it stated that Sleep Country would not take uncovered foam mattresses.

The nice young men assured us that once we took the trouble to complain to Sleep Country, our fifteen dollars would be reimbursed. 

I just hope I never need another bed, because I'm never going to either IKEA or Sleep Country again.

 
Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Progress

There's still dust everywhere (hence the vacuum cleaner)
but we're very close to finished with the renovation.
Congratulations to the two readers who saw that
we changed the way the ensuite door swings.

Today is Saturday, November 19, three months plus two days since my surgery.

Here's the progress to date:

• I no longer walk with a cane and am far past the adolescent ostrich stage; I'm walking like a fifty-something human again
• I am almost out of pain - I'm down to two Tylenol a day 
• I'm not 100% - I still have a bit of a wobble in my gait; without the cane my stride is shorter, my speed less - but with a bit more work and the magical influence of time, I think I will be 100% again very soon.

I saw my surgeon, my haematologist and my physiotherapist all within the past week. They all said that they were not interested in seeing me again for at least another year. I may never see my physiotherapist again in my life.

That's progress.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Looking for the Logic

This past week I stood in a colleague's office, uncomfortably warm in coat and boots, while she spun conjecture after conjecture, trying to make sense of a recent decision that would bring small good to either of us.

In response to an unpersuasive imperative and with an eye to cause as much unnecessary disruption as possible, several teams working for the Ministry are being moved from one building to another. Some of the moves will split offices (mine included) into two.

My colleague tried gamefully to make sense of the needless additional complications to our working lives. She said, "I'm looking for the logic here."

Because of my closer proximity to the core of decision-making, I had a bit more information. So I tried to help. 

"There is no logic," I reassured her.

This also sums up my feelings about the outcome of the US election.

Remembrance Day

Another colleague at work circulated for our Remembrance Day reading excerpts from a WW1 diary kept by an Irish officer who spent 14 months as a prisoner of war, commencing on October 24, 1917. 

The excerpt starts with the story of how he and a band of soldiers set out into no man's land to capture some Germans and, after becoming disoriented and mired in the muck of shell craters, were themselves captured. 

Any diary entries about the tedium and suffering of incarceration did not survive the excerpting process. It is not surprising that the stories the soldier retold on the 50th anniversary (in 1967) of his capture focused more on food - and the few fine meals he had while in transit to the final place of internment - and on the moments when he appreciated the beauty of the landscape through which he travelled as a captive. Here's an excerpt that includes both:

The journey for the next ten hours was not very exciting, as it was night, and nothing to be seen.  The next stopping place was Cologne, and a very beautiful place it appeared to be.  A splendid Cathedral was just outside the station, and as we had to wait some time, for another train, we had good facilities for looking all round us. A very broad river, the Rhine, runs through Cologne, and enormous bridges span it, carrying trains, trams and all sorts of vehicles. We went into a German soldiers buffet, and had the best meal since our Journey began: plenty of coffee, and we had bread, and we had a large bowl of soup and potatoes. When we had finished these we were given a huge German 'Wurst ' or sausage. We felt very contented, and for the next ten hours, were comparatively happy. We got into the train, and after going across one large bridge, after another, we started to go down the  Rhine valley. 

We have all heard of the beauty of the Rhine valley, but to hear of it, and to see it, are two different things, and it is hard for me to write of the picturesque scenes which I saw. The Rhine flows in a long curving stream in the valley at the bottom of a high ridge of hills, and this continues for many miles. Very little traffic was to be seen on the river, and it did not appear to be capable of carrying very large ships. The hills rise steeply from the banks, and are covered with a kind of heather, which must look very pretty in summer. The hills are not of great altitude, but tend to make the scenery very picturesque. Trains run along the sides of the river, and on the top of the hills are numerous castles, all seemed to be very old. It was clear that in ancient times, the barons must have had very hard skirmishes there, with only the river to cross, and they would be in enemy territory, but I am afraid that the difficulty of crossing the river then was much greater than would be the case, in these days of expert engineering.

My favourite passage is this, when the war's been ended, he's freed, has taken the train to Holland and is now on board a ship to take him home:

On board ship, the Captain asked me what I would like for supper. I asked if I could have some butter. Surely, said he, and when I went down to the dining room, what did I see, but a keg of butter, weighing at least a hundred weight, was on the table. Everybody was so kind, that tears were not far from my eyes.

Renovation Update - Spot the Difference

Stupid closet; old ceiling light fixture

Stupid closet gone; plaster applied to wall wounds. 

