Off the Cliff

Another early shift, another trashed knee. Don't ask me why: I was careful to sit when I could and to stretch ligaments. But no- put on boots, walked out of work, ow pain stabbity. Streetcar to subway, subway one stop, stabbity stab to library for hold, and realize I left my phone at work. Cabbed it back, as I had cabbed it down earlier, thought about having him wait but knee felt better. Get phone, walk out- stabbity stab stab 'ohhh I think I'll crumple under your weight!' hysterics. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Home and into a Johnson cocktail and two anti-inflammatories. Knees become lamb-like quiescent. Can walk no problem. It *has* to be something about the boots, but I can't think what.

Maybe I should try my shoes with snow grippers instead? They leak, but if it makes my knee happy, I'll take frozen wet feet.

(And postpone visiting my aunt till after the first when my pass becomes active, because the subway entrance near her place won't take tickets or tokens anymore.)

Grey dank December day, but streets empty enough to bicycle if one exercises care and doesn't mind pissing off motorists, who only put up with slow-moving vehicles in front of them when said vehicles are a) official and b) bigger than they are. Garbage trucks, snowplows, buses. In fact, yesterday I witnessed a line of cars honking at a FedEx truck pulled up on a snow bank but still, in the drivers' minds, blocking the way because of the cars parked on the other side of the street. Then driver of third car got out and walked around the first car: 'Look, room enough for me to get by on *this* side, and oh look, room enough for me to get by on *this* side, so will you MOVE?' and walked back to his car, muttering expletives, as they say. I felt like applauding.

But when I got down to Markham St, ready for beef bourgignon at The Butler's Pantry, all was dark. 'We are open at our original location at 371 Roncesvalles.' I mean, I know one or two businesses on the block have closed, and Honest Ed's closes for good on Dec 31, and some time in the near future it will be demolished, and eventually all the buildings will come down: but that's *eventually*. (snerf) They could at least have mentioned they were closing before Christmas, but no, they did not. No announcements anywhere.

And so farewell to one of the few nice things from the 20-teens, and a couple of happy memories.

1. The weather is cold, which means I can put my kitchen scraps directly into the green bin outside instead of keeping them in bags in the freezer. And I can do this because last fall I thought I'd bought garden waste bags but instead had bought 'back to earth' waxed paper bags for lining green bins. Of course I wouldn't use those when the temps are above freezing, because c'mon- stink plus raccoons, however much my green bin is supposed to latch. But now, even if we're supposed to hit above freezing a few days round about Christmas, the chicken bones and such are outside, not in.

2. The blinds in my bedroom rest on cheap aluminum hooks which invariable bend and/or pull away from the wall so that the blind falls down when pulled on. This happens most often with the center blind which requires great care when raising or lowering. Last time it fell down with a mighty crash I said the hell with it and let it lie. Put a shoji screen across the window instead. Result is that there's actually light in my room when the day dawns, filtering through the curtain and sheers above the screen. Thus the hibernating reflex, which kicks in big time when the blind is down and the room is always dark, is slightly forestalled and I *can* wake up at a decent time if so minded. Of course, I'm convinced the blind used to block the wind, and that's why my room is slightly colder than usual this year; but I can always shrink wrap that window too at need.

3. Had physio appt this morning six blocks away as the crow flies, so was naturally reluctant to wait for non-existent bus to subway, take subway one stop, and walk a block up. I can usually do this in less than fifteen minutes; snow increases time to half an hour; and snow turned to ice results in swollen knee ligaments after four blocks and me limping painfully for the remaining. So they ultrasounded and electropulsed and acupunctured and massaged the thing, and then gave me a new brace to try. Adjustable in three places, and not a sleeve but something that starts flat. And it seems to work. I can feel the knee aching after a certain amount of walking, but it no longer stabs.

The only drawback is that the material stinks to high heaven. As I discovered when lying on the couch and wondering what the acrid smell was- furnace overheating metal, chemical fire somewhere nearby, next door cooking something unholy? But worth it for the relief.

1. It snowed another too many inches overnight. I woke to bare sidewalk because the Phantom Snowblower had been at work up and down the block.

2. TPS once again turned off his machine at the ex-Indian Gardener's house, currently under construction. I was able to push some of the soggy snow away with my ice chopper, so it will be passable in tomorrow's freeze, and my elbows and neck did not object. Cannot lift-shovel this year, which has been a worry to me.

