Just Jot It January: Time Out #PandemicEdition #SoCS #JusJoJan

My hope for 2021 (and many other’s hopes as well) would be to see this virus kicked to the proverbial curb, just as #45 was in their elections). Hopefully, by the end of this year, COVID-19 will be on its way out, along with (hopefully beginning of year for #45).

I know he lost, not according to him, but he did. And now I’m waiting for his exit from his position/status on top of the world.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday #SoCS

I guess this viewpoint could cost me a few readers here, but in this case, I can’t care about that. I need to speak out on this man here, more than/over any politics I could discuss. He is no king and never will be. I need to be able to look back, years from now, at this blog and see that I spoke out about the damage he’s inflicted.

I was inspired to write my second go at
Just Jot It January #JusJoJan
with an image of #45 in the corner.

When I was growing up, often I’d visit a friend from school. We’d have sleep overs and swim in her above ground pool. She had three younger siblings and one of them would get in trouble while I was there and into the corner they’d go.

I didn’t have this parental technique in my house growing up and so I was intrigued by it, as punishments go. Every family was different in how they disciplined their children like in any other generation.

Go stand in the corner to reflect on what you did wrong. I think, as January 20th approaches, this image of that man in the corner stands out.

Not that he’ll do any such thing, real image being slightly amusing and symbolically, he would need to stand there a long time to satisfy me. There are worse punishments, things people experience every day. He has been getting away with so much crap for so long now. He is, sadly, too far gone to ever come back to decency.

It’s like how people in positions of power over the lives of others (politicians) here in Canada are in need of a bit of time in the corner themselves. The finance minister here in Ontario was caught vacationing over the holidays, somewhere tropical. He came home, in shame, which is supposed to be bad because we’re told that people never learn that way, but he isn’t a child. He should have known. He did know it was wrong to do while people back here are trying to stay afloat and following a rule in today’s society that helps stop the spread of a nasty virus. Then, it was discovered that another politician, in Alberta this time, she was found out doing the same sort of thing. But no punishment (no standing in the corner for her), right Alberta’s prime minister?

People are upset because the same rules don’t seem to apply for those with power and thus a high desire for them to be responsible as they apply for the rest. The rich/poor gap does feel extremely prominent these days.

I am writing every day on this blog in January, except for every Wednesday when I’ll take a break, but I’m doing this to be able to look back on this time period we’re all experiencing together: same boat but all looking through different portholes. Or we’re all inside a submarine and we’re all looking through the scope at slightly separate moments in time.

The years of #45 at the top of the world practically are, hopefully, coming to an end and he isn’t very happy about it. I, on the other hand, I grin about it multiple times a day now, when I’m not letting dread cloud over that glee, at the thought that it’s not quite over just yet and some seem hell bent on extending our misery, with this so-called leader’s ungraceful exit.

I don’t normally admit to that kind of pleasure, in another’s downfall as you might say, but this is my exception to the rule, rules this man has never had to follow like the rest of us and now, by some, following rules in our society is considered weak and sheepish which I just don’t get at all.

I’ll end by saying I am one of those who hasn’t seen Dirty Dancing all the way through. I don’t know if it’s a particularly blind friendly movie. Or is it that it was from a very specific decade, time period in the 80’s and I wasn’t there to experience it all live, in its glory, as I was not even six at the time.

“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” Isn’t that what Patrick said in that dreamy role of his? #Rip

Where’s a certain friend’s mother when we need her to put this man in the corner, not some vague-to-me Dirty Dancing line, but he has been compared to a baby plenty, with all his tantrums – okay, so put “baby in the corner” for a time out for a long long while.

Scary Scary Halloween #FightTheFear #HocusPocus #RIPSirBond #SoCS

I want to not be afraid. I want the knot in my stomach and the clenched fist in my heart and the nagging in my head to be held at bay. But how?

Thoughts. Fears. Prayers. It’s all a lot of no good.

I wonder, on this final weekend where October and November meet, what exactly is the
trick
to how I may accomplish that.

Notice, I do not place a question mark at the end of it because I know I, as a Canadian, that I can’t do much to help relieve myself of all I’ve been feeling. I know that some questions aren’t meant to be questions because I’m not going to get answers that suffice.

Not this weekend at least.

I try to focus on the light hearted fun of Halloween today, but I want to scream from world and North American events specifically, not some silly haunted house.

I Am horrified and I wish it were only horrified that my darling nephew loves his awful Jason, zombies, and vampires

Instead of the real and lasting decisions from world leaders and politicians and so many that stay silent, even with mouth hanging open wide in horror.

What is the answer to my dread at this point?

Halloween will come and go, tomorrow we’ll wake up having lost an hour, and I will wait to see what November brings.

All I can do is be here and watch what happens, all while I’m left viewing things out of my own ability to influence. It feels like slowly sliding down into a dangerously bottomless casm and I’m powerless to hold on.

If November brings worse news than I’m daring to really believe such a thing could happen, I don’t know what I’ll feel or do.

I’m listening to protest songs this weekend because I know art has power for good and for change.

Who are the gatekeepers who let the dangerous humans through?

Honestly? Seriously?

Honestly. Seriously. I say to myself, and I sigh.

