Dodging Danger: A Big Storm and Teenagers

It was a crazy night. It started with the storm.

I was in my naturopath’s office when the first rumbles of thunder became distinguishable from the traffic outside. We were sitting in his consulting room. A door stood open to his acupuncture treatment room, where there’s a skylight and a big picture window. The lightening flickers coming in through the door were so constant and regular it looked like there was a big TV in there, left on and tuned to static.

The wind outside picked up. Rain lashed against the windows. The rolling and crashing of thunder was almost constant. And yet, we were nowhere near the centre of the storm.

By the time our session was over, the storm was receding. The rain was still coming down in sheets, and it was twilight-dark outside much too early, but the worst I suffered from that storm was soaked feet as I ran to the subway.

Others were not so lucky.

I found a seat on a subway train among other damp and dripping folks. At the very next stop, a man around my age took the seat next to me. He was talking to himself.

“Six… dozen… chicken wings,” he said, jiggling his left leg nervously.

He murmured some inaudible comments, and then suddenly, with a big flourish, he whipped open the plastic bag he was carrying and pulled out a hairbrush. His hair was wet and messy from the storm.

He brought the brush up, and over his shoulder. He tapped himself on the back with it several times, between his shoulder blades. He threw it in the air and caught it, twice, with great concentration. That done, he dove back into his plastic bag and put the hairbrush away. He leaned back in his seat.

“Strong and powerful,” he said. “Strong and powerful PUNCH! PEANUT PUNCH!”

At this point I was having a very hard time keeping a straight face.

“Nutritious food,” he mused. “Sweet potatoes. Okra. Ackee.” Mumble mumble. He got off at the same stop as me. I walked slowly to fall far behind him. He paced off energetically, presumably in search of something to eat for his dinner. Six dozen chicken wings, perhaps?

I got myself dinner at a food court, and got back on the subway to go home. There were some girls who looked to be around 15 years old, standing in a little clump, talking loudly amongst themselves. Skinny jeans, hoodies, big gold bangles, neon pink and neon green nail polish.
Two stops later, another bunch of girls got on the train. I still can’t figure out if the two groups were loud, obnoxious friends trying to freak out all the other passengers, or if they genuinely would have liked to tear each others’ eyes out with their manicured fingernails. But the verbal bust-up that went on for the next five minutes had me ready to push the “Emergency Stop Get Help We Are In Danger Eeeeeeeeeee!” security strip over my seat. They were yelling and screaming at each other, calling each other every possible disgusting name, and making violent threats.

Finally one of the groups got off. There was some banging on the train windows before we pulled away to safety, but whew! No one’s eyes were gouged.

I got off at a transfer point, only to be almost destroyed by a team of adolescent boys who were running for the train like a stampede of charging rhinos. I threw myself up against a wall and felt the sleeve of the closest boy’s T-shirt brush my upper arm as he raced past. I would have been knocked flat on my back I hadn’t jumped out of the way.

Anyway, I finally made it home all in one piece, and found my home all in one piece, at the end of the evening. My roof was not ripped off. I was not struck by lightening or flying debris. I wasn’t attacked by a crazy man or evil teenaged girls. Nor was I squashed by teenaged boys, or even a subway train.

I’m feeling lucky!

The Cold Post

It's cold out, and I have a cold. Welcome to winter!

I fought the cold, and the cold won. On Monday and Tuesday of this week I did nothing but recline on my couch, feet up, remote control in hand, semi-conscious and re-discovering the gems of daytime TV. There's nothing like a low-grade fever to lay a shiny gloss of fascination over programs like American Justice and Dr. Phil.

Normally I get bored after two consecutive hours of TV. It was pretty cool to just relax and veg out for two whole days.

By Tuesday night I wasn't feeling a whole lot better, but in my mind's eye I could see the work stacking up on my desk, so I thought I'd better go in. The cold (illness) waited until I was back at work to morph from a general feeling of achiness and fatigue into typical, slow-torture cold symptoms. The delicate tickle at the back of my throat that cuts me off in mid-sentence, or wakes me up at five-to-ten-minute intervals all night. Epic sneezes. My face looks like an unmade bed.