(I do wonder what TPS' agenda is. I used to shovel snow so that I could get places, and so could other people if so minded. TPS seems to do it out of a desire to spare people the need to shovel but not to make walking easier. Otherwise he'd do the whole street.)

3. Made it to my aunt's and back, walking to and from subway because the non-existent Christie bus is even more non-existent in snow. Knees are not happy but not the spasming misery they were last night.

4. Freezing drizzle seems to have stopped for the moment and may, with luck, be covered by snow tomorrow. (I am *not* inconsistent: I am situational.)

My cold only troubles me when at work. Why should that be, I wonder? It's still at the sore throat/ general malaise stage, but with enough medication in me I don't much notice it. However I've cancelled attendance at the staff dinner tomorrow, alas, because for once it was a dinner for the P/Ters- some of whom work rather more hours than the F/Ters- and it's nice to be appreciated. Also because it's at a Greek restaurant out the Danforth where I haven't been since I was a Classics undergrad. Well, no matter. It will be loud and my whiskey voice is not up to the hilarity of twenty-odd people.
( And yet again Wednesday )

Throat itches, ears are blocked. Cannot be allergies, must be incipient Something.

OTOH woke to sullen snow under a leaden grey sky. Heaved self from bed, ready to put on woolies and go outside to shovel, gingerly, the heavy accumulation. Pulled back curtain to check and there, by god, was the saint in the yellow coat and his snowblower coming up towards my house, having cleared the other side of the street completely. But saint with snowblower must have been tired because he stopped at my brother's house next door and turned round to go home. So got woolies on, but by then my brother was out shovelling, and all was well.

(Or maybe saint is merely peculiar about who he uhh blows. He'd left untouched the renovating house down the street, formerly the Indian gardener's, and the irresponsible cottager who was denied mail service one summer when her garden's milkweed and cosmos overgrew her front walkway: but also the two very elderly ladies next to that. So I did Florence and Mary's sidewalk on my way to work, with the car shovel I brought to clear our diaper / garbage/ recycle drop.

I always drag my feet about writing Christmas cards, which leads to them becoming New Years cards. It's hard for Eeyore here to find positive things to say as the season gets colder and darker- and I ALSO have to wear boots and my knees hurt and my feet cramp on the icy sidewalks etc etc. My message of good cheer usually defaults to variations on 'Hope next year is better than last' while being quite certain it won't be.

This year of course the pessimism is empirically justified. But I consider that we've had eleven months of WW1 centenary celebrations and many articles about the hideous and appalling and stupid things that happened a hundred years ago. So there's one cheering thought. Things are not- yet- as bad as 1916.

(There's also the intellectual schadenfreude of Neon Trotsky's tweet: "the CIA protesting a right wing president being installed by a foreign power might be the funniest thing that has ever happened.")

Nothing much is happening. I suppose I should be grateful.

Adulted today to the extent of completing the hateful task of shrink-wrapping the N-W facing window with the AC unit in it, from which icy blasts enter my bedroom at night. Did laundry, returned library books, wrote Christmas cards, and flogged me to the Holiday Bazaar at the Native Canadian Centre.

Craft fairs always make me feel bad about not buying people's stuff. But I did find presents for one or two people, including my impossible to shop for ('don't give me food') s-i-l. I bought her food- specifically, honey from the bees atop New College at the UofT. May not be terribly good- who knows?- but is a nice novelty. Assuaged general guilt by buying raffle ticket and door prize ticket: and came home tonight from my extended babysitting gig to a phone message saying I'd won second prize i the former. Can't for the life of me remember what it was; shall find out in the course of time. But, as when I won my free dinner, did think 'Why didn't I buy a ticket for tonight's 25 million draw while I was at it?'

Trump and Tribalism.
- "attacking Trump because of ethics won't work. The tribe that voted for Trump thinks everybody is corrupt, and that their choice is who the corrupt person is working for."

More happily:
Gorgeous forgeries.
-- Includes comments on the need to get your diacritics right when forging Assyrian wall reliefs. Not a profession for the lazy, that.

80 year old Albertan woman wins 50 million.
-- Go you, love.

My reading stats for November are as depressed as that depressing month. Few books, all but one mysteries, but that one does at least add Chinese mainland authors to my reading challenge.

