Cabbagetown

Set and ready: the guy we hired to assemble the new treadmill on Monday the 31st called on Friday the 28th and asked if he could come by that day. We said yes. Now we have no excuse.

Clickbait ads on the internet are telling me it's time to set a new routine. I think this must be the 21st C way to say "summer's almost over."

In this household "back to school" isn't a thing. It's the piece of new equipment on the third floor that's instigating a rethink.

I'm on it.

But I don't think I'll give up entirely on my foot tan just yet. There's more to see than just what's outside the bedroom window.

Such As...

The found poem in Cabbagetown laneway names.

 

 

The free junk on Cabbagetown curbs.

A random sample: a bbq grill, a terra cotta sconce and a broken sled.

The gritty birdbaths of Cabbagetown sparrows.

Dust-bathing sparrows have excavated these little
depressions in bone dry dirt.

The weathered memorials of Cabbagetown residents.

And the occasional field mouse.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

Words of the Prophets

I have too much time on my hands. So I listen to a lot of podcasts. On John Green's Anthropocene Reviewed, I heard an ad for "Metaphor Dice." They're a teaching aid to help kids learn to play with language, but the ad made them sound like something grown ups would use too.

So I bought a set.

They work like this. You randomly pick one red, one white and one blue cube (the French edition would be blue, white and red) shake them up, toss them and then make a statement out of the words that fall. The statement should follow the equation: "the red cube" equals "the white cube" plus "the blue cube". 

So, using some of the words in the photo above: 

"Home is a sacrosanct zoo"

or

"Apathy is an obstinate lens"

You get the idea. Once you have the statement, you play with the words and see where they take you. It's like a burpee for your brain.

One downside to this clever tool is the word choices of the man who made the dice. Many of them are negative ("ill-gotten") or creepy ("party clown") or part of an idiom I avoid ("blessing"). But the dice come with stickers that you can use to add your own words. 

Another downside sometimes is the randomness of the combinations. For example, I rolled "regret is a petulant mirror" and spent the morning cursing how stupid that was.

 

On the Other Hand

Nothing is more random than what you find just wandering around.

Give a schizophrenic a Sharpie...
Sidewalk scrawl at the corner
 of Alexander and Church Streets

... and I think this is someone's idea of a 
clever parody of ... something.

Thanks for reading!

Make the most of what's left of summer!

Karen

Bought on Yonge Street in 1998 from a
schizophrenic named Stewart

Life Underfoot

By the Brickworks on the Belt Line Trail: frog in green and gold

Since I retired and since the pandemic, I have spent as much time as before - maybe more - on my feet. 

I've certainly spent more time outdoors.

When you're out walking in the spring and summer, there's less need than in winter to watch your feet. There's no snow or ice to slip and fall on. But there are still good reasons to keep an eye on the ground.

On Thursday, I crossed the Don Valley on the footbridge by Riverdale park, headed into Riverdale proper and tacked along residential streets from one pool of tree shade to another until my Fitbit told me it was time to go home. 

On the way back, I cut across the big slope that in the winter is Toronto's best toboggan hill. The city hasn't sprayed pesticides on its fields since 2004 and can't possibly irrigate, so the vegetation underfoot was a mottled mix of flattened straw-coloured drought-stricken grass, deep green prostrate knot weed and short-stemmed clover. Wild bees hovered and darted just above the half-parched clover blossoms. In the four o'clock sunlight the bees glowed gold, their hard-working wings invisible. I took pains to step around them as I crossed the field. 

When I was a little kid and my family lived in Holberg, I stepped on a bee, which stung my foot, and went crying inside for solace on the same day that my mom had banished her children to the out of doors so she could wash the floors. Housework made mom crabby. My sobbing sudden entrance did not improve her mood.  

A Note on Kamala Harris

I'm not quite sure how we skipped all the steps between "never in a million years" and where we are now, but somehow the selection of the first African-American and Indian-American woman as the vice-presidential candidate for a major American political party has been described as "safe."

JFC you dopes. This is epic! It's AMAZING! Hooray Kamala!

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

The other kind of covid toes:
foot tan from five months of daily walks
in the same pair of Ecco sandals.
Also, no pedicure.

I Have No Real Problems, Part Two

This is Primrose, a piece of public art next to St. Basil's Catholic Church on Bay Street.
I strongly recommend you click on this link.

About ten years ago, I wrote in a weekly email that it felt strange to share the small details of my life when so much of greater import was going on. To make my point, I listed things that had not happened to me:

• the Japan tsunami (March 11, 2011)
• the marriage of Wills and Kate (April 29, 2011) 
• the assassination of Osama bin Laden (May 2, 2011)

In the same vein, today I note that I have not

• had my wedding photo shoot wrecked by a giant explosion
• melted down in Trader Joes over wearing a mask (even though my name is Karen), or
• died of coronavirus.

Instead, I've discovered there's more to buying a treadmill than just clicking a few buttons and sending $2700 into the void of the Internet.

First, there are the Federal Express guys who dump two giant boxes in your front hallway ... under protest. They explained all they legally had to do was leave them (one is 110 lbs., the other 80 lbs.) on the front step.

Second, you have to figure out how to get the boxes out of the hallway without injuring yourself or your husband.

Third, once you get the boxes up a half flight of stairs to the dining room, you realize you can't possibly get them up the two flights of stairs still to go.

Fourth, you hire a couple of guys to do the heavy lifting for you for a reasonable - given the alternative - cost of $150 bucks plus tax.

El Cheapo Movers will be here on Monday. The guy we've paid to assemble the equipment comes at the end of the month after we receive, I hope, the pad to protect the carpet from the treadmill.

After that, it'll just be a treadmill and all the fun that implies ...

Thanks for reading!

Summer's almost over! Get outside! 

Karen 

It looked smaller on the website

Stage 3 - The Final Frontier

This week's picture is the first one since February 20, 2020 that was not taken in Toronto. An enterprising optimist painted rocks with cheerful messages and left them scattered about my sister's neighbourhood in Belleville, Ontario.

Toronto entered Stage 3 on July 31. We celebrated by having my sister and brother-in-law in our home - so we could finally recoup some of the value in our renovated guest bathroom - and then beat it up the 401 to Belleville, where all is as it was, except everyone's wearing a mask and the line up for ice cream in Bloomfield is more socially distanced than normal.

I know the pandemic's not over. You don't have to look too far for persuasive signs of that. Bruce and I still follow the rules and avoid those who don't. I'm glad I have no skin in the game on the question of reopening schools. I wish Canada had less skin in how badly the the US is playing the game.  

And I don't, don't, DON'T care about the WE scandal, as much as it fulfills a longing for news not about COVID. 

In honour of reaching Stage 3, I have quit my membership at the YMCA. I've always liked the idea of the Y, but I never liked working out there. Also, the Y teems with young people who I can only assume are careless about social distancing.

The pandemic forced me out of doors to get exercise. That's worked out quite well. Sidewalks will be slippery in the winter, so I've ordered a treadmill.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen