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