I hate to speak dramatically because I know it sounds alarmist and radical. Ooh, what a scary word is radical, but I feel fear pushing me into a future I don’t want to live to see and I can’t bare to keep it in.

So those who think I’m being dramatic, both those who know me and love me, along with anyone else who might come across these words, I throw my hands up and I sigh because I want to wake up and feel something else, anything else but what I’ve been feeling since #45 went from some ridiculous reality TV star to commander in chief.

I wrote about my fears last time, in those weeks before November the last time.

I wrote about the misogyny coming at #45’s running mate, last time.

I wrote about what giving him power, real power would say to him, would give him a green light for, last time.

I wrote about my, it turns out, justified fear, last time.

I wrote about all this, the last time, while Lenard Cohen passed away, while his words gave me comfort, even when I’d always felt unable to connect with his voice, no matter how iconic and how poetic.

I practiced my violin and went out to dinner, the night #45 was to be elected, still being free to openly eat dinner out. I saw the writing on the wall, last time.

I drank and I waited.

I had a successful time of it, these last four years, for me anyway and that all was a big deal to me. I did well and I am safe in Canada, but Canada is, four years later, far too close geographically for my liking.

I wish we could put a bit more distance between our two countries now, but our border is used by many, even still.

Any thoughts that a pandemic would show up, now, I did not think it would be now. I did think that, if given four years with such outrageous power, that would swell his head so intensely that we’d have to work even harder to dislodge him from a place he has no business (businessman though he is) in being.

I’ve never been a reality TV fan. In fact, I think the rise in reality TV culture got the worst person, unfit to be a president, where he is today. I could have gone on, rarely being made to think of him and I can’t tell you how disgusted I am at a country who would put him in such a position of power, and put me in this position of having him shoved in my face, in control of so much right across that border.

I have other things going on. In this country, I can go on and not let the elections of another country distract me all that much if I so choose.

But now you tell me how.

I want no trick-or-treat, but only to know the trick to not being afraid.

And now Sir Sean Connery, Bond, has died.

It’s odd to think of those who’ve recently died, RBG and now Bond for example. It’s strange to think of anyone who was here of late and now will not be here to see what’s to come, whatever it may be.

Today the organization I am a part of (the Canadian Federation of the Blind) is having an Eat The Fear Halloween event.

Of course it’s virtual, as covid is 2020, but it works because blindness and fear often go hand in hand.

This day is all about fear, fearing scary movies and gory costume choices.

This will go on until October ends, until those clocks jump back an hour, giving me one extra hour of fear while I wait everything out, but all the fears I have I would like not to have. I am not in a movie or in some dream.

I recently got into a travel writer by the name of Dervla Murphy, an Irish writer and chance taker and she and I are nothing alike.

She went places I won’t go. She did things I wouldn’t do. She biked from Ireland to India, took her young daughter overseas with her.

It’s fear that she speaks about that has had me reeling since I read her words. She does not fear any bridge until she comes to it. Oh, how to not fear the bridges I’ve not yet come to?

I have family members much better at this, better like Murphy, but not me.

Happy Halloween!

TToT: Back After A Long While #OctoberSurprise #BlindnessAwarenessMonth #10Thankful

I could have posted my favourite quote about the month I most love, but that “October” quote from Lucy Maud Montgomery has been added here in previous years. I will stick to my own words today.

I’ve been out of this gratitude post activity for months now. I still practice gratitude in my head and in my heart, but I have my moments of self pity and fear also and so I wanted to break that block I had which kept getting in my way of sharing here.

Ten Things of Thankful #10Thankful

I am thankful for this, my favourite month. The air is fresher and crisper and cleaner than the earthiness of spring or the humid, heavy heated air of summer in southwestern Ontario. Winter is good also, with the smell of snow in the air all around, like a snow globe. I look forward to that, though I worry about people I love who find the long, dark months of winter a challenge to their mental health and energy levels.

I am thankful for my yearly seasonal fresh apples. They are giant, some I call pumpkin apples. They are special and tart/sweet and so crisp and sour at times. I am thankful for those who pick them from the apple trees this time of year.

I am thankful for how Canada is mostly pulling together and facing this pandemic with grace and a common goal of staying healthy, as many of us as possible. I lay low and protect myself, as I’m on my way to 25 years with my father’s kidney come 2022. Those I love are staying safe too.

I’m thankful for staying close to family during such strange times. I am lucky to have parents who taught their four children respect and love for the gift of a sibling, brother or sister, for the different things they bring to the table of sibling closeness. Our parents know they won’t always be here and how important it is to keep growing a bond with a sibling, no matter where life takes any one of us four. We’re here for each other and I don’t see that changing, but I hope I can do my part to keep the bonds strong.

I’m thankful each sibling and I have talks and they each keep me sane, in different ways, at different moments when I might be struggling to voice my concerns and fears over the state of things. I tend to let my imagination run wild with these things, am frightened for what’s to come in the US especially in the coming months. It’s hard here too, as helpless as I feel because I can’t contribute a vote against the man currently occupying the people’s house there in DC. I can only watch from up here, in horror and disgust and embarrassment for it all and the still real possibility that it could go worse still.