First coat of paint applied; new light fixture installed

These three photos show the major changes in our master bedroom. There's one small change. Can you see it in the photos? Leave a comment if you can!

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Hub Bub

Me at the office. Photo by Patrick Fancott.

Not long ago, someone at work said that, since Bruce and I did not spend $20,000 in Quebec to get my new hip, we should spend it on something nice.

I let them know that we had decided to spend the money on something nice. We're renovating the top floor of our home, which is wholly taken up by the master bedroom and ensuite washroom and ... a walk-in closet that had been converted by a previous owner into a sauna that we practically never used, and always worried about because of the dubious D-I-Y wiring job.

To compensate for the lost closet space, the previous owner built in a closet along one wall of the bedroom. This wasted all the floor space in front of the closet. I never liked this arrangement.

The impugned sauna. The little black dot is my lens cap.

 

All that's left of the closet and sauna. Now being recycled somewhere.

The contractor teams have been at work for the past week. Most of the demolition is done. We found a surprising pipe closet in the middle of the room, a drain hiding under the sauna floor, and a blocked register that explains, probably, why our ensuite is so cold in the winter.

The electrician brought an impressive array of tool boxes.

Behind the sauna control box: this is why we were worried about the wiring.

The old ceiling fixture, disposed. Always hated that, too.

The next big part of the job is taking out all the old carpet from the bedroom and four flights of stairs. More hub bub, but worth it.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Almost Able-Bodied

Detail from Nick Sweetnam's completed mural at Sherbourne and Gerrard. 
The last time you saw this it wasn't quite done.

 I've been back at work four weeks now. This means I have a whole bunch of other things to pay attention to besides my progress coming back from surgery. 

Fortunately, others are doing that for me. 

One person noticed right away on Monday this week that I'd stopped using the cane indoors. Another, seeing me walk without the cane, noted that the wobble in my gait is almost gone. Bruce tells me that my walking stride outside is like it was when we went to San Francisco, before this whole arthritis thing got started.

But wait a minute - what's that white thing?

Long ago, when I was in high school in Trenton, Ontario, I attended an assembly where a man in a wheelchair raised our awareness about disabled people. That was when I learned the word "quadriplegic." I also learned that people like the man in the wheelchair called the rest of us "Tabs," the acronym for "temporarily able-bodied." The man in the wheelchair lost the use of his arms and legs in a car crash, but, he told us, "sooner or later everyone becomes disabled, through accident or age or disease."

Wisdom.

His point was we should not only admire him for how he had lived a full and happy life despite being disabled, but be prepared ourselves to stay happy and live our lives fully when disability comes for us.

Obviously, that lesson stayed with me. I hope I've applied it. But, as I continue down the path to the land of the able-bodied, I bring two things with me from the almost two years I spent disabled: 

• a great compassion for those people who deal every day with pain and impaired movement and 
• an even greater gratitude that I'll soon not be one of those people, at least until the next affliction hits.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

All Dolled Up

It's not often the case these days that Bruce and I get to dress up and go out someplace. But, Bruce's cousin's oldest child had the good fortune to find the love of her life. 

A wedding was of course the next natural step.

The venue was the Eglinton Grand. The theme was Hollywood glamour. So I got out my sequinned polka dot dress and Bruce put on his purple tie.

Credit: Hair and make-up Jane Saracino; Photo: Jane Saracino

It's October, and it was an evening wedding, so I had to get some kind of a wrap.

Credit: Hair and make-up Jane Saracino; Photo: Jane Saracino

A tricolour sequinned bomber jacket was the most wearable and lowest-cost option. No, really.

An unexpected hip-replacement milestone: This was the first time in more than a year and a half that I've been able to wear heels.

How Weddings Are Done These Days

The wedding cake was made out of da-nuts (donuts made from danish pastry dough).

A master of ceremonies - not related to the bride or groom and not part of the wedding party - maintained order (no glass tinkling to make the B&G kiss), organized contests and announced speakers and dinner courses.

The MC's the one with the microphone.

The bride and groom maintained the important traditions of making sure they talked to everybody, appeared happier than they ever have in their happy lives and looked like movie stars themselves. 

Congratulations and lots of love to the happy couple.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Live (Again) From Toronto Rehab

I'm a little early for my nine a.m. appointment, so I'll rehearse here what I'm going to share with Mariam, my physiotherapist.

