Off the Cliff

Motion is lotion, you say? Can't prove it by me. 8500 steps and all of them painful,  or at least more painful than they should be. But--

Got the (probably) last dark wash until autumn done and on the line. After removing dead mouse from basement, and why are there dead mice in my basement, I want to know? They should be outside providing food for cats, raccoons, hawks,  and coyotes.

Got clothes off the line before the grey clouds rolled in. Weather page insists the sky is clear and POP is 0. Weather page is not to be trusted.

Got Pride flag onto pole and-- back protesting mightily-- pole onto hooks on porch. With more protests and swearing, got pole fixed so that flag is less likely to droop in the middle. Still droops, but not as much.

Got to BoM for cash and negotiated the Bathurst and Bloor sidewalks thronged-- nay, black-- with the heedless youth of TO, or at least the heedless youth of Central Tech, released from class, travelling in groups, and not looking where they were going.  I *may* have bumped accidentally on purpose into a few backpacks, but heedless youth did not heed even that.

Got to Bakka Phoenix for my two Murderbot books. Thought of adding Fugitive Telemetry but will try it in Kobo first. I remember not being that taken with it.

Thought of going to my Brunswick local for a pricy dinner since I was there anyway, but the pierogies at Future's called to me instead. And a good thing, because local now closes at 4 on Mondays.

Finally got out to the super when the lying weather forecast said it would stop raining from 6 p.m. Of course it rained on the way back but at least I have soy milk now. On the way to, I passed Joti's house down the block and thought, 'Gee, that's a big squirrel', hiding amongst the deep greenery that our Irish weather of the last month has encouraged to run rampant. Only it wasn't a squirrel but either a large rabbit or a small hare-- not that I've ever seen many of either in this burg. I must assume it's someone's pet because, well, rabbits aren't native to downtown AFAIK. Skunks, raccoons, and coyotes, yes: but rabbits would fall prey to any of those, not to mention our urban hawks. It was either gone or hiding when I came back.

But equally, as I was watching the leporid amongst the greenery, the pure white cat who struts around from time to time was coming along the side street, stalked by a Korean family who I assume owns it. Cat consented to join them on the sidewalk across from me but dashed away the minute younger daughter made an attempt to pick it up. I don't see white cat very often, unlike Barton Cat who owns the corner a block down from me and lies, like Old Deuteronomy, in the exact middle of the sidewalk and Will Not Move. But clearly Snowy gets out from time to time. And shouldn't: the urban fauna mentioned above also attacks cats.

Returning from my jaunt down to the library and then to Sushi on Bloor-- which now has drinkable wine and a very nice waitstaff who helped me out of the restaurant's double doors-- I watched a garbage truck roll up the street and stop. Oddly, because pick-up was at 9:30 this morning. But this was mattress pick-up: guy lets down the back, takes what I would call a marlinspike or possibly a billhook, not that I've ever seen either, hooks it into mattress and hooks mattress up into the back of the truck.  Repeat two or three times (while the fourth car waiting behind him honks in that witless and arrogant Torontonian driver fashion: if you don't know when garbage days are, buddy, stay off the streets) then off we go. Enlightening, but I wonder at the specialisation. When do they pick up other furniture?

The quondem New Generation storefront is now a vegan sushi place that was on the other side of the street. I have absolutely no idea what a vegan sushi place can possibly serve, let alone how it stays in business, let alone how it moves into a spot that closed because the rent was too high. Can only think it's a money laundering outfit.

Otherwise have stocked up on wine to wait out the rainy next four days. Have also stocked up on masses of root veg because the ginger stew I made with same before turned out to be most tasty when it had time to age.

Made it to my closing restaurant yesterday and had farewell tempura. New Generation was only one of two places that does decent tempura, the other being the pricey Korean place and theirs still isn't as good as NG. They've been there 25 years and pre-covid had an all you can eat menu that kept the place packed in the evenings. Memory wants to give me a snapshot of reading Magnifico there eight years ago while indulging in their lunch menu, but memory is lying, of course. It was A Distant Mirror in 2017.

I gave them a thank you card signed with my name, which they wouldn't know, and a stick figure of me with my walker so they could place me. Sort of. Because though I've never seen anyone else with one, yesterday there was indeed another old lady with her rollator.

Disturbed night last night, natural fallout of having to be up at 7:30. Taxi was fifteen minutes early and at the wrong address (seriously, what is it with 543 not registering as itself?) but we got that sorted and he delivered me at TO Western in good time, in spite of Bathurst being its usual parking lot. Construction on the hospital side, sewer replacement on the other, plus what I suspect to be a condo going up near the corner.

Saw the orthopedics guy who says sorry, elbow is too foutu for arthroscopy, wanna replacement instead? Umm, do I? You can't lift things when you have a replacement, something like 'no more than five pounds, 2.5 kilos.' And me having to flip  mattresses and heft walkers up stairs so no I don't think so.

But being only a subway stop's distance from the AGO I walked over there, because streetcars are hard to get onto with a walker and anyway Dundas is as much a parking lot as Bathurst, and for the same reasons. I wanted to ask why my membership card hadn't arrived yet, and answer is, because they're going to a phone code but haven't got the bugs out of it and it will be available in November. Didn't ask them What if you don't have a smart phone, because they assume everyone does. But anyway, took myself to the AGO Bistro for lunch, at hair-raising prices for not much food. The waitstaff were all very nice but were not the middle-aged professional waiters of the Before Times, and the coffee isn't as good, and the cocktails were a tad uninspired. Also, the membership I got no longer includes the discount. That's for people who shell out $110 and up. The waitress gave me the discount anyway but explained that even if my ticket said membership, it wasn't the *membership* membership.

