MIA

Last weekend - actually, last Monday - was my 56th birthday. I celebrated as I usually do. I invited friends over for a nice meal and I didn't do my blog.

Sarah, pictured here sleeping in the warm spot on the couch created and just vacated by my sister, was the oldest (in dog years), quietest guest at my birthday party.

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It's been a busy week. As of Monday the 23rd, I have a new boss. He comes across as quite accomplished. He has a nice sense of humour but he doesn't fool around. Every one of the many, many briefings we have all had to do to get him up to speed were all "Just the facts. What do I need to know? Is there anything that has to happen now?" 

After the last boss (who was a bit wound up) and the interim, substitute boss (who was very relaxed) the new guy presents a completely different mix of calm and stern. It's keeping us on our toes.

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On Friday the 19th, I visited my family doctor for my annual check up. I told her about the funny things that were going on in my right eye that had started just the day before. She didn't seem too concerned but, because I asked, she said she'd make arrangements for me to see an opthamologist.  

I had just returned to work after my doctor's appointment when a giant (at least it seemed giant) black gash appeared in my vision in my right eye. 

I Googled the symptom immediately, read the words "detached retina" on the screen and got on the phone to my doctor to see if that opthamologist appointment couldn't be moved up.

The clinic's phone was set to voicemail. No one was answering.

I googled "eye clinic Toronto." Google told me St. Michael's hospital had an eye clinic with a reassuringly long list of doctors with competent-sounding names. I called the clinic and explained my dilemma. The nice person on the other end of the line advised that I either physically go to my clinic or walk into emergency at St. Mike's.

I chose the latter.

In the space of just under three hours, I was admitted - asked if I was taking any prescription medication during five different intake interviews with five different people - and given an eye examination that I just have to tell you about.

At St. Mike's, when they really want to know what's going on in your eye, they drop some local anesthetic on your eyeball, lay you back flat on a high tech chair and then dig around your eye with a gizmo that I think I can accurately describe as an ice cream scoop attached to a flashlight.

This was an unpleasant experience. But, because my only right eye was at stake, I tried hard not to move, tried even harder not to yell and, during the last few seconds of the test, tried hard not to bite the nice young doctor who was really only trying to help.

So, the good news is that my retina did not detach that day, but I am at some risk that it may still. So I get to go back in a few weeks, won't have to go through emergency to get there, but I imagine I'll still have to answer the question "are you taking any prescription medication" a few more times.

Fun fact: just about everyone who's intake interview I overheard while I was hanging around in emergency started their long lists of prescription medications with "Lipitor."

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen  

Small Accomplishments

The agave flower spike in the Allan Gardens no longer draws crowds, but it's still busy. I have speculated in this blog about the fate of the blossoms fallen from the stalk, thinking (and said thinking based on a cursory review of the very reliable Internet) they were the clones of the mother plant. I still don't know anything about agaves, but I'm prepared to say my earlier speculation wasn't right. Take a look at what the spike is up to now. There are bulbils growing where the flowers were once. 

This is Chester. In theory he belongs to our neighbours Grant and Bob. In fact, we all belong to him. Chester - or Pester as we call him - has enlisted the entire condo complex in his bid to become the world's most patted cat. He's 90% of the way to target. 

This is a sign along the TransCanada trail, close to the Kinsol Trestle.

I wonder why they thought they needed a "no trespassing" sign.

Finally, this is what the property immediately south of ours looked like last week. I ratted them out to the Municipal Licensing and Standards inspector.

This is what it looks like now.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen

Further Signs of Aging

This week I attended the 50th birthday party of a well-known, hard-working advocate for many causes including the environment, social justice and women's rights.

You can imagine that there were quite a lot of other people there with me.

And I knew a lot of these folks from my previous life in the non-government sector and work as an environmental lawyer. Some of them, it has been so long, while I knew their faces, I had no access whatsoever to a name or what had been the circumstances of our acquaintance.