1. Co-worker is back from disastrous trip to Thailand, which involved food poisoning and arbitrarily cancelled return tickets and having to buy new ones at a cost you can imagine. Am sorry they had such a miserable experience but sooo glad to have their calm sense and reliability accessible again.

2. The way to save money on bars and restaurants is to buy my own alcohol. Thus: have ingredients for Johnson Cocktail in the freezer; had Johnson Cocktail before dinner, and contented myself with prawns and pot stickers and leftover rice.

3. Weather is March-mild. Night lawns and front gardens breathe off the damp chill that usually comes from melted snow but today comes from last night's rain.

4. Wrote the emails I've procrastinated on writing and feel the world lifted from my shoulders.

1. The curse of the unnoticed kleenex tissue in the dark wash.

2. The curse of the adhesive contact lens that won't leave the mother ship eyeball.

3. The curse of the inner thigh cramp, Medical Mystery par excellence*. Especially trying because I was lying all flannel-wrapped cozy in the spare room bed reading a Dr. Siri after a long Friday when the agony commenced. OTOH I still had the ice pack for my knees on the side table, so wasn't permanently crippled.

*Seriously. No professional has ever explained these, or why they usually hit while sitting on a couch. Half have never even heard of them and no one can think of how to stretch them out. Hint: you can't.

1. Buying expensive ginger at the yuppie supermarket (because the People's Greengrocer down on Bloor was inaccessible yesterday until about 4 p.m., thanks to the Santa Claus Parade, and afterwards it was snowing, sleeting, and blowing a gale), cutting it open, and finding it already blue inside with only a 2 mm pith of usable yellow. How hateful!

2. Today: "Winds WNW 47, gusts to 61 km/h (30-37 mph)." I could manage biking to work in the daytime; returning at night on possibly newly icy streets is antsy making. But equally, walking on certainly icy sidewalks and taking the crowded rush hour subway is also antsy-making. Winter, boo.

3. Shirts still smell, arbitrarily and causelessly.

4. (see 2) The wind crept around in the dirty town and sneaks in through all the cracks and windows that won't close/ latch completely because of settling houses.

1. It's Friday.

2. The tax department finally sent me an explanation of my property tax refund four weeks after the event. If I understand them correctly which I may not (see 1, above) they have cancelled the tax increase for this year, not merely deferred it until I sell my house. I suppose this is good news, in that they might do the same again next year. Am still not clear if I'm still paying the increase every year and getting it back, or if they'll adjust the tax bills.

3. Last night was a blue, mild, early spring-like evening. Stars shone, air smelled of damp ground. Very like March of 1986, that happy interlude on Brunswick Ave. Suddenly realized that the reason I like my side bedroom is that it reminds me of my bedroom there, which was smaller but squarer, and also a combination of white and maple.

4. Snow flurries and snow squalls forecast for Sunday. I have nothing planned for that day and need not go out to battle the Santa Claus parade crowds.

5. The construction around the Bathurst Station was them doing an homage to Honest Ed's before it closes at the end of the year.

Mindfulness fail: if you intend to put your lenses in, apply heating cream to your aching shoulders *afterwards*.

Mindfulness fail: if you intend to put your lenses in, apply Nivea cream to your dry hands *afterwards*.

Mindfulness fail: if you intend to put your lenses in, apply Voltaren to your twinging elbows *afterwards*.

This is why I didn't wear my lenses today.

Also: if you're wondering why you're so cold at night in spite of the heat being on, it's maybe because the cold moist air humidifier is blowing its little wind directly at your bed.

1. My warm mist humidifier wouldn't warm last night. Light came on but no steam came out. It has an automatic shutoff when water is all gone and so are you, having forgotten to unplug it as on Friday's zombie morning, but the unit seemed to have burned itself out anyway. Was not going to go downstairs and root around dark bunker for the cool mist so did without, dry-coughing through the night. Unplugged it this morning to remove and on a sudden thought, by parallel with Windows, plugged it back in. And it lives!

Am still intending to find a Heaven Fresh humidifier like my brother's, which will take tapwater and doesn't require buying and recycling three four-litre jugs of distilled water a week.

2. The trees with unshed leaves are solid gold, as if they'd been dipped into that pool in The Voyage of the Dawntreader.

3. Spent a reasonably productive day adulting. Washed bedding and towels at laundromat, washed a sinkful of dishes here, washed new coat 1 and new waffle top 2 because of Odour (and shall be peeved if it proves unmovable), raked leaves from back yard and side passage and made good, cut down swathes of dead vine from fence, and made liver dish for dinner.