I am thankful for a more successful year for me, compared to 2019, dangerously contagious unknown virus that has come upon us in 2020 notwithstanding. I’ve started doing what’s called sensitivity reads for a children’s publisher in Toronto and now an accessibility review for a science journalist who was presenting at some sort of UK science journalism conference. She wanted to do all she could to make her slide presentation, with its images and alt text on those images accessible for everyone and needed someone with a screen reader to look everything over. I feel like I am doing my part in this world to improve accessibility for myself, others with the same needs as I have and that’s something at least..

I am thankful the show I do with my brother is
now available
in more places than one. We’ve had some incredible guests on the show in recent weeks and we’re not done yet.

I’m thankful for the nature documentaries on Netflix I’ve had to escape into for distractions lately.

Most of what’s available on Netflix now is audio described, allowing me to imagine the scenes of wildlife and the natural world in my mind as I’m listening.

Watching these, I felt peaceful for a brief but necessary break in my day, but also I’ve been reminded why I love nature (my religion) and the need for action to protect it.

I’m thankful I have an essay
about Braille
I wrote, published in my third print book, not counting the
magazine
I now have my name on as assistant-editor over the last year or so.

I probably should have confirmed, but I’m unfortunately unsure I can post the correct photo description, as I am unsure which one I went with here. I just chose one from my photos, one from that day, something with the print magazine my essay is in, me holding it or it being open and showing the page with my name or my story on it.

I’m thankful for the Women Who Travel online study course I’ve been taking, for the virtual walk around New Zealand next month, and the nature writing class I’m taking in January, 2021, all of which give me something meaningful to focus on, to work on, and to use as inspiration until I can travel again one day.

I’m thankful for the recent online fiction writing class I started, every Friday night until right before Christmas. It will keep me accountable..

Though we don’t know what will be by the time Christmas and the end of this wild year arrives, but until then I am doing my best to get by.

So, if you ask me that usual, general question from now until at least 2021 and the hope of a possible COVID-19 vaccine is perfected, even if I sigh, suck it up and answer “fine,” I won’t exactly be fine, but I’m doing what I can to stay hopeful and sometimes I fall back into that trap of answering in a way as to not make others feel uncomfortable to continue any further talk with me.

Thank you, Kristi and everyone, for still being here to show me the way on staying as accountable to being thankful as humanly possible and a recent Happy Birthday to our hostess here at the TToT.

And finally, this is a shot of my pal before I had to say goodbye and have him put down last month.

RIP and I’m glad there’s no more suffering for you. Staying positive here, as best I can. There’s always something to be thankful for.

It Could Fill An Ocean #BlackDisabledLivesMatter #SoCS

I haven’t done one of these in a while.

I could say I’ve been lazy, but this is a double “z” post and so that won’t cut it.

I’m genuinely
puzzled
by so many things, too many to list, but I’ll give it a try.

How people disregard the potential seriousness of this coronavirus.

I know we need an economy and we need human contact and touch and socialization and companionship. I know I know – when I hear people I once spent time with, how they think there’s more than this virus to consider. Of course there is, but I also know I’m afraid of getting covid-19 and it destroying my life with my father’s kidney, let alone worse possible outcomes. I am not overly cautious, but I also haven’t gone out much. I try not to let it take over, but it is here to stay, for the foreseeable future. I am scared, when I hear reports of how other organs are damaged, not only the lungs.

When I hear the phrase now: “I can’t breathe,” I think of both George Floyd and all biopic who fear for their Black men and women, not wanting the children to inherit this version of the world, and I also think of people on ventilators and I shiver slightly for a moment in bewilderment.

That racism is still a thing or ever was one.

Of course, that’s a simplistic, childlike way to look at it and I am no longer one, still wishing I could be again now. I know the reasons behind, as awful as they are, and I am doing my best to educate myself even further.

I’ve been away from blogging, on the whole, for a while now and I’m more overtaken by all that’s going on in the world.

I am worried this will be a long summer, longer than last year after I hurt someone badly and even longer than the summer of 2016 when the whole world seemed sure Hillary Clinton was certain to win.

I was confused about how people could be so sure because I wasn’t.

Now here we are again. What happens in the US seems to leave its mark on us in other places. As hard as I’d like to escape from the reality of racism in 2020 and in the prospect of #45 winning a second term, I cannot.

I am genuinely baffled that anyone ever saw him as successful and, thus, giving people hope they could also be rich and powerful? I think that’s what it is.

I sense bullshit easily and he has always given off that air, even before people called him Mr. President.

People are out in the streets here in Canada too, protesting because this matters. I am puzzled by power and the lengths some will go to get it, but I wish I could experience a Black Lives Matter protest. I admit I am afraid, even with being outside and social distancing and masks, I am afraid I could be exposed and be one of those who are worse off after being positive. My kidney won’t work forever, like my technology won’t, but I am still hoping to avoid losing my transplant to this pandemic.

I’m always puzzled about computers and how they work. I don’t get there naturally.

So before this stream of consciousness threatens to run wild, I will end by offering one final observation, less timely than what I’ve been writing so far.

But wait…

I note the differences between the US and Canada like I think of the letter “Z” because, while we say it as “ed,” the US says it like: “e.”