Succeeded in getting myself home via TTC and only screwed up once at Osgoode Station, asking the attendant where the elevator was when obviously it was the big square thing just past the gates.

However, the day's other downer was yesterday's mouse who bypassed the tiptrap (and just as well because you have to remove the beasties something like 1000 feet from where you find them, which I measured once as the far side of Christie Pits) only to fall into the plastic rinse tub from the dishes and drown. I should empty it when I'm finished them but for some reason I never do. Fished him out, bagged him, put him in garbage, emptied tub and filled with highly concentrated bleach and water solution. May buy a new tub as well. But at least that's farewell mouse.

Back to, if not summer temperatures, certainly sumer humidity and consequent aches and malaise. Actually this is a very September thing, which I keep forgetting: the mug and brassy light and background allergies and general wanhope. Will be cooler on the weekend but will also rain. This is going to be a warmer than average autumn, they say, which is good from the pov of economy (no furnaces) but not psychologically.

Should hang up my orange Reconciliation shirt on the porch but see: rain.

Jonesing for dim sum but getting to Chinatown is... not something I'm up for. Walking is still not much fun and I'd have to walk from University because Spadina is now a parking lot, or rather, even more of a parking lot than before when the LRT at least had a dedicated pathway. Shouldn't have dimsum anyway-- too much pig.

Finished Trial by Fury, a Ferrars mystery (really, why isn't she at least as famous as Christie? lack of signature sleuth, I suppose) and Guards! Guards! because Pratchett is not merely easy reading, no matter how well you think you remember a book after umpty many readings, there's always something new. This time around, now I'm on Men at Arms, is the Duke of Eorl.

The rain this weekend broke all records except one, rainiest month. That honour belongs to last July. Buy some wood and google 'cubit'. But stats say it didn't in fact rain that much downtown. The airport got 150 mm over the two days, the Annex got like 38.

The trumpety flower that's taking over the neighbourhood is hibiscus. Can tell by the buds.

Once again, heading to the super, the intersection was blocked. Cars in some kind of accident, ambulance, fire trucks, and southbound traffic backed up to Dupont while the northbound cars whizzed past-- or rather, slowed down to gawk. People. By the time I got out there were police directing traffic,  or at least telling drivers to stop leaning on the horns, and some of the southbound guys- including buses- were able to inch past the cars and on their way. Unfortunately one of the cops saw me standing by the signal and asked if I wanted to cross, and I didn't have the wit to say Not in a rush, let these guys go ahead. So he stopped traffic for me and of course the northbound cars took over the single lane and stopped all southbound traffic, including alas the bus. Hope they got some real traffic cops in to sort out the confusion. Especially since what seemed to have happened was a simple rear-ender, and not the first time at that crosswalk. People *will* tailgate and when a car stops for the signal, bang.

The thing being that Christie didn't have to be two lanes. They widened the already wide sidewalks all up its length for no reason at all, with the results that it's not only constantly backed up, it's a bitch to bicycle on.

Walked over to the Bloor and Spadina postal outlet, the one I think is closer than the Dupont and Spadina one even though I know it isn't, and sent off my tax form and accountant's cheque. So that's done. 'Places on Bloor seem closer than they are' simply because it's the main drag, hence has shops and people and, let's be honest here, better sidewalks than grotty Dupont with its condos a-building and its multitude of utility cuts chewing up the sidewalk. (Utility cuts are when the hydro and gas companies rip up a newly concreted sidewalk or asphalted roadway to access the stuff underneath, then patch it with asphalt that sinks down or breaks up, depending, making life hard for people with walkers and bloody dangerous for people in wheelchairs, especially the motorized ones.)

Also on the main drag is Wiener's hardware, that Annex institution, so I dropped by to see what they had in the way of window fans. Nothing, same as the last time I checked, aside from 'whisper quiet' towers that don't do a great job of moving the air either. But this time I asked one of the oyaji when the fans would be coming in and he said they  *were* in, just down in the basement. Came back with the exact model I want, yahoo! because the air purifier is dead and the old window fan has started screeching as well. I know there's no excuse for these fans because you can't get in to clean them, much less oil the motor,  so they're essence of planned obsolescence. OTOH this fan was bought probably in the oughties and is pushing twenty years, so I don't feel *too* bad about getting a new one.

My cherry is fully out and has the sakura smell, which is ok but nothing like a plum or apple. And may fall in the weekend's forecast heat and rain and wind so look at it while it's here.

Library holds continue to trot in with no regard for 'four weeks wait' notices. Thus Murderbot 3 appeared yesterday, which is a problem since my hold on Murderbot 2 was still showing umpty many weeks wait. But amazon gave me a credit for my delayed envelopes so I got 2 for about five bucks. At which point library tells me 2 is in transit. Oh well. Cancel that and proceed with Artificial Condition. Only it appears that what I thought was no.3 is actually no.4 and the real no.3 is 'eleven weeks wait.' (Really, Murderbot titles are as bad as Dick Francis' for confusibility.) Do I believe them and buy the kindle edition for 15 bucks, or do I trust that it will come in before my no.4 is due back at the library?

