Sister

Since my last post I have been thinking a lot about my sister who, until last night, I hadn't spoken with since May '04. We were both going through difficult emotional situations then, especially her at that point. We loggerheaded over a sensative family issue and we stopped speaking to each other. Our silence troubled me greatly, even though I was convinced she'd never speak to me again regardless of what I said.

Christmas Day I spoke with my brother in Oakville and he told me my sister has just been in hospital and the doctors found a tumour the size of a grapefruit in her abdomen, probably on her uterus, that is growing and probably malignant. The news sickened me. I called and left her a message while she was still in hospital saying I would be happy to help any way I could. She returned my call last night and we talked for more than an hour. Her attitude about the cancer is very positive and she expressed great interest in my welfare. She even took some of the responsibility for the rift between us even though I had no idea why she was so hostile for a year before the rift happened. I was totally pepared to forgive her though I wasn't buying her entire interptretation of what happened. Anyway, she is driving in from Langley tonight to meet me for dinner. I had no idea how much I this change would impact on me. I rarely cry, but last night in bed the tears kept flowing. They weren't tears of sadness or joy, just a release of stress I no longer needed to hold onto.

Mela and Sera

In the blue light of early morning I tottered to the window and saw sheets of white snow already blanketing the sheets of ice from yesterday. So I returned to my own sheets and blankets to dream some more. When I felt the 'big empty' I got up, had some corn flakes and a hot shower. It is still snowing heavily on this 11th day of siege but today I am in a great mood knowing that it is at an end. By the weekend it is forecast to rain for three days and get up to +8C. The nightmare is almost over. My Team Leader just chuckles when I call in now and just says he hopes to see me before the New Year.

Last night before bed I took a melatonin capsule. On days when with lots of mental activity (e.g. playing lots of computer games lately) seratonin builds up in the brain. Seratonin (no relationship to Sarah Palin, though both induce lethargy and foggy thinking) is a sister to Melatonin and they react, like most brothers and sisters, when they come into contact. In this case Mela metabolizes Sera, which I'd gladly do to my sister if I could figure out how. Mela metabolizes Sera during the brain wave spikes that happen at the start of a dream, which means each time they metabolize a dream begins. So I take melatonin and spend the night dreaming. My dreams are weird and wild as I have a vivid and playful imagination.

Last night I was at some kind of residential job site and I had to leave. I was wandering the corridors of this labyrinth building in my underwear, towing my sleeping bag behind me, looking for my lost bicycle and the rest of my clothing and stepping over all these other half-naked men cuddled up and sleeping on the floor. Next thing I know I was on the sidewalk, clothed and selling tickets for Phantom of the Opera, which I have never done before, though I was a bar tender for the show in Toronto. I had to give out the tickets, for some unbeknown reason, with two blueberries each and I was having a problem finding suitable good ones in my basket. It was the blueberries that reminded me I was hungry and that woke me up. So, who needs other drugs or a date when you can go to bed with melatonin?

The last dream reminded me of the time I was a bar tender for the Phantom along with my bf Joseph. He was 11 years younger and always had to be the centre of attention. He was hot and complimented on his looks all the time, but he was as much of a headache as a pleasure most of the time. He was also flamboyantly gay and made a big point of being my bf, which was a new experience to me. One day one of the other bar tenders named Robin, an attractive straight guy a few years older than Joseph, came to me and said, "Your boyfriend" (with the agitated tone that said this was my problem) "has been offering me beginner lessons in blow jobs!"
"He has?" I faked surprise, stalling for time and trying to suppress a smile.
"Yes!" he responded, waiting to hear what I'd do about it.
"Well I guess that's alright..."
"What?" he was taken aback.
"But if he offers you intermediate lessons," I sighed and shook my head slowly, "he's not qualified."
He looked like a deer in the headlights until a smile gradually crept across his face. He nodded at me and turned and left the room. He never complained about Joseph again.