So I smiled at everyone, chatted up the ones whose names I did recall and remarked secretly to myself about how old everyone looked.

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A young woman stopped me on Bay Street on Tuesday morning as I was on my way to work. She looked to be in her late teens early twenties and wore a large back pack. As she tentatively began her request, my brain restlessly presented possible options of what she might want: directions to the bus station, the time ... maybe loose change. 

She handed me her iphone.

"Would you take my picture?" And then she told me how she wanted the picture taken. She wanted to pose a distance from the camera, with the buildings along Bay Street looming large in the background. 

"I'll look sad," she said, "to show I'm sorry to be leaving."

So I did as directed, and took a few extra shots of her walking away. I told what I'd done as I handed her back her $400 cell phone. She said thanks.

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A friend recently on vacation saw the scene in the photo below and thought of me right away.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen

Might As Well Be Fearless

I get to work early most days. Often, the only other person on the floor with me is the manager of the correspondence unit, a small clutch of ink-stained wretches plying themselves to the trade of answering, on behalf of the Minister of the Environment, letters expressing outrage, concern and other human emotions.

We don't work together much, the manager of the correspondence unit and I, so our exchanges when we cross paths are usually amusing pleasantries and small talk.

Of course, these days, when I'm at work before just about everyone else, it's because some imagined catastrophe is about to erupt and end life on this earth as we know it. This dread event won't come about because of climate change. No, in the minds of the people I now work for, the cataclysm will arise from the public release of a document no one will care about or even notice.

These days, as I think about the direction from above which, if I follow it, will over-extend my small resources and distract attention from purposeful work, my thoughts stray to "pushing back." That's the phrase used to describe the behaviour people engage in just before their career as a public servant goes into a tail spin.  

The other day, as an image of a small plane spiralling down toward the tree tops played in my head, I crossed paths with the manager of the correspondence unit. I said good morning and asked him how he was doing.

"Oh, you know," he said, "Just trying to keep out of trouble."

"Oh yeah?" I said, "I find these days I keep trying to get myself into trouble."

"Really?"

"Yeah," I said, "My new motto is 'might as well be fearless'."

At this point, the manager of the correspondence unit disappeared into the photocopy room and I headed on my way down the hall.  

Then I heard his voice over the sound of the photocopier warming up. He'd stuck his head back out the door. He said:

"When you think that everything bad that ever happens in the world comes from fear, that's a pretty good motto."

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Ruby Slippers

At the New York Public Library in June, at a display exploring well-loved children's books, in the corner of the room dedicated to The Wizard of Oz:

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen

Can't Blog - Cooking

This weekend is Bruce's 56th birthday, and I'm busy getting a couple of meals together.

Tonight we have a light eater coming over, so the menu will look something like this:

• one small steak of some sort
• oven roasted potatoes with rosemary
• beans cooked in browned butter with almonds

And for dessert, probably just some fresh fruit and nice chocolate.

Tomorrow we have a small crowd coming for brunch, so the menu's a bit more elaborate. 

There will always be bread, pickles and olives on the table, to accompany 

• gaspacho for the first course 

and, for the second course

• green salad with fresh wild blueberries and fresh peaches
• smoked salmon with capers etc.
• cold lobster and Alaskan King crab legs

Guests will graze on these nice things for the time that it takes the third course, a

• cheese souffle 

to bake in the oven.

Because this is a birthday party, there will be 

• Chocolate-Orange Carrot Cake

for dessert. 

In case you're wondering, I won't be serving Cronut burgers. 

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Here's a picture of the Kinsol Trestle, a lovely spot on the Transcanada trail we visited when we were in Victoria.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen

Spot the Difference

From the fall of 1981 to the spring of 1983, Bruce and I lived in Victoria, British Columbia. I spent most of 1982 working on my masters degree in English at the University of Victoria. Bruce spent most of his time looking for work, and, once having found work, wishing he could work someplace else. When I'd finished my degree, we spent most of our time raising the scratch to get back home to Ontario.

