Beginnings, endings and inbetweens

Students are back and my neighbourhood is surprisingly quiet. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. What, did they all mature over the summer? I saw one guy walking up the street with a bong, and later a couple of guys carrying 12-packs of … water! Maybe they all gave up booze? I don't know. I am enjoying the peace, for however long it lasts.

The dry sunny weather continues on and on. I've never had to water my garden in September before. We have water restrictions right now so it is a good thing I have a rain barrel. The water restrictions are not due to lack of water but rather a broken part in the reservoir that needs to be replaced, but is caught up in supply chain issues with no ETA.

I started a Tai Chi class. I really am hoping this is a level of activity I can tolerate. My Fitbit tells me that the first class hardly raised my heartrate at all, a good sign. But the following two days I've been pretty much confined to home due to dizziness, not a good sign. The instructor of the class is really good, plus he has volunteer helpers—more experienced students—to help guide us. There's one woman in the class who I am pretty sure has dementia, she sticks pretty close to her husband and only vaguely follows the instructions. But nobody says anything about that, the class is very inclusive. I don't have to pay for the class until I've completed two sessions, to know whether it suits me or not. At this point the jury is out. I really enjoyed it, but spending two days after virtually bedridden is a little disconcerting.

Shortly after I got out of my Tai Chi class I saw the news that the Queen had died. It feels almost like a death in the family. I know that some people disapprove of the Monarchy but I for one do not. She has been a source of stability for a very long time. When I was three years old I went with all my extended family to see her when she visited Toronto back in the day. Since our house was closest to the parade route, the family gathered there afterward. I remember the gathering but not so much the Princess (she wasn't Queen yet), just that it was a momentous occasion.

I liked living in a country with a Queen, I like that Canada is part of a larger community, the British Commonwealth. I realize that the Commonwealth is just the old British Empire with a new name and that the British Empire was a great colonial power that did a lot of damage in many parts of the world including here, damage that people are still having to deal with. But being part of a larger whole, for better or for worse, and having a long history, also for better or for worse, seems to me a good thing in the long haul. And I'd rather be part of the British Commonwealth than the Russian Empire.

Anyway, I miss Queen Elizabeth II, the end of an era that lasted almost my whole life. I think she did a very good job of it. It will be strange to have a King rather than a Queen, but I hope he does well too. I read something about him, how he was in the habit of espousing weird ideas that people made fun of him for. You, know, organic food, the environment, that sort of thing. Now he looks a little prescient.

And on and on it goes

Happy New Year.

I guess.

Well, maybe it will be, who knows. The signs aren't good though.

I walked to the Reservoir this afternoon, looked at the melting ice. A week ago I got to skate on it when it was a glassy smooth sheet of ice, now it's a mess of melted ice, pooled meltwater and piles of melting snow.

Eventually it'll freeze up again, but whether it will be glassy smooth or not is anybody's guess. Usually the first few days after it first freezes are the best, but then it's not very thick so you're taking your chances. Best not to go alone.

On my way home a friend who was driving by stopped and asked if I wanted a ride or not. I jumped in her car and said, "Your timing is perfect!"

These days I am out of bed no more than 6 hours a day at best, most of that time taken up with chores and errands. But if the stars line up, the weather is good, and there's no chores or errands, then I can go for a walk. I can no longer walk to the Reservoir and back without exhausting myself, so I was glad she showed up when she did.

She's not in much better shape than I am, doesn't know if it's physical illness or depression. I said, "Does it matter?" Not a lot one can do about it either way.

We've both gone in search of laughter, I found it in old "Seinfeld" shows and she in "Friends". By the time she dropped me off I think we both felt better, nothing like a good laugh to cure what ails you. Temporarily anyway.

My son's family in Toronto all have the Omicron. Today they said Ontario has more than 18,000 new cases, and since they're not doing extensive testing that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's the same here, we have no idea how many cases there really are. Today I read that the booster shot wears off pretty quickly; 65-70% protection at best and down to 45% after 10 weeks. Israel is already starting a 4th round of shots.

We're doomed I tell ya, we're doomed!

Since I am not really up and about that much, I have less to report that's anywhere approaching fun or even pleasant; so I probably won't be posting that much. There's only so much gloom I can write about before I bore myself.

A pandemic summer in the city

I had an interesting phone conversation with my son in Toronto last night. He has two sons who each graduated this spring, one from elementary and the other from high school. The older boy is wildly successful, he has landed two jobs for the summer and been accepted into his first and third choices of universities. He is even offering to contribute toward his family's household expenses. One job he does mostly for fun (many of his friends are there so it is an opportunity to hang out) and the other is a renovation job that will allow him to learn a bunch of useful skills.

The other son is struggling with emotional issues, and the enforced isolation of pandemic times in a big city has exacerbated some of his problems. But at the same time it has pushed the boy toward attempting to find solutions on his own since the usual fallbacks of counselling and therapy are just not there anymore. His parents are frazzled but starting to see a glimmer of hope.

Like many, my son is working from home and finding it stressful, but at the same time he is settling into it and now dreading returning to the office at the end of the summer. Their usual summer getaway plans have all been foiled, local cottages are either unavailable or wildly expensive, and travelling to the Maritimes to visit a family cottage is not really feasible. So they must make the best of a summer in the city.

When they first settled in downtown Toronto my son and his wife invested in an old 8mm film projector to show movies outdoors on summer evenings. They lived on a street that was really a kind of back alley, across from all of the houses was a row of garages, so they projected movies they borrowed from the library onto a garage door and the audience sat on the kerb across from it sharing popcorn and ice cream.

I expect the old projector has been retired and they now have something a little more digital, the movies are now projected onto a large bedsheet hung in such a way that neighbours in adjacent backyards can view it as well. My son was describing the latest movie they watched which he said was "iconic" but I had never heard of it. He said that even though he is a director of a film industry company he was embarrassed to say he had never watched this particular film and felt he had to rectify that shortcoming.

We compared TV and movie watching menus. My son has a taste for dark-themed thrillers which I can barely stomach, however he says he can't watch that kind of thing anymore, mostly he watches comedy now. I guess reality has surpassed fiction and one most look elsewhere for relief. Currently he is watching "Community" on Netflix. I don't know if his change of taste is pandemic-related or age-related, he will be 50 next year. I've been watching very old TV shows that were always running in the background when I used to visit B in her basement apartment. They're corny as all get out.

My son's family have a new dog: when their previous dog Dobby (see my previous post) died, they swore they'd never get another one but less than a year later they did. The new dog is a young mixed breed female of medium size. Its antics are both comic and stress-inducing. The other day it captured a baby skunk in the back yard and attempted to throttle it to death. The dog got skunked, up close and very personal. The baby escaped and hopefully the dog learned a lesson, she was lucky that the parent skunk did not intervene.

Toronto has designated one of its less popular beaches as an off-leash area for dogs, so the whole family piles into the car on hot evenings to drive there. It's the closest thing to a summer vacation at the beach now.