Bro was by on Saturday to pick up mail, which was not tax stuff, since he's already done his taxes, but an application for some government program that my accountant deals with for me. Weird that Service Canada would send his T5s to the new address but not this. Governmental right hand not knowing what the left does, even within the same ministry. But that aside, bro says he does an hour of duolingo French every morning, which amazes me. Quite apart from finding Duolingo annoying and thinking my French is better served by actually reading French, I can't summon the discipline for even mild language study. It seems pointless now. I know I'll never go back to France and certainly never to Japan so why bother? S-i-l was doing Russian because she intended to go there before Putin happened and for all I know still intends to after history deals with him, but my s-i-l is not a Johnson.

My front yard is covered in easy care ivy, which is fine by me, but I notice that the ivy has deserted the front third of the yard. Maybe there's too much dead wood,  or maybe-- as I noted today-- the ivy prefers to grow up the birch tree instead. I was happy to let it do that because ivy strangles trees and that would solve my problem with the birch. But not if it's going to denude my front yard. So have pulled down a good swathe and will pull down more once I get the clippers out because it's climbed out of my reach and clings tenaciously to the upper trunk.

Was feeling hungry on my morning erranding and not disposed for my pricey restaurants-- accountants must be paid this month so economy is advised. Thus I stopped by the Tim Horton's down by the subway station and stood in the very long line and listened to the babble of conversation around me in, conservatively, about five different languages I don't know. The Korean grammas like to congregate there, but there were also a goodly number of turbans and saris, also what I thought were niqabs but couldn't be because Eid isn't till this evening. Although the possible niqabi may just have been with the white guy who was ordering. And this is why I really don't want to move away from this area.

Up and moving at a decent hour so down the street I went for my blood draw. Swear that last November there was something about they only held faxed requests for six months. Appears they don't hold them at all because there's no record of me in the system. In the lab I've been going to for decades. Ah well. Call doctor, secretary says she'll fax the request again instanter. Reader, she did not. Waited ten minutes, nothing came through, waiting room is backed up with posted wait times of 40 minutes for the people who did have draw requests. Said I'd come back next week. Receptionist takes my number and says she'll call me when the fax comes in. Unlike my doctor's office they work till 5 on Fridays. Reader, she did not, so I assume the fax never arrived.

Went to the library to pick up a hold. Meant to ask the librarian if they could now print from emails, a service that was disrupted during the cyber attack, but there was only one librarian and he was shelving holds so I didn't get a chance. If they do, I can get my doctor to email the form to me and print it there and not have to trust the dodgy lab.

Saving grace was that I actually had two holds at the library so I am well-supplied with Flavia Albia's to get me through a rainy tomorrow and a snowy Sunday.

Then, in spite of resolutions to save money by eating at home, went to my old Japanese restaurant where they bring me my wine automatically, and had a bento. It's half the cost of same at the tony Korean place, so I allow me the indulgence. And I got something close to 6000 steps in from all the gadding about, so go me.

Otherwise my supermarket has started stocking frozen dumplings from Mother's Dumplings, famous Toronto restaurant as it says on the package. But only one kind, the pork and cabbage, and not the delicious pork and chive ones I got from Skip the Dishes earlier this week. My Skip credit got me mountains of food though as ever the chive pancakes were a disappointment. I should just stop ordering those because no one makes them the way I like. But my order arrived with blinding speed because, a first, my Dasher was on a bike. The food delivery guys all have fat wheeled electric bikes and congregate on Bloor these days-- well, everywhere, I suppose-- though Concerned Voices have been heard about them bringing the bikes on the transit. Because for sure these guys don't live downtown: almost certainly they come from Markham and Brampton and other northerly Here men say bee dragonnes outposts where, alas, all the best Asian restaurants are but that need a car to either get to or get around.

I had an actual honest to god conversation today. I don't know who it was with because we never got around to swapping names. But as I was creaking out to the super with my rollator, another woman was coming from the super with hers, and I wasn't sure we had room for both of us on the narrowish sidewalk. So I pulled over and remarked to her as she came abreast that rollators are great but also wide. And she said mine looked lighter than hers-- which it might be because hers had a very sturdy-looking iron framework-- and then we were off to the races. She'd just moved into the neighbourhood from Etobicoke, a section of TO so out of my normal round that I'm not even sure where it is. (West, apparently,  out by the airport.) Husband died, she moved into her daughter's basement apartment, doesn't know anybody in this area, so of course was happy to talk. She had a hip replacement, hence the walker, which was bought for her by kind family who didn't consult her on her preferences. Is resigned to being in a wheelchair eventually, though her daughter wants her to do tai chi‐ 'But I can't even stand!' I commiserated: I still can't stand myself though I work on it.

Certainly not on days like today when everything hurts for no good reason and I have to wear boots, except I could have worn shoes, the streets were so dry. But you never know where ice will lurk. Like the other day coming up from Bloor and observing the ice berm as high as the sidewalk-- which is ridiculous, because we only got an inch or so in the last fall so where'd this five inch pack come from? Anyway after my shop I limped up to the LCBO and bought mickies of gin and vodka and had two vodkas and tonics and the day got much better after that.

I'm told 'mickey' is a purely Canadian term. It's 375 ml or 12 oz, whichever comes first, and used to be in curved bottles that fit between the calf and the boot for concealment purposes. My bottles aren't curved but they are portable.