And that’s just the start of our differences, but when it comes to thinking Canada is so much better adjusted than our neighbours, I want to believe it, but I know, wherever you are, there is tribalism and fear of “the other” in our society. I am genuinely bowled over by some things, but I can’t look away and pretend I don’t see.

I am blind and I see less and less, but I am more and more puzzled by the state of things and I feel it all most intensely.

Speaking of technology, I do like to think of zz as a funny sound when my technology, my screen reader says it, zz zz zz zz

It makes me want to go to sleep: zzzzzzzzzzz

TToT: Happy Seventh Birthday – Transplant/10ThingsofThankful anniversaries #Annedemic #Janndemic #AntiRacism #StrawberryMoon #10Thankful

“Go home and stay home.”

—Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada

In mid March our PM told us this and I’ve been interested to see how things happened since then. This has been the last few months and we’re just now starting to gradually, very gradually open things back up a bit, and we shall see what happens over the summer ahead.

Long before all of this coronavirus talk, for me, it’s been five years of
Ten Things of Thankful #10Thankful
and I’ve found great value in this exercise in gratitude along with several other bloggers every week, especially now.

Current host says: Friendships were formed, and a community was born.

This is true. Thanks,
Thankful Me,
and thank you to Lizzi and Josie, those who have kept it going ever since, when one person needed to pass the torch and someone stepped right up to take the TToT on to keep it going for us all for all these years.

After I discovered the TToT, I was lead to another and there’s a partnership between the two weekly blog hops, at the moment for this thankful birthday celebration.

Finish the Sentence Friday with Finding Ninee

I’m thankful for this extended blogging community. I’ve done better in life with a place to go to remember gratitude in the tougher times and in the joyful, celebratory or reflective weeks.

From
Annedemic
to Janndemic, Jann Arden is one of my favourite Canadian musicians and she’s been going on daily walks with her little pup and taking her fans along on Facebook live. She is wise and talented and she has a calm voice of reason and comfort during corona, all the way out there in Alberta where she lives.

I call these walks Janndemic jaunts.

I’m thankful for our, let’s just say, more stable and practical leadership and direction during the first few months of the coronavirus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjhF1GI9n8A

The longest pause on record, it felt like, but what should he have answered?

As a certain #45 is nearing the end of his first four years, I hope he will be gone but I’m just trying to make it to November so we can see him go. I need to focus on what I’m grateful for because all that’s scaring me can feel massive and distracting.

Black lives matter.

Canada is muddling through the coronavirus like any other nation and we have racism here and discrimination—and discrimination with incidents involving cops and African or Indigenous Canadians. We aren’t as bold and in-your-face as all that goes on in the US, but we are hopefully seeing where we need to shape up and I look for signs of change. This appears to be a global movement, along with all the others, global warming and pandemic and economic etc.

Privilege. Apathy. These are just two ways I’ve benefited or faltered with our society’s white supremacy. I’ve done advocacy work with disability long enough to know I have nowhere near all the answers, I will make mistakes and frequently do, but I won’t stop trying to do better because we’re all interconnected, but must remember we don’t know another’s pain or experience in their own body.

I’m thankful I have people that I look to, learn from, and wish for their success and ability to be seen and heard. I want things different, for my nieces and nephews, for their future but also for the present they are growing up through, for every disabled child being born now, every Black child throughout the world, and every black, disabled person.

I write about these days we’re living through and also to document this year, here on my blog. I know, the perfect storm, but pandemic or no pandemic, these demonstrations are bringing people out, speaking of antiracism so nobody will be able to look away anymore.

I’m thankful for the daily diary I’ve started where I write to my grandma (gone 15 years next month) and share with her about this historic time she didn’t live to see. I have a place where I can go to express my biggest fears and anxieties of this pandemic.

I’m thankful for a few writing wins to focus on while the world is on fire.

From Feeling Stupid to Feeling Included – Folks

I wrote this about my journey to finding a safe space to explore movement, through yoga and then Pilates.

I’ve also got an essay about reading and braille that is likely coming out this summer sometime.

I’m thankful for the old rerun episodes of Young and the Restless, airing while new show taping is taking a pause. This is a different year from the almost fifty years of this particular soap opera they play and usually have a theme for one week’s shows, like greatest romances or villains. I can go from an episode I remember watching, at a younger age in life, or I can see an old enough episode that I was barely born when it first aired. It’s taking me back, distracting me once a day for an hour, and it reminds me of my oma who watched for years. She’s been gone ten years next week and I wonder what she’d make of this virus, after she faced war and moving to Canada and all.

I’m thankful for some of the shifts this virus seems to have ushered in, even though much about this time is hard, along with those brought on by systemic racism and prejudice, though these injustices are unacceptable and I am cheering on the protests and this time where a bunch of the best of 20th century are making an appearance in a bundle of fun: 1918 pandemic, 1930s economic woes, and the unrest of the 1960s in the Civil Rights movements to follow. (Sarcasm here, but it all feels like that.)

I’m thankful for the virtual Crip Camp I’m attending this summer, every Sunday, where presenters speak about internalized ableism and activism and mentorship in the disability community. I know I’m not alone in feeling helpless, but I must move beyond that if I want to get anywhere.