4. There's such a thing as glow in the dark yarn. There's even a site that makes glow in the dark winter hats. The link was on FB and of course I didn't bookmark it and suddenly FB won't show it again- in spite of everyone and their brother showing me ads for anything I've clicked on ever- but I could get my own yarn and make an ear warmer for winter. Or buy a Lumos helmet, though that's a bit optimistic about what the weather will be like.

5. Reading a Mary Russell about her and Holmes in Japan, or on their way to Japan on a boat, which is diverting and lets me do my ex-expat's sneer about 'that Japanese sentence is wrong' and 'I know no Japanese who start quoting Basho the minute after they've introduced themselves.' Though IIRC the Japanese in question is from Osaka where they do things differently.

Thought, after Wednesday's broken night, I'd need some extra sleep. Wednesday night- or rather, early Thursday morning- was when my cell phone company changed hands, so what do they do? Message me at 2:15 to tell me it happened; message me at 3:20 to tell me how to get into my voicemail; and messaged me several times thereafter but by then I'd muted the damned thing, trusting that if anyone needed me they'd call my landline. (Never giving up landline nope no way.)

So last night I prepared for a morning shift by going to bed before 11 and setting my phone for 8, hoping my body would wake me at 7 or 7:30. 'Every hour before midnight counts as two!' Yes, well. Was woken by phone at 8. And now wonder when I'll wake up tomorrow, when I have a 1 pm appointment.

We had the replacement from hell Monday and Tuesday. He had a violin. He really really really wanted to play his violin, and did: LOUD LOUD LOUD and FLAT. Discover that in the event four separate people told him he was playing too loud for the room and the age group. 'Well, can I go upstairs and play for the preschoolers? They'd really like it!' And he's been doing this for ten years and still has no notion of adult: child ratio or sectional programming?

I'm terribly afraid we'll get him again in our current crunch.
( The usual meme )

I am giddy with all my old age money and have bought a third!!! winter jacket. Granted, it's because the first two jackets are prone to that mysterious annoying smell, which may drive me into buying some kind of scented deodorant eventually, but still. Such luxury. And maybe third time's the charm. (I still want a plastic waterproof thingy, but oh well.) There were some lovely light down-filled jackets at the Fat Women's Shop, but even their 3x didn't have long enough sleeves, and the cuffs were open, not elasticized, which is death in a windy snow squall. So I have another bulky men's coat, and this one is sky blue and thus distinguishable from everybody else's coat at work.

Went and looked at my stats which gloomily confirm what I suspected all along, that I'm slowly but surely putting on weight. In spite of the wide and inexplicable day-to-day fluctuations, overall I add about a pound a month. This is probably post-65 metabolism and annoying. Am not prepared to cut out my daily lattes and croissant but can't think what else to cut.

The cherry tree, which two years ago dropped all its leaves by mid-September, is currently thinking about changing colour at October's end; and the neighbour cherry is not much farther on. Meanwhile the heart-lifting yellow whatever across the street is half bare, which makes me sad. Classic post-hot-summer greenness reigns; we may only hope the snow doesn't begin in November, before the leaves fall, as it did in (shudder) 2007.

In the dep't of first Things First I spent most of my rebate on a new winter jacket. My old one is less than two years old but it too has fallen prey to the underarm stink bug: which I now think is not sweat but a combination of my PH balance and the lycra tubes I wear instead of bras. Certainly I never noticed this when I wore cotton. But it's a distinct pungent odour and it travels from tube to tank top to long sleeved top to, alas, whatever synthetic my coat is made of. I just washed my old coat in scented Tide, which may mask the smell, but I don't know for how long.

Cruising the stores last week I saw a lovely light-weight silver thingy, perfect for dark nights, but it was gone when I got back. So I have a North Face jacket in a light forest green, which will at least let me tell it from everyone else's coat hanging up at work. It's a men's XL, the largest size they have, and it fits well enough. But I won't be able to wear a fleecy under it if the weather goes really cold. If I lost those fifteen pounds I put on in the last fifteen months, then yes; and especially if I lost the additional ten I put on before that; but this doesn't look likely.

However I did manage to walk twenty minutes yesterday without knee hysterics. Surely walking must have some effect on the aging metabolism?