Hallelujah! The snow has just turned to rain!

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Freeze Out - Day 10

I didn't make it up to the Sunshine Coast with my Faerie friends on the weekend for fear that the snowfall on Saturday night/Sunday morning would prevent me from getting home for Monday morning. I didn't want to call in to work long distance saying that I couldn't make it in.

I've been house bound since then, except for a one block -13C trip up to my favourite breakfast diner Saturday morning. The snow started late Saturday evening and continued through Sunday. Monday the skies were clear but there were more than 15 cm of snow with snowbanks half a metre high where the plows had been. The sidewalks looked mostly clear so checked it out when I took out the garbage. It was worse than it looked with cars throwing up large sprays of slush onto pedestrians and sidewalk ramps at intersections being blocked by snowbanks left by the plows. I went out the back to take out the garbage and it was a total mess there too.

But the snow was melting and there were rivulets of water everywhere. I was hoping to get to work today. I dressed, make my lunch and left full of determination but I couldn't even leave the property. The front steps are sheet ice. The part I use where there is something to hold onto on both sides has been used to pile 60 cm of snow, now frozen solid, and the courtyard which had melted into a small pond is now a skating rink.

I'm really sick of staying home. I have busied myself making a stained glass calla lily box and I have started a sun catcher (window hanging) of a calla lily too. I have no idea how upset my Team Leader is over my repeated absence from work. I leave messages. I have taken these photos too.

Homeless death

Tuesday morning, 3 days ago, I stopped by the 7-11 convenience store to buy bus tickets. A pleasant but weathered older homeless woman stood by the door greeting people as the entered and left with a donation jar in her hand. Though I usually refuse to give to the many beggars in our streets, often more than one each block, I gave her a dollar. In weather like this I knew she would need it.

This morning at 4:30 am she died. She had tried to build a shelter in a shopping cart, wrapping herself up tightly against the -12C cold and trying to use some candles she had found to stay warm. The candles caught fire and that was the end of her. Another homeless man ran into Blenz Coffee a block and a half down the street, the only establishment open in our neighbourhood at that hour, screaming that someone was on fire. But the staff had already been dealing with a few incidents of screaming homeless people earlier that evening so they ignored his pleas for a few minutes until another person saw the flames.

I slept through it all the ensuing police, ambulance and fire alarms, quite accustomed to the sound sirens and of homeless cat fights on the street below. The retaining wall pictured above is part of the commercial section of the property I live at. The steep sidewalk and ramp onto Hornby St in front of the foreground are still covered with a layer of ice making me treacherous to go there.

I am holed up in my condo above the shopping cart, having phoned in sick again, unable to keep warm under my many layers of clothes. It is 1pm. My co-workers have just left for the annual Christmas lunch. Yesterday my Team Leader met with me to discuss his discomfort with me calling into to say I cannot safely make it into work when I am not sick. I have fallen 3 times in the past 10 weeks when there was no snow and I have broken ribs and my right leg on previous falls. I have narrowly avoided falls a couple times this week because he feels I should make an effort, even when that puts my well-being at risk. He also had monitored a call and had a few negative comments to share. His comments are always negative, never encouragement, support or praise. I have no heart for my job these days but I still need it. I'd have no home without it. Perhaps I'd be smoldering in a shopping cart below.

How can one keep a positive attitude and his sense of humour of days like this?

Breathe

7:30 - I am lying under the fug of my blankets listening to the hiss and slosh of tires on slush. I don't need to get up to know that it's snowing, but I do, only to put on a Joni Mitchell CD and listen to the sultry saxophones, funky bass and her smoky voice singing, "Come In From The Cold".