I’m thankful for tonight’s strawberry super moon taking place on my kidney transplant anniversary: twenty-three years and counting.

I’m thankful for my kidney, after a few scares with my creatinine and then my potassium level since the start of the year. Things are stable again, for the moment, and I’m thankful for the dedicated specialists monitoring things, always there, and the continuation with phone clinic visits.

I’m thankful I’ve been able to get through such a stressful time and that I practice the attitude of going with the flow (while lying low), even on my worst days of fear and weariness.

Happy 5th Birthday TToT!

An ENG 101 Instructor’s Plea: Let’s Stop Sharing Our Theses (So Soon!)

Something to think about in this time of strangeness. Here’s to all I don’t now know.

BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog

By Christen Madrazo

COVID-19 social media content was all fun and games at first. We shared memes, tweets, and posts about the media hype, the handwashing, the run on toilet paper… Now, though, this is our real lives—not just our virtual ones—and our online tone has grown increasingly somber.

The same folks who, three or four weeks ago, insisted this was all “no big deal” and even shamed others for their “hysteria,” suddenly implored us to “check in on our friends with anxiety.” Those who said “relax—it’s just a flu,” almost overnight began to chastise those not doing their part to #flattenthecurve.

But I’m not writing to call out the hypocrisy here. That our social media content would shift makes sense. As more information surfaces, our opinions change.

I get it. In fact, it’s my job to get it. For 14 years I’ve taught university-level intro to writing and research. My…

View original post 740 more words

TToT: An Epoch In My Life – Equations and Conjugations #BlackSwan #OneWorld #TogetherAtHome #10Thankful

“’The matter with human beans,’ the BFG went on, ‘is that they is absolutely refusing to believe anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles. ‘” …

—The BFG by Roald Dahl

So much going on that writing here often now slips through my fingers and gets lost in the recesses of my brain, but I have plenty to be thankful for-so let’s go.

Ten Things of Thankful #10Thankful

With the novel coronavirus, covid-45 up to his bullshit, and now the worst mass shooting in Canadian history having taken place this past weekend. I am trying to find moments of joy, ways to distract myself and my racing thoughts, and ideas to harness the creativity I have inside.

I wish, oh how I wish the world could all be on the same page with this, to work together, which seems so very simple to me. Apparently not?

We can sit around and blame China or the US or anyone else, but where does that get us?

All the finger pointing and wide gaps in the seriousness of the way this virus is being taken and all those conspiracy theories floating around. Why can’t things just be what they are? Like the quote I started this week’s TToT with, humans refuse to admit until they see with their eyes, and during times like these, not even then.

I am thankful for this song.

The Book of Love – Gavin James

I am thankful for a new online writing class I’ve started and the community of writers who are willing to open up and share.

The instructor started a WhatsApp group for all of us and we’re all leaving audio messages there, for each other, and as a place for reflection and contemplation.

She suggested we think up a name for the group and I thought of black swan because it’s a term being used to describe this pandemic and also, there are swans down at the park by my house now. I remember their white, graceful, loveliness as I watched them glide across water. Now I no longer see them, but I think a swan could be still beautiful, even a black one. Why not?

I know we’re often tempted to describe tough times like these as dark times, looking for the light, but I often get tired of these images we use to describe the bad and the good of life, but yet I know I can’t make every person stop describing life this way. It is what it is, as a writer, but I know the images that are created powerfully in words that bring to mind such metaphors.

I see it as a way to express how we are all going through an unprecedented period in history together, but also, along with all the negatives there can be beauty.

I am thankful for music to get me through hard times, like the live concert I got to see the other night.

Sarah Slean sold tickets, but for much much less than I’d pay to see a show in person, certainly less than I paid to see her live on a bitterly cold December night back in 2017.

Day One – Sarah Slean

I know Zoom has its issues, and I had to turn the voice off my iPhone while watching or else all the hundreds of people commenting would make Voiceover go berserk.

Sarah is so cheery, the kind of cheery you can hear in her voice, as her smile is audible when she speaks. Her singing voice is just brilliant and so is her piano playing.

She is excellent with a string section behind her, don’t get me wrong, but there was just something about the simplicity of a woman and her piano in her home in Toronto with 776 people listening to her performance.

I am thankful for the virtual camino walk I’m on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Ekot38tV8&feature=youtu.be

I have many places in Europe I’d like to get to, but Italy was never high on that list for some reason. I am not sure why, but now Spain is up there.

A writer who creates unique travel experiences put together something to occupy us and help us find our way through all this, starting a group on Facebook and every day she posts a file where she describes a chunk of a camino, Camino de Frances in this case. I would have trouble handling such walks in real life, with my blindness and my chronic pain issues, but this is totally doable. No blisters if I choose not to imagine them, though I know I get off easy in this case.

All these ancient routs that pilgrims went on, going back to the sixth century or the tenth. I simply can’t imagine. This music she shared told a story to perspective travellers. It puts me in that frame of mind.

I write a daily corona diary to my long since departed grandmother, but I also take her and all my ancestors along on the camino with me.