(Really what I want is another plastic winter coat. That one was warm and wet-proof until it started cracking, *and* it had that so-useful arm pocket as well.

Dreamed I was in sort of an Edo-period chanbara, all properly dressed in Edo-period kimono, at a probably *not* Edo-period restaurant with present-day shoji booths etc (that now I think might owe to Samurai Champloo) in the company of a bunch of Japanese dream-friends. Had to use the bathroom down the hall, which is very not Edo. The toilet was western but it sat in a long earthen pit which was six inches deep in muddy water. 'Use the toilet slippers!' my friends were saying, but I was all 'What about my socks!!???'

My mind is now trained to recognize toilet dreams as the sign of a full bladder, so I woke up and limped down the hall. Then viewed the grey light out the study window, checked clock- 8:15- and remembered that the 'We are currently experiencing extremely high volumes of calls' tax dep't starts answering their phones at eight. (And not 'available 24 hours' as the recorded message likes to tell you. That's for minor city stuff other than property taxes- well, maybe for downed power lines; I dunno. But not taxes what everyone wants to ask about.)

At 8:15 everyone doesn't want to ask. Got a clerk right away and inquired why they hadn't taken their money from me this month. After I'd answered the usual skill-testing questions, she clicked through to my account. Property Tax Increase Rebate, which last year sent me a grateful cheque, this year is applied directly to my taxes. 'You'll be receiving a letter from the city.' I bet I will; information is not the bureaucracy's strongest suit. So October's installment is cancelled, November's is reduced, and it's back to normal in December.

Which means I have five hundred dollars more than I thought I did. So maybe I *will* get a tablet after all.

My cell phone will take pictures again. I feel mighty!

Now I shall worry about why the government hasn't withdrawn my property taxes from my account this month and whether they'll blame me for it.
( Memeage )

The dollar store has waffle shirts in again, which I wear three seasons of the year to work and that get splashed with bleach droplets and imbued with a sweat smell that won't go away. So new ones at $10 a pop are always appreciated. And maybe I'll give in and just throw out the smelly ones, since none of the classic treatments can reduce that lingering stink to a point where my foxhound's nose can't detect it.

I have tomorrow off work, and it will be a sunny autumn day, and I could go to Old Navy and get some tanktops that fit.

And in the evening I sit the Little Girls, who are practically at an age to sit themselves. But they wanted me over! So, yeah.

What a lovely weekend this weekend was. Sunny and cold and invigorating, a quiet corner away from the world. Biking through the superb afternoon, I wondered (and not for the first time) why the fact that a day is a holiday changes the whole tenor of the city. It's not like this on my rare days off; it's not like Bloor St and its restaurants are any less crowded than on a weekday. Am I picking up a relaxed vibe from the people around me? Am I subconsciously registering fewer cars and bikes and much less aggressive modes of driving both? Whatever, it's really lovely and I love it.

Must admit, if it was warmer, as past Thanksgivings have been, I suspect the mellow vibe would be less in evidence. Something about warmth in unwarm seasons makes the Torontonian soul determined to get out and ENJOY!! before the long winter begins. And must say, the crowds inside Sushi On Bloor were as loud as ever. That I got into that trendy eatery is down to me showing up at 2:30 because normally I wouldn't even try. Their portions are as big as ever, including the servings of wine, but I still prefer Next Generation across the street, just as good and much more subdued.
( More food )

1. OK, autumn says, no more Mr. Nice Guy. Forget those balmy lows of 15/16 and those daytime humidexes of 30. We're going for COLD (ie under 10) with a north wind to back it. Close the windows, wrap up in quilts and flannel, pray you don't need the furnace this early. And now I'm almost wishing I had a space heater, though those things suck electricity, just to warm up the bedroom, the way the window A/C cools it down.

2. One positive reinforcement of adulting is the nice clean fresh-smelling terrycloth robe. Oddly, this doesn't work for sheets and pillow cases, but that's because I do those at home in energy-efficient cold water detergent, which doesn't smell nearly as nice as the laundromat's hot water Tide.

3. Note trees going red, street gutters golden with fallen ash leaves (if they are), pure white clouds in blue sky etc. A brisk Thanksgiving, I think, unlike the past two or three years: but then look at past stats and discover it's quite as warm as those past Thanksgivings. Try 2012 with its highs, not lows, of 8 and 9. And last night my bro and s-i-l went swimming in Lake Erie, so yeah.
( Cut for reading )