Walked over to the Spadina Shoppers PO in the cold grey dank, with gunk on the wheels because melted snow + leaf detritus + mud/ clay from the many many condos a-building on Dupont. But parcel dispatched quickly, though my heart sank when I realized the one guy ahead of me had fifteen or so identical flat parcels to post and was in deep consultation with the clerk. Sat down to wait-- such useful things, Rollators-- but guy realized he couldn't mail his fifteen parcels the way he wanted, gathered them up, and went on his merry way. Luckily, because by that time there was a line of lunch-hour would-be mailers behind me. Still faster than the Bloor Shoppers for sure, but that's because there are fewer businesses and buildings on Dupont (see: condos a-building) than on Bloor, where the Shoppers is the ground floor of a high-rise apartment.

Then decided to try my luck on the Dupont bus and travelled back no problem at all. Could this be because I had a female driver who took things easy and asked me, getting on and off, if I was OK doing both? Oh, surely not, wottever gave you that idea?

I see there's a new anthology of Victorian detective fic. Have a hold on it, though the editor's article about compiling it gave me pause. He omits any Thorndyke because he can't take Austin Freeman's anti-semitism. Well, alright. But aside from the weird conviction that London's Jewish population tended to lisp, I thought Freeman was fairly well-disposed to his Jewish characters. Certainly they aren't all money lenders as in Sayers or money-obsessed as in Mitchell. And IIRC Thorndyke can read Yiddish,  which is more than any other Golden Age detective can do.

The last time I walked past Spadina, my phone said 4000-some steps. Today, in spite of doing 1300 in the morning, it will barely go over 3,000. This must come from carrying it in the breast pocket of my winter coat. Am certain I went over 5k in any case.

The reason I was limping two and a half subway stops was someone on a neighbourhood FB asked if anyone had a toaster oven going spare.  I have the beast I bought in early lockdown that is both slow and complicated to use and I could use the counter space. And because she has mobility issues too I said I'd bring it over to her street. What I'd forgotten was that three years ago I could still bike and had brought the thing home on the carrier. It turned out to be too big for the walker's basket so shou ga nai, I put it in a bag and put the bag on the seat with the bag handles looped over the walker's ditto, and gingerly trundled it over. Toronto may be all smug about its curb cuts that supposedly accommodate wheelchairs and strollers and whatnot, but all I can say is I hope I never have to use a motorized wheelchair let alone a standard one, because there's always a ridge of broken paving between the street and the incline, unless the incline itself is cracked and broken. Even taking things slow and using the lift thingy, I nearly lost the oven twice, once being actually rescued by a kind young thing who grabbed it as it was sliding off. I hear that Americans envy our accessibility but in the words of the old song, It's not that we're much better, it's just that we're less worse.

Still I got to see the houses with their decorations still up, on a blue and gold windy evening, so there was that.

Weather still mild so I decided to make it to the AGO. Alas, the jets were practising for the air show this weekend, meaning painful sonic booms, so to limit outside exposure I called for a cab. Beck has finally ironed out the kinks of its automated voice system ie the voice tells you what to do and if you follow the pattern (number, street name, street/ road/ blvd/ etc. disambiguation,  CITY) the robot repeats it back to you correctly. Alas again, they haven't got their drivers in working condition. My cell rings as I'm sitting outside, no cab in sight, 'I'm in front of your house now', the hell you are. You're sitting outside 534 and I'm at 543, the number I gave your robot. When I get in the car the driver's screen is large enough to read from the back and yes it says 543. If I do this again I swear I'm giving my address as 545. NND won't mind.

My heart sank when I got inside the gallery because the line went back to the entrance. Holidays, of course. But that was a tour group, and the real line was only a few people. Group reached the ticket taker a second before I did, but luckily she asked if she could let me in first. The Cassatt and Daughter show was interesting enough, though the patrons were as worth looking at as the pictures. There was a Kushner&Sherman lookalike couple that I knew couldn't be because the originals are in Europe now, and a woman in draped Raphaelite robes, and a tousle-headed little girl looking like the models in a number of the paintings. Also a tour group of maybe thirty kids in red tshirts for identification, 9 or 10 at a guess, who paraded through the exhibit rooms and straight out without looking at anything, much to the surprise of the security staff.

The exhibition had all ten of Cassatt's famous prints, as well as the oil paintings both she and her daughter did. Renoir reminiscent as to colours and subject matter. The prints have faded- IIRC because of the chemical composition of the pigments she used. But what most struck me, I'm afraid, is that she loved to do mother and child paintings and prints, and unless the kid is on a bus, the kid is naked. My expert's eye says these are 12 to 18 month olds, not babies as I define babies, and unless toileting was done differently in the early 20th century, you're risking disaster carting that child about without a diaper. Taking her into the garden to pick apples is probably the least dangerous place to do it, but you really are asking to have your own lovely dress ruined.

So now I was ready for a latte at the 2nd floor café in the Galleria Italia, except I couldn't find the galleria. You used to run into it without trying, but they've blocked something off so I kept going round and round, on the admittedly smooth floors.  I could smell the coffee but couldn't get to it, and the maps all lied. Finally found a security guard who said to go through the African exhibition and turn left. Which did, and at last found the long wooden gallery the runs along the front of the building. But there was no coffee shop there. Or tables or chairs or indeed anything at all. It's been four years since I was last here and the place *looked* the same but... no café. But I think this was where the tour group was trying to get to, because the map implied that the Galleria was the other side of the Cassatt.