The first time I came to TR - which is about 2 km from where I live; a straight line down Gerrard Street - I had to take a cab, with Bruce, because I was that weak and felt that unsure on my feet. That was September 6.

The second time I came to TR, I took the Dundas streetcar, more independent but sufficiently wobbly that a kind stranger asked if I could manage the stairs on my own. That was September 23.

Today, October 17, I walked, still using my cane, to Toronto Rehab.

Yesterday, I walked approximately 3 km to the Nespresso store on Cumberland and back, with a stop at the Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws on the way.

That's 6 km, pre-arthritis-level walking. And there were no after effects. No soreness. No exhaustion.

So, I need to upgrade to another level. 

I started, as you recall, as a baby bird. Then a baby giraffe. Then a baby bear.

I'm graduated to adolescent now.  Bruce has proposed an ostrich.

Thanks for reading!

Karen

Saddle Sore

High contrast on a sunny day in Halifax

I am fully back in the saddle at work now, coming off a four day week that felt like ten. 

The Three Bureaucrats You'll Meet ...
A perfect storm in the public service is when you have, together and at the same time each of these types of bureaucrat on a file

• the gatekeeper
• the sloth
• the underminer

These three are all really one type of bureaucrat, the type that prevents things from getting done. The only real difference is their modus operandi.

The gatekeeper convenes teleconferences with sixty attendees so there are many witnesses to their public shaming of your best efforts in support of the government that, ostensibly, everyone on the call works for.

The sloth agrees to help make things happen on a short time line, signs a work plan, then ignores the work plan, does nothing and refuses to return calls and e-mails the day the-thing-that-absolutely-has-to-be-ready is due.

The underminer is someone on your own team who zealously pursues other Ministries in misguided attempts to advance the file. These well-intentioned shows of moral outrage piss everyone off for no good reason and precipitate shocking delays. 

That pretty much describes my Friday afternoon.   

The Seven Stakeholders You'll Shake Hands With
I spent some or all of three of the week's four days performing a short set of jokes based on the ambitions of the current government about something called the Green Bank before turning the conversation over to four different groups of stakeholders. 

Their opinions about the Green Bank ranged from scowling scepticism to gleam-eyed excitement.

In no particular order, I shook hands with

• the impressively smart non-government organization rep
• the impressively rich corporate executive
• the impressively dressed woman who sat there and said nothing for an entire three hour session
• the impressively firm-hand-shaking guy from the geothermal industry, one of whom showed up for every single session (not the same guy; always the same handshake)
• the impressively angry construction sector economist who left the meeting in a rage because someone disagreed with him
• the impressively friendly guy who saw my cane and told me an interesting tale about his own medical adventures
• the impressively compassionate person who expressed interest in my recovery and who seemed impressed himself that I was on my feet and leading consultations eight weeks after surgery.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Multitasking

Is it in the dining room?

Now that I'm back at work, along with healing and rebuilding the strength in my right leg, I keep myself busy by:

Looking for My Cane

My instructions are clear: use the cane all time time, especially when I am going up and down stairs. But I'm a preoccupied, easily distracted middle aged person. I forget things. I take stuff with me. I change my mind. Then I have to retrace my steps, or go someplace else. All of that and a cane are a lot to keep track of. The cane is forgotten first. Then I have to find it.

Is it in the kitchen?

Counselling Future Hip Recipients

My first day back at work a colleague from Intergovernmental Affairs asked me why I was walking with a cane. When I explained, he said that he was scheduled for hip surgery on October 21. So we made a date to talk about the things they don't tell you. 

His biggest concern was pain. I advised, because he is also an active person, he will likely, after the surgery, be most interested in rehabilitation. 

He wondered if OHIP-funded physiotherapists were any good. I told him I was quite satisfied with mine. 

He wondered if he could go back to work after four weeks. I told him I was glad I had randomly picked six. 

He was worried about all the equipment he would need: a walker, a raised toilet seat, a cane and what all that said about him as a person. I told him he would be exactly the same person after surgery as before and none of those things mattered. 

Is it under the coffee table in the living room?

Is it in the front hallway?

Being the Victim of My own Success

Almost without thinking about it I have reverted to my pre-arthritis stride while walking to work. I'm not quite up to 6.6 kph, but I'm going strong enough that I've given myself shin splints.

Never thought I'd say this, but I am happy to have 'em.

Is it in the second floor washroom?

Is it in the third floor washroom?

Is it in the front bedroom on the second floor?

Thanks for reading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Karen