I would love, LOVE to crawl back under my duvet and channel-surf my way through to the end of the week. But I'm not quite sick enough to justify hiding out at home. Blick. At least those crunchy sounds I was hearing in my right ear didn't come to anything. (Watch - now that I've written that I'll have a raging ear infection by this time tomorrow. )

There are some good things. I always like to remember the good things.

I bought new boots on sale: knee-high and lined with lambswooly stuff that makes them very cozy. I tested them out yesterday and today, taking 20-minute walks in the deep freeze, and my feet were toasty. Huzzah! I'm incredibly well-equipped for winter this year. I have layers like you wouldn't believe. Fleeces, hats, mitts, scarves, long-johns, over-the-knee-socks... in fact, I have to be careful not to overdress. I even have snowpants, which I haven't resorted to yet this year. If I wear them in anything warmer than -25 C, I broil.

I'm not letting the cold (weather) or the cold (illness) bully me out of having some social fun. I went out for a Japanese dinner last night with my super-awesome little sister, which was great. And I have a plan to go dancing with a girlfriend of mine for her birthday this Saturday. I have to get well by then! I can't think of a way of working Epic Sneezing into my Flashdance routine.

I take it all back

After all my whining, yesterday turned out to be a gorgeous day.

I took a 2-mile walk, past quirky retail stores, over bridges, and along the edges of ravines. The sun was brilliant; the snow was melting. I knelt to pat a patch of emerald-green, velvety moss. I was sorry that I hadn't brought my camera.

I love this enormous, awkward, mixed-up city, with its generous network of untended parkland interwoven with the streets, homes, and skyscrapers. All I want to do in good weather is get out on foot to appreciate every inch of it. 1 degree Celsius in full sun is good enough for me. I don my parka and my hiking boots, and off I go.

Dinner at Mom's. The Dude says "Hi" to y'all, from his favourite cubby-hole by the kitchen table. Officially, it's the storage spot for my mom's placemats, but they don't get much use anymore because they're always covered in cat hair.



My mom got him going by scratching the outside of the cabinet near his rear end. He got a little over-enthusiastic turning himself around to find out what the noise was all about, and fell out, butt-first, onto the floor, taking a placemat with him. The placemat landed on his head.

I'm off to enjoy more quality time outside in the sun.

Happy Easter weekend!

Ah, Spring.

Everyone's been blogging about how great it is that spring is here. The sun is shining! Green things are poking up out of the ground! There is the promise of full-blown beauty just around the corner!

Where I live, not so much.



No green sprouts are poking their delicate heads from the ground. There's just the mud.



And iced-over sidewalks that lie in wait, hoping to break your ankle.



This puddle got me the other day.



Doesn't look so bad, doesn't it? It was bigger and deeper two days ago, when there was more fresh meltwater. Still, you'd think that if you were wearing waterproof boots you could get through that no problem.

I tend not to pay much attention to my surroundings while I walk, especially if the weather is crappy. My eyes go on an autopilot setting. Alerts only reach my brain if there's impending dog poop in my path, or traffic. The rest of the time, I'm lost in thought. Puddles don't register because I'm wearing boots, so it's not an issue, right?

I had both feet in the puddle before I realized that something was amiss. It was much deeper than I had assumed. Still, nothing for it but to keep going. There were only banks of ice on either side, and the last thing I wanted was to slip and fall on my butt in the water. Two more steps. It got deeper! Each time I put a foot down, it made this sound:

BLOOOOSH!

I started to run. Counterproductive strategy: the 5-inch-deep water splashed and slopped over the tops of my boots, then started wicking up my pant legs. Argh! By the time I got to work, I was dank and grouchy.

I long for warm days and green trees...



Spring's got to get here eventually!

P.S. These photos were taken yesterday. This morning I woke up to brilliantly clear, blue skies. It's still freezing out, but at least we have sunshine!

Snowy Saturday

7:30 am: Wake up. Huh, what do you know? It's snowing.

10:30 am: Go meet my friend Zach for brunch. Wow, it's really coming down.

I walk to the subway station through ankle-deep snow. It's pretty, so white and quiet. There are hardly any cars on the streets. I enjoy the tingling cold of snowflakes on my face.

11:00 ish (OK, so I was a little late) to 1:20 ish: Brunch with Zach at the Pickle Barrel.