Totally confused by now, not to mention footsore even with my walker, I went back to the ground floor where the pricey restaurant is. They found a table for me-- being crippled has its uses, since they were going to put me on a wait list-- and I had very pricey  bread and very pricey paté and very very pricey wine, and my server told me the café is now on the ground floor and no wonder I could smell coffee in all the wrong places. And I do think that guard might have mentioned that there was nothing in the Galleria Italia itself and if I wanted the café, it's moved. Since you have to leave the AGO proper to get to the restaurant,  it being  the other side of the gift shop, I couldn't even go back to get a latte there. Once out, you're out. However the gift shop already has next year's calendars and I got a satisfactory modern Japanese artist, which consoles me for much. 

Then took transit back home. Taking a wide walker, even one that folds, on the Spadina LRT among all the shopping Chinese grannies and grandpas is an interesting experience, because they have walkers too, as well as many many bags of groceries, and we're all squished together Tokyo-like. But people were very kind about giving me their seat and helping me get the beast onto the car: because you do have to step up, and even worse step down, over a not inconsiderable gap,  to get on and off. No way you can use a wheelchair, motorized or not, on those cars, which means no way are they disabled accessible I-don't-care-what-you-say.

And when we got to the subway they were cracking down on the fare jumpers.  Unlike in the past, they scanned everyone's ticket, including old folk with their walkers, and pulled miscreants out of the queue and kept them there. In the before times when it was just me and my staff, the checker pointedly ignored me as I went past with my card all ready for scanning. But this guy had clearly had enough. The two women who'd failed the test were trying to argue with him and he was having no part of it.

I didn't have to walk home from Bathurst- -there are up escalators at Christie, though one of them requires climbing three steps to get on and whose screw-up was that, I sometimes wonder-- but I had a hold at the library, and if I pushed it a bit I could also get a latte at Ninetails. Which did: and maybe sun and pleasant temperatures just put Torontonians in a sweet mood (except subway inspectors) because people continued to open doors for me very helpfully. So a good day with much exercise: but I still wonder if I'll ever walk unaided again.

Got out to the super yesterday and stocked up on hot weather food (cold cuts, lettuce, bread). Got home as the black clouds came barrelling in from the north. In spite of which I don't think it started raining until much later. Today was drier and breezy, but the sidewalks are still yellow from  both the lindens and the  maples, so I stayed in and was moderately productive: dishes, laundry, vacuuming up the seedlets in the front hallway...

Being unwontedly limber, I got downstairs to weigh myself before breakfast. Not as bad as I'd feared, not as good as I'd hoped. And I strongly suspect that I've dropped a kilo or so in the last few days, what with the appetite killing/ water drinking hot weather, and a noticeable lack of coffee shops and their pastries. Balanced by gin and fizzy drinks, but the gin is almost all gone now and won't be replaced. 

My Pride flag fell down when one of the elastics holding it snapped so I brought it inside and hung it in the front window where it catches the setting sun. Also blocks the view so I can hang my laundry from the living room chandelier and not feel self-conscious.  Laundry bingo is a necessity in this house. The basement gets damp and moldy in the summer so I can't hang things on the lines down there too long, but I don't want to put my underwear on the lines outside, supposing it's safe to hang anything there. (It may be now: can't see any cherries left and the birds seem to have departed.) So it's wheel hangers from the Korean super for underwear until we get back to furnace time. Never did like putting underwear in the dryer,  since heat eats the elastic. 

Is there a form of Covid that has no symptoms except joint pain? Tuesday's acupuncture worked for half a day but yesterday I hurt. Had a massage yesterday and today I hurt more. Maybe the fact that it's gone unseasonably cold has something to do with it? though I hurt all weekend in the warm and mug.

I walked anyway, to the laundromat where something like 2/3 of the machines were out of order, a record even for them. That includes the washer with no sign on it- maybe they'd run out- into which I dropped two loonies before registering that it was a cyber washer and if it had no digital display it wasn't working. The one next to it, with the out of order sign, did have a display but by then I wasn't up for betting four dollars and yet more detergent that the sign was on the wrong machine.

So took me off to my old coffee shop which is now a fair hike, and was greeted with open arms by David the barista, who has learned to project his voice finally. Still couldn't hear him because Zoe the owner and her friends were conversing right behind me and the place has concrete floors and walls. Ambient noise is not my friend.  Said  hi to Zoe, remarked on her change of address to the family co-op, discover that her bf is working at my old daycare where his father also works. Very much a family affair all round.

All week I've been watching the sakura blow about on the wind. My tree is almost entirely empty now. Two weeks since the first white appeared, which is good innings. Two doors down's speading branches still glow white in the fairy lights of two doors down's garden, but have begun to blow away too.

Went out walking amid the front lawn dollar store offerings. Got small coloured envelopes, useful for tips if I ever go back to Doordash and grocery delivery. The last three years have depleted my stock of (many) decades, since I belonged to a letter writing generation. Also found several large and sturdy reusable bags which will serve for putting records out front, should we ever have a day that isn't threatening rain. That day was today, and very nice it was too, but the rest of the week is up in the air.

Had bulgogi, then looked for the new coffee shop down Bathurst that people have recommended. They have good lattes and cookies, but the sound system was cranked up to painful, so I ate outside and read Thorndyke on my phone and observed the mammoth towers across the street that have replaced Honest Ed's. Mostly or maybe all are to be rentals, and maybe in the course of time I might find myself there. Or not: I give myself another ten years at most, given how everyone dies at 84, and if I never stop being crippled I may opt for a retirement home instead. Though those will be increasingly harder to come by as the python bulge generation starts moving into its sunset years. Friend who was sussing places out for her parents says it's already like trying to get into Harvard. Given that, half of me thinks I should seize the day and indulge in sugar and alcohol, for tomorrow we may die, while the other half says to exercise more and drop weight so as to remain as active as possible as long as possible. Right now I do both and neither, which is not quite good enough.