I am thankful for something called Annedemic.

Winter Green – The East Pointers

The band, The East Pointers, they’ve come up with something to help raise money for struggling musicians who have lost touring opportunities. Themselves or one of their friends or musicians they’ve played with read one chapter of Anne of Green Gables a night on Facebook live. It’s always entertaining and I forget how much I love that story. It’s just a lot of fun to distract from all that isn’t.

I am thankful I can travel even when grounded in place.

TVO Original TRIPPING the Rideau Canal

I love the Rideau Canal and especially when it freezes over in winter and becomes a long stretch of skating surface.

I experienced that back in 2015 and I wish to go back there, since skating again with family in these last five years and most recently, right before the coronavirus took centre stage.

I went to Ottawa last year, right around now, to a conference and I brought a friend with me. I stood out on our balcony and recorded a soundscape of the capital city of Canada and I still plan to write some poetry of some kind and record my voice reading it over that city backdrop.

I am thankful to be in Canada during covid.

In spite of everything, this country is handling the pandemic better than many other places. When I heard an interview with Andrew Cuomo I heard someone who knew what he was talking about and who works hard. That’s what leadership should look like, but other so-called leaders are impossible to follow.

Here we have kept the numbers of infections and dreaded dead down to a lower amount than elsewhere. We come together during hard times, like this virus and now the shooting Nova Scotia has suffered.

I am thankful I got to speak with my family members, even if we’re social distancing for now.

My niece and nephew told me all about what they got from the Easter Bunny and then my niece gave me a book report, of sorts, about the BFG.

Snozzcumbers Soph, really?

The main character’s name is Sophie – close but we call our Sophia Soph.

I really should get a copy of a book my niece is reading and read along too. We could have a little Roald Dahl book club of sorts, even from a distance. My teacher read us Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, I believe, and the Glass Elevator in fourth grade, but I hardly remember except for some truly awful alien creatures in the latter story. I could use a refresher.

I am thankful that the re-test of my blood, creatinine level, it was repeated and has gone down again.

From 70-80 for years and years, up to 110 at the end of 2019, down to 100 at my birthday, and now down to 93 – I’ll take it, for now.

And I am thankful for this poem and the journey it relays.

David Whyte: Santiago

My writing instructor recommended it. I had not heard of David Whyte before.

As Anne Shirly would say, this is sure to be an epoch in my life, this virus, for better or for worse and everything/everywhere in between.

Marco Polo in Missoula – River Teeth Journal

My house is leaky. Wisps of cold air seep in – but my kids remind me this isn’t possible, that scientifically the warm air is leaking out. Certainly, there is oxygen flow in this old creaky house but taking a full breath is a privilege I don’t use . . .
— Read on www.riverteethjournal.com/blog/2020/04/20/marco-polo-in-missoula

TToT: The Luxury of My Breathing – Hammer and Dance #10Thankful

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still.

And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

“And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

“And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new wats to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.”
– Kitty O’Meara

Photo caption: massive flock of swans on a pond at the side of the road. Reminds us of how the world of nature and our environment might have been calling for a shut down of our regularly scheduled programming for a while now and to slow down and learn to value what truly matters, not what certain fake leaders think life’s all about.

And nature also takes a breath, as my favourite Canadian song writer (Jann Arden) says: “good things come from bad things.”

I am full of gratitude for so many things, even though this pandemic rages on across the world, moving in waves, inclines and declines, and I wait at home for news…for something.

Ten Things of Thankful #10Thankful

It all starts and stops, begins and ends with breathing.

I’m thankful for every breath I take that’s unimpeded by the virus in question and any other.

I’ve never experienced pneumonia before. I’ve been on ventilators before, during surgeries, but any remaining memories of that sort of thing are super vague.

I’m thankful my family are all safe right now.

Speaking of breathing, my sister has asthma and I’ll never get over the shock when I walked into my brother’s hospital room, after an emergency medical condition had him requiring help to breathe and we’d not had any warning.

I’m thankful for medical advancements in the last one hundred years.

I’ve read and studied a lot about the Spanish flu of 1918 and I know this is different, but the biggest we’ve seen since then.

I’m thankful my two essential worker parents are okay.

My mom looks after people in a group home and my dad drives a wheelchair cab.

People with disabilities already have greater difficulties during these large events because they can not drive and depend on others to do that and more.

Lots about this world isn’t accessible and all the work-at-home modifications being made to keep people working and our economy from total collapse are things those with disabilities ask for normally and are often denied.

Not so much the time to harp on that now, but it’s a valid point.

I’m thankful for the technology I do have in 2020 so I don’t feel so alone, even while practicing social distancing in my home where I live by myself.

I have family and friends nearby and am rather used to spending large amounts of time home.

I’m thankful for all the work being put into fighting this coronavirus thing here in Canada and around the world, all the brilliant minds working and the front line people seeing this covid-19 up close, but I feel intense appreciation I am in this country and not in the US, but I worry for all my friends there during such days as these.

I’m thankful for the message Prime Minister Trudeau sent out to the children of this country.