Just so you know, Zach is awesome. We've been friends since high school. In my tenth grade yearbook, he glowers at the camera from behind a curtain of hair. He signed it: "When I rule the world, I won't enslave you."

Zach made these guys for me many years ago. They are: Red Squid, Oonis, and Sammy the Snake. Oonis has a hole in the top of his head and so doubles as a pen holder.




Yes, Ken is cool with us being friends. He trusts me. The value and rarity of this kind of trust is not lost on me.

You'd think that at a restaurant called "The Pickle Barrel", you'd find the best quality pickles available. It may only be a garnish by the side of the plate, but it's also their corporate emblem. Zach and I agreed that in fact, these were the WORST pickles we'd ever had. They tasted like they'd been bottled in flavourless oil, instead of brine. Slimey and tasteless. Feh!

2:00 ish: Meet Ken at the bookstore. Take the subway downtown to the Eaton Centre Mall. It's still snowing, but I don't care much because I've been indoors since I got on the subway at 10:45 am. I love malls that are attached to subway stations.

2:30 to 4:00 ish: Bum around the mall. At one point, we ventured outside, but the wind threw such a flurry of cold, wet snow into our faces that we turned around and went right back in.

4:00 pm: Take the escalators up 8 floors in The Bay department store to the Cityview Cafe.

This is a quiet cafeteria with enormous plate-glass windows that look down onto the historical building that used to be City Hall. You can also see Queen St. (a main thoroughfare) and the skating rink at Nathan Philips square.

We chose a plastic-wrapped slice of pumpkin pie to share, and sat by the plate-glass windows, watching snow pour down heavily from an undifferentiable sky. A few brave souls were skating, although the snow must have been pretty thick on the ice. We watched traffic creep along. Tourists stopped to take photos of each other in front of Old City Hall. A pack of skinny teenagers waiting for the streetcar tried to have a snowball fight, but the snow was as packable as dry flour. They threw handfuls of it at each other, and it just blew away on the wind.

5:00 pm: Take the escalators down 8 floors. Bum around the mall some more.

6:00 pm: Take the subway to Yonge and Bloor. The shoe store I wanted to look around in was "Closed Due to Extreme Weather. Sorry for the Inconvenience." We went to Ginger for dinner.

Ginger is a Vietnamese, cafeteria-style restaurant. We sat at a table for two pushed up against a wall papered with a mural of a tropical beach. As we ate, the wind picked up outside and snow blew in a furious dance outside the windows. Whenever the front door opened, the wind gusted in so aggressively that it blew snow right onto my dinner plate, as I shivered under the image of a paper palm tree on a sunny beach.

6:30 ish: Time to get going. Outside it's snowing so hard that I laugh in disbelief. There are so few cars on the road that it feels more like 4:00 am on a weekday than Saturday night at the heart of the city.

7:00 ish: Walk home from the subway through calf-deep snow. The wind won't let up, and it's blowing a constant stream of cold, wet snow in my face. I am so over the snow by now. I am not enjoying the sensation, no sir, not one bit. Not the stinging of snowflakes landing directly on my eyeballs, nor the cold melt-water that's trickling down my neck.

10:15 pm: Draft a blog post about my day in the snow. It's STILL freakin' snowing!!

Sasquatch

It would be easy for me to feel bitter about the recent weather in Toronto. It's not even officially winter yet, but it's been snowing for a month. Das ist crazy, for reals. We usually don't even get a dusting of snow until around Christmas.

But I'm kind of liking this wintery experience. Bad weather allows me to pretend that I am an adventurous hero, forging my way through wind, sleet, and snowdrifts to survive. Getting to the grocery store and back in freezing rain becomes an expedition. I may be slithering and slipping on this glassy sidewalk, but the Stalwart Red will never give up! Even if I have to shuffle all the way, I will prevail!

I'm even looking forward to the deep freeze days, the days I used to dread. What's different this year? In July I got contact lenses. Now I can pull my scarf right up over my nose, without fear that my breath will fog my glasses. I used to have to choose between seeing and breathing. That, my friends, was a hard choice.

Soon I must go out. I will pull on my ugly, waterproof winter boots and go stomping through ankle-deep slush while most everyone else is delicately picking their way between the puddles in their fashionable, leather-soled shoes. And I will feel superior! Oh, so superior.