There's a postal outlet two subway stops east of here, and as it's in the same direction as work I never think of it as being that far away. A bit of a hike with the walker but not as far as my old massage studio. There's also a genuine post office one subway stop to the west, but that's so faaaar. Now distance is partly a mental construct so I decided to go west to mail my tax return. That, and the fact that the lineups at the east outlet are always hideous, and especially so in April. And lord it was so faaaar. Seems like I was walking for hours. 

But it's a nice PO, in a degentrifying stretch of the main drag where in happier days, a decade ago, my acupuncture studio was. Angry guys yelling at the world, bars catering to same, and occasional panhandlers. (I don't count the ones west of me as panhandlers per se, they're just the regulars.) But I got a chatty clerk who excused herself halfway through printing the amazing number of labels a special delivery requires, to talk to a woman and her dog in the other line and give the dog treats. Woman is from the local vet clinic who took care of clerk's Shih Tzu in its last days; clerk now has a little medallion with some of dog's ashes in it. So that was my human interaction for the day.

Then I walked back along the main drag and strangely it wasn't any distance at all. Distance is a mental construct indeed. But I stopped at the Vietnamese restaurant across from the subway station and got a banh mi and coffee which I ate in the sun by the Chrstie Pits, the local park created by a glacier who knows how long ago. (Google: starting at least 72,000 years ago, finished about 12,000 years ago. )  It's now definite: whatever that restaurant does to its coffee, it disagrees with me. Not enough condensed milk, maybe? But it's been heartburn all evening, as it was the last time I had it.

And since last night was a ferocious nuit blanche, in which I got to sleep some time after 4 a.m. solely by an exercise of will, I hope the walking will get me to sleep at a decent hour tonight.

Occurred to me that it's time I read that booklet on the Primavera I've had for the better part of 40 years,  and no I don't recall where or when I picked it up. Turns out to be about the restoration work done on the painting but also includes historical background and interpretations of the painting pre and post treatment, with lovely full-colour plates not only of the Primavera itself but of other works. (Botticelli was a practical joker, did you know? He doesn't look like one in his self-insert in the Adoration of the Magi but so he was.)

This is not only happily reminiscent of reading Magnifico, which I did seven years ago-- and how did 2016 get to be that long ago? yes, yes, covid, but also the Trump years which I blotted from memory. But also hearkens much further back, to high school, and the Florentine Shop and a Time-Life book on the Renaissance with pictures of various interiors,  and possibly The Agony and the Ecstasy (book, not movie). It wasn't the first fully-furnished mental time/space construct of my life but was one of the most brightly coloured. These constructs are always made of scraps of this and that, bolstered by random conflations-- the university gothic of Victoria College, that I passed through on my way home from school, and the clear blue sky of a November late afternoon through the  arched windows thereof, and the golden background of some Fra Angelico angels, all came together to make a seamless whole, which then was echoed in the backdrop to an early scene in the Prokovieff Romeo and Juliet, pale dawn sky over a narrow cobbled street. 

And of course the real Florence did nothing to contradict my version, but wouldn't matter if it did. Mine is a Renaissance Florence of the mind and quite divorced from reality. Though if I'd seen a lot more baroque wretched excess there, instead of an almost Quakerish restraint,  I might have felt different. Rome certainly was all baroque wretched excess, even if the last time I saw it was when I was an ignorant twelve who knew no art history. But Rome sorted very well with the kind of Catholicism I was then neck-deep in, all relics and holy cards and glorious martyrs. Which of course had its roots in the baroque Counter-reformation of the sixteenth century. And by the 16th century my Renaissance was over, replaced by men in trunks and beards who all died young of syphilis.

No, back to the serene beauty and balance of the Primavera, and its newly (in 1984) revealed glowing colours.

Dear lord, let Gladys Mitchell once set a book in Scotland and you can either skip a quarter of the verbiage because it's all place names, especially if a boat is involved, or get out an atlas and learn a little geography. I'm willing to admit that if someone did this with a place I know, like Japan, I'd be all happy nostalgia. I know nothing of Scotland and so I skip. Though it was another Mitchell that taught me where the bay of Biscay is ie not where I thought.

The elasticity of the Dead Days still amazes me. Impossible that Christmas was less than a week ago. But when you cram three seasons into seven days, and do nothing unusual on most of them, and *do* do the same things on all of them, time elongates like a holiday abroad. 

My baking friend brought her baking around last night. She assures me that lumbar pain needs core strengthening to cure it and that core strengthening begins with diaphragm breathing. I thought I already did that, though it's mostly when I'm lying in bed.  Well, I shall work on it along with the exercises I already have which don't seem to have affected my core at all. Online has all sorts of suggestions for it, which involve kneeling or holding weights or raising hands in the air, none of which my knees and elbows will permit.