Trudeau gives Canadian kids ‘special thanks’ for helping fight coronavirus – CBC News

I envy my three-year-old niece, but I wonder if she’ll feel any of these issues going on around her. My older niece and nephews can’t go back to school and I know that will be an issue. I’m okay because I know their parents are there for them, there to explain things when they ask questions.

I can’t imagine running a country during a global pandemic, especially after Sophie Trudeau tested positive for the virus. He isn’t perfect, but better than many alternatives worldwide and I feel safer here than many places I could be right now.

Justin Trudeau: Working at home just like the rest of us – Politico

I’m thankful for a body that knows how to heal itself, at least somewhat.

I went for a walk last week and twisted my ankle and scraped up my knee.

I’m thankful for strange pain pathways that don’t feel how bad my knee looks/feels. I was able to put weight on my left foot and right leg and finish the walk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jO2wSpAoxA&feature=youtu.be

I’m thankful for the beautiful words of children.

I asked my cousin if I could share the following thoughts from her kids. Good place to end the TToT for this week (copied, with permission, from Facebook):

We’re all poets. And have something profound to share. Here’s the sentiments of our sweet Anders and Nevie.

Nev😇
I am happy
I wonder how many animals there are in the world
I hear the radio
I see the lake
I want a pet hamster
I am silly

I pretend I’m an animal
I feel proud
I touch animals
I worry about wildlife
I cry sometimes
I am kind

I understand the way of life
I say I love animals
I dream happiness
I try hard
I hope this virus goes away
I am calm

Anders🥰

I am strong
I wonder about the world
I hear nature calling for me
I see love
I want to have a nice life
I am proud of who I am

I pretend that I can fly
I feel happy
I touch nature
I worry about other people
I cry sometimes
I am filled with love

I understand nature
I say freedom
I dream of the world being saved

I try to be my best
I hope I can listen to other people’s feeling and help them if they’re sad
I am the best, best version of myself

Write them for yourself and your loved ones to stay connected to Self and one another. Stay true folks❤️❤️

I AM
I WONDER
I HEAR
I SEE
I WANT
I AM

I PRETEND
I FEEL
I TOUCH
I WORRY
I CRY
I AM

I UNDERSTAND
I SAY
I DREAM

I TRY
I HOPE
I AM

Try these prompts out for yourself in the comments, as comments, if you want and take care of yourselves.

It Is What It Is #SocialDistancing #SoCS

Spring has arrived.

As it stands, we
welcome
our new reality, even as we resist what that means.

I listen to two US sources, along with the national news here in Canada too.

I’ve been listening to Michael Moore and his podcast since before Christmas, when his main goal was to fight to get #45 out of office. It’s become something else now that most of us couldn’t have seen coming.

I’ve been listening to Rachel Maddow and in her most recent episode, she ended the show by announcing the death of an NBC colleague who lost his life to covid-19 and she lost control and became choked up as she said it.

Most of us aren’t that close to this yet, but who knows what the next weeks and months could bring upon us all.

Panic. Don’t panic. Panic. Don’t panic.

I am one who learned about this coronavirus with a slow dawning, a realization that’s just now beginning to scare me. It was only end of January that I was still relatively oblivious and planning an adventure to walk the Thames River Path in England. This new reality hit me soon after.

Since then, I’ve been around some people, but I now feel the instinct to totally isolate from all people.

Every time I send someone out to run an errand for me, they could potentially pick up this virus themselves. Should I stop this, for their sakes and mine?

I get paranoid with germs (for years) and now. Where are they? How close by are they? Which surface are they living on?

I’ve been cushioned here in my town, in my county, but reality inches ever nearer. I listen to accounts from doctors and nurses who are already seeing emergency rooms and ICU’s full of the sick, numbers then reported on the nightly news and 24/7 online.

I take deep breaths, sitting here and when I step outside, the now spring air streaming into my lungs as I go out with my dog.

I went for a walk, fell and twisted my ankle and skinned my knee, but I got back up again and kept walking. I wanted to feel myself, moving through the world, grateful I am still well.

I went to a medical appointment and it was a breeze compared to how it usually is. The doctor and his pain clinic moved out of the hospital setting and into a recently abandoned medical practise next door. I was in and out, no waiting in a waiting room with a dozen other people, but straight in to the room, after I’d been given a mask to wear. I haven’t worn one since being on dialysis back in the late 90’s.

I sanitized my hands and got my nerve block injections for my headaches, that I’ve been receiving for almost a year now.

I questioned whether I should have gone there, gone out at all, but things moved along so quickly because many patients did decide to cancel.

I worry for my parents. They aren’t in the highest risk group, but they are over sixty.

I worry about my sister, doing her work in the midst of this time of year which is tax season, ever so slightly delayed like school and everything else.

I worry for my brother-in-law who works in a factory.

I worry about my older brother who needs to go into work to support his family.

I worry for my younger brother who had a kidney transplant in 2013 and who has had other medical issues, before and since then. He and I are both immunosuppressed, not currently on dialysis or a cancer patient receiving chemotherapy, but I don’t know how this new strain of virus might act if either one of us were to catch it. I’ve never had pneumonia and the idea of basically drowning when the lungs are overloaded is terrifying.

I worry for my sister who has asthma and her husband who is a type one diabetic, who just recently recovered from mono. They have two young children and I’m only thankful that my nieces and nephews are at much lower risk of contracting this.