The joke I used to tell was that we lived in Victoria for twenty months, six days, four hours and ....

We were back in Victoria this past week to visit my sister. We zipped up and down the Island Highway to see the pretty scenery and visit family in Nanaimo and Qualicum Beach.

View from the Malahat, August 2013:

Same view from the Malahat, June 1995:

Apropos of last week's post, we spent a good portion of our visit struggling - struggling - to put together our memories of Victoria as it was when we lived there in the early 80's.

We spent our first day visiting the Inner Harbour (but I forgot my camera battery so no photos), which should have loomed large in our memories because of all the time we spent at a little pub, the Beaver, tucked in a far corner of the Empress Hotel. But, no. The place felt as familiar as a photo on a faded post card. The Beaver itself is long since closed (1989 they shut her down) and bees guard the latchless door where the entrance once stood.

We managed to put a few pieces together on our last full day in Victoria when we walked around downtown.

This is the theatre where we saw E.T.

This is the hotel across from the ODEON theatre where we drank India Pale Ale.

This is the view from the spit jutting out from Beacon Hill Park where Mom and Dad came all the way to Victoria from Trenton to help me celebrate my 25th birthday.

Here's a photo from the day in September 1982 when they visited.

Here's our first home in Victoria, photographed both this past week and five years ago, when we were in Victoria for my niece's wedding. 

We lived in a ground-level apartment at 1142 North Park Street. Ours was the entrance at the side of the house. 

1142 North Park Street in 2008

1142 North Park Street in 2013

Here's the second place we lived, 723 Field Street, on a cul-de-sac across from the Victoria Armoury, once an apartment, then a Traveller's Inn and now a property on court-ordered sale that the City of Victoria has purchased so as to make more affordable housing available.

I'm not a sentimental person and our long ago stay in Victoria was a mix of happy and sad times, so I can't say that I waxed nostalgic on this trip down memory lane. But I stopped in my tracks, a bit whelmed, when I saw through a third-storey window overlooking an empty parking lot, my old kitchen.

The window on the top floor, to the left of the chimney.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen

Forgetting

I bet that none of my readers find that they remember things these days better than they used to.

Growing forgetful is perhaps a curse, perhaps a blessing.

My own increasing forgetfulness has made me very aware recently of how people have been talking about memory.

For example, as the fall and the prospect of another CN Tower climb loom, we've been chatting at the office about where people get their endurance. One colleague recounted how a friend of hers every once in a while jumps up from her couch and runs a half marathon. She can do this, my colleague explained, because of the "muscle memory" her friend built as a runner in high school.

I think I understand what that means. The only thing that makes it possible for me to manage the ever-changing array of teachers at my yoga studio is the muscle memory I've built over the years (ten of them now, I think) of bending and breathing.

But, the yoga teachers also talk about "beginner's mind" - stepping into every yoga class - or perhaps everything you ever do - as if it were the very first time. This energizing notion proposes that there's always something new to learn and always old patterns of thought and action to let go.

Starting new every time is a lot of work, though. Unthinking routines I've built around my day - such as preparing lunches in the morning - free up space in my brain to wrestle with rare questions such as, "should we get new blinds for our bedroom?" and "what are we going to do about climate change?"

Getting around the hard-wired routines that are my failsafes against forgetting is what really takes tremendous effort, or, at least, clever use of both the language and post-it technology. 

Bruce helps me remember that I don't need to make a lunch for him.

The note says NLN*.

And these are our new blinds.

Combined sheer/insulated opaque blinds that you can adjust to all of one or the other, or partial, as illustrated;
when the opaque blinds are fully deployed, our bedroom has never been so dark.

And Barak Obama has made a recent promise (gee-I-hope-they-keep-this-one) about climate change.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen

*No Lunch Necessary