Evidently one must see one's prescribing physician face to face every two years so today I did. Ascertained that Queen's Park subway has elevators, knew that Bathurst and St. George do, so set forth bravely ninety minutes early because not only am I Like That, so is the TTC. (Local joke: TTC stands for Take The Car.) First problem was that my boots were too loose so that the toe with the unhealed ex-corn rubbed annoyingly, and the walk to Bathurst thus took 30 minutes instead of 15. Second problem was the St. George elevator out of service (and I *did* check for outages as advised but of course...) But there's an up escalator which took the rollator just fine. Guy in a motorized wheelchair led me to the elevator when we got to Queen's Park and up we went. Unfortunately the elevator debouched in the MARS building, which is a warren very much like the Toronto General Hospital it replaced. In theory it connects to the Elizabeth St annex where my doctor is, but not in any way that I can see.

So I took myself outside onto College St, all torn up and single lane one way, so that bicyclists were whipping past me on the sidewalk. Found a little paved path to the side that went in the right direction and followed that, bumping painfully on the unmelted salt, until it ended in a flight of steps with no handrail. Retraced my route and trudged the long half block to Elizabeth St and the long half block down to the entrance and argh.

Appointment over, I got myself to the ground floor of the annex and tried following the signs that promised to lead me to the subway entrance through the MARS concourse. Then saw a sign saying 'exit to University Ave' ie right back to where the subway entrances are. Memory said there's an Aroma coffee shop just south of the MARS complex and I was getting hungry, so out I went: onto a curved drive that I have no memory of, a biting north-west wind that whipped my neckwarmer out of my hand when I went to put it on, and a taxi just pulling up with a patient. Reader, I succumbed and took the cab back up to Bloor (and it *was* backed up, because not only is College torn up, they park their equipment in the lanes north and south of College, reducing University's three lanes to two.) Chatty cabby said they should double-shift the work to get it done faster because 'look, 3 o'clock and they've stopped for the day!' True, but efficiency is not a Torontonian virtue.

Had him drop me off at one of my pre-pandemic fave restaurants which has erected plexiglass dividers between tables and where the same waiters are still working, still know to bring me a glass of white wine without asking, and are so happy to see me again: and very much vice versa, because I don't get around much anymore. This helped a little, but only a little, with the twingy walk home. I can't figure what's going on with the city's snow shovelling. I know we had a bobcat clearing my block because I saw the tire tracks, but the two blocks south of me have ice fields in front of several houses-- but only on my side of the street. The west side is all clear.

Anyway, that's that for another two years. Some day, she sighs, I shall be able to walk again.

Toronto drivers like to complain about the War on Cars whenever a bike lane is put in or speeds are reduced etc etc, and my usual response is 'diddums' or occasionally Suck it up, depending how scratchy I feel. But after today I might just believe in a conspiracy against drivers, even if one should not ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

As in, today I have an appointment at College and Yonge.  I call my usual company for a cab,  and call 90 minutes before for a usual 20-30 minute ride because I am Like That. First warning signal is no human dispatcher: now it's automated 'leave address and closest intersection.' Do, and wait. And wait. And wait. After 35 minutes cancel ride and head out to subway where taxis often hang out. Flag down one of Usual Company's cabs on the way. Driver is surprised that no one came: 'There were four cars in the area.' Oh well. And no, no cabs in front of the subway today either.

College is now a no-go area: tracks are being upgraded, great swathes of it are closed, including the stretch in my area, and it's one lane eastbound only after that. So we take Harbord, the e-w street north of College. Which is fine until suddenly Harbord is closed too. So we detour up to slow-moving Bloor and back down to Harbord where construction has ended, over to Bay (parallel to Yonge) and down that to avoid Yonge's perpetual construction/  bumper to bumper horrors. Then I walked over to Yonge because in spite of city stupidity and congestion, my wonderful driver got me there ten minutes early.

But when I'm finished the same problems arise. There's no way for a cab at Yonge and College, so I walk over to Bay and up another few blocks to where at one point there was a hotel where I hope to get a cab. But the hotel is now condos and the driveway in front of it is gone. I try to call for a cab from there but it's so noisy inside the building that I can't hear the robot voice. Finally squeeze into a corner outside and talk to the robot an d wait. And wait. And flag down another Beck taxi even though the driver isn't wearing a mask, doesn't have the usual plexiglass shield inside,  and has all his windows closed. 

It's only the middle of the afternoon but traffic crawls up Bay until it gets north of Bloor and then it stops where the condos start a-building again. Stop start, stop start, and know things will get worse once we turn the corner onto Dupont, the northernmost e-w street, because then you have condos, parking, and delivery trucks. We deak down through the Annex and finally cross Bathurst into My Territory, where I dismiss the driver several blocks from home because I need a latte and some pastry to recover. 

The chiz is that I have to go back to the same area in two weeks and am already trying to find alternative routes. I might even try the subway.

The Colonnade in Toronto was an innovative piece of architecture when it first opened in the 60s. It was also on the walking route from my highschool to home so I spent a lot of time in its little shops, discovering a brave new world. The stretch of Bloor St it sits on is now a wall of condos and is also the beginning of Mink Mile. Tiffany, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Prada, Dior, and on and on. Fifth Avenue wannabe. Even in the oughties there were smaller stores there, but not any more. And all are equally gone from inside the Colonnade itself- the Paper Place, the Florentine Shop, the little theatre, even the Japan Society from later years. In the ground floor store that was once an upscale chocolatier is now a boutique that sells cashmere clothing. I might even think of buying some of their pieces but I'm sure they cost in the hundreds, and no one who sweats as I do should wear cashmere.