8:30 - I call in to work saying that I can't make it to the bus stop safely. I'm not going to risk breaking my leg again, especially when I can't get up when I fall and I always fall when I slip. Life can be a bitch some days. My Team Leader says he's sure the sidewalks will be salted soon. Yeah, right after they have been reduced to pack ice. I am more concerned about what will fall the rest of the day if I do go to work as it shows no sign of letting up. It's chilly as hell in my condo but I can't stay in bed all day. I set the shower water as hot as I can stand it. In spite of this, even the shower curtain feels cold against my skin.

10:30 - The weather forecast shows that it will be going down to -10C and -12C the next two nights. It will warm up slightly on Sunday, just enough for it to start snowing again. I have the two front burners of my stove on medium to help warm the place.

3:30 - It has almost stopped snowing. We have about 12 cm or so of the wet stuff. The trees are beautiful but the streets are treacherous. Apparently city buses aren't going down the steep hill to the back door of my building where I would usually get off because they lose control. I am glad I stayed home. I never would have made it in one piece.

Freeze Out - Day 2

I'm sitting at work, having successfully arrived here without falling. It wasn't easy getting those leotards on. And they don't make those things with flies either. No wonder women take so long when they go to the toilets. It wasn't that cold, really--just cold enough keep the ice on the sidewalks frozen. I was able to get out the back door and to the bus stop on Davie St without hitting any major patches of ice, but I won't be able to use the bus stop closest to home when I return because it stops beside the community garden and the sidewalks beside the garden are a frozen nightmare. I'll have to ride an extra two blocks, cross the street and cross again to get around that major obstacle.

The kicker that got me to risk the sidewalks to come to work, besides the stained glass gifts I had made for seniors, was that as future forecasts unfold the temperatures are just getting lower. By Friday it will be -12C (10F). I can't justify taking a whole week off. If the flurries on Tuesday night/Wednesday result in real accumulations then I might have to take the last three days of the week off. The last time the temperatures remained below freezing for a whole week was over Christmas 10 years ago.

I'm doing my damndest not to fall. It won't be easy to last the whole week, but at least it isn't -29C with a windchill of -45C as in Winnipeg! Small mercies. On the plus side, those pesky pine beetles are getting their asses frozen, finally.

Under siege

I made my first tentative outing this morning. The wet snow had packed hard but it was melting where it had been salted. On Sundays, with many businesses closed and regular condo maintenance people off, most of the sidewalks were still ice. The worst parts are the sloped ramps at the intersections where the snow has been packed hard by hundreds of pedestrians. I simply can't climb up them without losing my balance.

I only went half a block downhill to Cafe a Go-Go where the Faerie Coffee happens every Sunday morning. The ramp crossing Hornby St was very slushy but I was able walk down it and shuffle across the street like a penguin without falling. Even that half-block trip, as slow as I took it, was precarious. I felt my feet slipping a bit a few times and by the time I reached the cafe my heart was pounding hard.

I went only because my good friend Danzante was coming. Three others Faeries, Aunty Tinkerbell, Dragonfly and Butterfly Menace, joined us and we had a pleasant little visit. Danzante drove me up the hill to return some videos and post a letter and then drove me home to the ice-free rear entrance of my building. Gawd bless my friends.

I am safely inside now and plan to stay here for rest of the day. I will probably not risk the trip into work and back as the forecast is for -10C (14F) tomorrow am. It's impossible to catch buses that have room during morning rush hour this close to downtown. Taxis can only drop me off on the steep sides of the building where the buses don't stop and it's hard to get to the entrances from there, but even if I caught a taxi it is nearly impossible to catch a cab home at 4:30 when they are all changing shifts. It is possible to catch a bus if I could maneuver the 3+ blocks to get to the bus stop. But if I fell at -10C and couldn't get up again I'd be in serious trouble so I doubt I will risk it.

Tuesday it will be slightly warmer (-8C) and only -6 on Wednesday, but it's supposed to snow that day too. Thursday, after the snow, it will be -9 again. Lovely. My guilt over not working and the prospect of being unable to leave my building has me all anxious as if I'd had too much coffee. I can't imagine 6 weeks of this.