But it was to an upscale Lebanese restaurant in the Colonnade that petronia took me to dinner this evening. Reviews said the service was slow and it certainly was: our meal lasted three hours. Slow dining may be well enough for Europeans but Toronto bustles. Still it was amazingly good, especially the shish kebab (when it arrived, after two requests). I'm not much of a meat eater these days but the beef and lamb and chicken were all tender and filling. Lived up to the prices. We sat at the outdoor balcony overlooking the muted hum of Bloor St, the evening was unwontedly mild, and they had heat lamps as well. Much more congenial than the inside which was packed, musty (a neat trick with the amount of floor space), and LOUD, with the din of conversation vying with the music volume turned up to maximum. Out on the balcony one could even converse easily and converse is what we did. Haven't done that since last March ie the last time petronia was here. The days when I had a social life now seem as long ago as the days when I used to buy things at the little shops in the Colonnade.

About those water pills. Sometimes they do absolutely nothing, and sometimes, like yesterday, they remove nearly three pounds of water weight. Effective but harrowing and making me wish, yet again, that I'd gone through with the rebuild in 2005 and put in a downstairs bathroom.

Cooler today but humid with it, so various joints ached. And for no good reason, a glute muscle had conniptions and was only happy when it had a hot pack under it. I still trudged to the library for my holds and then up Bathurst to get gin and food. Ko's does a very nice burger, I must say, and a Long Island iced tea let me limp back home without too much pain.

On the way a delivery guy stopped me to ask was this Yarmouth Gardens, and I said yes it was and he said But the street sign says Yarmouth Road, and I said Yarmouth Road starts at the next corner, and he said But the sign at the corner *said* Road and my phone says Gardens, and he shows me the map with his car coming down Manning and making an illegal left turn onto Yarmouth Gardens. As I'm trying to explain how it works, an Amazon guy shows up with another delivery for Yarmouth Gardens and first guy is all justified 'They got the road sign wrong and my phone is right.' Mh well. I walked on to the corner of Manning. Of course the sign on the right hand corner as you come down Manning says Yarmouth Rd. There's no sign on the left hand corner because the street is one way no entry and motorists have no need to know which street it is. And though I said four times that Rd starts after Manning, guy kept repeating 'the sign on the corner said Yarmouth Rd.'  Sheesh. But also why the hell did his gps tell him he could make a left onto a clearly marked one way street, and why did he enter a clearly marked one way street after looking at the signs, and why are Toronto drivers Like That?

Anyway today was sort of a bust moving-wise, but I did change my sheets and did talk to SND's gardener (name of Rebecca, here noted for future reference) about what to do about the spindly hedge. Apparently hedges have a limited life span, especially if you neglect to trim them. (The one down the street belonging to the odd Italian grandfather is thick and pristine, and has been for 34 years, because it's clipped regularly. The south side of mine used to be the same when Papa Pisani was alive to trim it, but he's been dead for decades.) Rebecca thinks also that the north side of the hedge might be as sparse as it is because it gets no sun, partly from being in that direction and partly because the ironwood's branches shade it so thoroughly. We will wait and see how it acts next spring because maybe now that it isn't chock full of deadwood, things might start growing.

The odd Italian grandfather has an enclosed front porch. The porch has multiple windows  but the windows all have shades so it's always dark inside and, I suspect,  hot as the hinges of hell in the summer. He sits there in the dark and groans, and has been doing that for 34 years. It's a bit unnerving to have that sound suddenly emerging from the darkness until you get used to it. There's now another oddity up the street at the corner house on the other side. I thought it was a cat in heat wandering the extensive property, but it's a middle aged guy who sits on the porch and yowls in Cat. No cats answer him, but that doesn't deter him.

Ah. Because the allergies are deadly this year in spite of masking outdoors, and because the strangle cough is back in a big way (still not as bad as when I was working in our moldy daycare, but requiring hot beanbags at night to soothe) tonight I broke down and had a gulp of my codeine cough syrup. Which has had its occasional side effect of gentle euphoria and well-being, so I think I'll go to bed while the euphoria lasts. Night, all.

lebataleur posts about reading the last Saiyuki manga and just for a moment it's 21 years ago in the full flush of fandom, yahoo mailing lists and fannish natter and long threads every day, and oh but it was fun and oh but it was so long ago. 'Where has it gone to/ Say the bells of Toronto', as someone filked even more ages ago. No, it doesn't rhyme, but did we care?

Some winters carry their own Ghost Tides- snowy winters that we don't get anymore except this winter when we do- and I'm back in the early 70s, that decade that got erased from my memory so I can't even tell you what year I'm flashing back to. '73, '74, dark jewel nights on Brunswick Ave, post-production dinners of the medieval play society at a long-gone restaurant, that somehow get mixed up with the Saiyuki days of early 2001 when I also hung around Brunswick Ave a lot, at By the Way and the candy store next to it.

There's a short story collection that begins "Everyone lives on Brunswick Avenue sooner or later" which isn't true, obviously, but more people I know have lived there than on any other street I can name, all at different times: myself, a coworker, my cousin, my high school best friend, and the Little Girls. It was the place I liked best of the- sheesh, how many?- sixteen places I've lived in. It had everything in a one block radius: one of the first Japanese restaurants, the Middle Eastern By the Way, a French restaurant whose name I forget, Book City, a 24 hour grocery store, a small theatre, and two blocks away a supermarket. All but two of those are gone now, and the now multi-million dollar houses, as the Little Girls' mom mourns, are full of yuppies with no conversation and no intellectual interests either.

We live in a scttering time, as Richard Wilbur said.