My father and mother work still, front line workers really, as she works in a group home and taking care of vulnerable people and he takes people in wheelchairs where they need to go in his specialized cab.

Here in Canada we have a wonderful healthcare system, but we see what’s happening in Italy and we must learn all we can. I feel better sometimes, most of the time, hearing the news here in Canada and feeling I’m safest here when compared to anywhere else, but things can keep getting worse with every case reported and all the ones that aren’t quite yet.

This is not at all how I saw 2020 playing out.

I had a friend who was traveling and another who’s about to. I can’t do much about that, but I still worry. So many who would have not gone and those still trying to get back home.

I have an old friend, from childhood, who moved to Ireland for medical school and is now a doctor there. I don’t know how much risk she’s at since all this, but I keep track of the news of this virus out of that country too.

I can’t control any of this and the last thing I wanted to do was see this happening, but we’ve been warned of a possible pandemic to come. Well it’s here, sweeping across the globe bringing with it waves of destruction and instability.

I worry about people’s jobs and the economy that I understand little about. I studied history and the Great Depression in the 1930’s. I learned about the Spanish flu of 1918 and how that washed over humanity during that time. We’ve come far with medical knowledge and still we are left battered by something so tiny, invisible and deadly in many cases, but people think it’s like any other flu season we’ve known in our lifetime.

I know it may be petty, but I’ve started calling #45 covid-45 because of his unique ability to be cruel and ignorant and incompetent at a time when the whole world needs effective leaders who also care, even just a little.

I like to listen to flocks of birds out my window and above my head. They fly by and I wish I could fly too.

Our winter was mild and yet I’m pleased to feel spring is in the air. I am finding things to bring me a few moments of peace because I know we’re at war, World War III if you want to call it that, but it’s a battle raging on in nearly all places now. It is just now making it to the northern parts of Canada and in our territories. It’s on islands that want to keep it from swamping their systems. The border between Canada and the US and that between them and Mexico, closed to all but essential trade.

Europe is being ravaged by it and it will get into refugee camps and already war torn regions, places across the African continent and in bustling cities where social distancing isn’t a thing.

For humans, in most cultures, having to stop shaking hands or hugging or kissing of cheeks is so difficult to do. Whereas I’m not struggling with that as much as I am to not touch my own face a thousand times a day.

People can’t believe they are in the position, for the first time, of being prevented from travel to their heart’s desire and content. They, we’ve, I’ve always had that option of traveling and the freedom of choice. Yet, when I hear people complaining that they are bored and dreaming of the moment they’re told it’s safe to do so again, I want to scream. I don’t know why, as I’m among them, but I know we’ve all been spoiled when air travel is so common and wanderlust is a thing.

I have multiple rolls of toilet paper here still and am not letting that stress me out, but I don’t like what I’m seeing of people out in grocery stores. I go back and forth between feelings of panic and calm, though I am never sure what I’m panicking about. I can’t pinpoint anything for sure in my buzzing brain.

I can’t concentrate on writing the things I’d planned on writing so far this year. I can’t manage anything more than stream of consciousness writing at the moment.

My dreams are vivid and my waking hours are spent trying not to bombard my head and heart with opinions and facts and statistics.

This is a numbers game, as the saying goes, but this time this is no game we’re playing. I’m no good at numbers games at the best of times.

People who are already greedy or selfish will only look for ways to enrich themselves in this, all while I know this virus can take hold in any one of us, doing as much or as little damage as it sees fit.

People are afraid and in denial as a form of self preservation, but the world is also populated by resilience and brilliant minds already at work.

I’m getting by on the stories that keep coming out, stories of courage from front line workers and from communities coming together to pick up groceries and medications for those who can’t.

We’re depending on our medical professionals and our food delivery drivers and those in the factories and the plants, but they have families and bodies that are vulnerable to getting sick.

I am used to hiding away in my own solitude and I don’t want to start worrying, any time I’m around another person, but maybe now is the time to isolate from friends for sure and now even family members.

I don’t know what to think.

So we are welcoming spring and wondering what’s to come. Some say we’re making more of this than is necessary, like young people who celebrated spring break and think they’re invincible. None of us are invincible.

We humans have our social media now and can stay in touch with loved ones and we should. We’re not used to being constricted in our movements and in our socializing. We’re told to stay in our homes, except for those necessities of life, but we can’t handle being cooped up for long.

Will this last weeks or months or more? We hate to think it could. Loneliness even though we can connect easier than any period in history.

I don’t know where I’m going with all this. I take chunks of time off of Facebook and I watch a show from my childhood. I can recall difficult times in my past and how I made it through and that helps, but this is a new one on me.

I think of my indoor cat now and what his life consists of. Human beings won’t stand for that for long, but I’ve seen some beautiful examples of people in places like Italy and Spain making the best of these circumstances. Each of us and our governments are dealing with this in stages, but sometimes swift measures are necessary ones.

I’m trying to wait this out, to ride it out, but I don’t know what to expect and I know emotions are running high.

I envy the innocence of the children in my life right now, but I’m now afraid to be around them, around anyone. I hate that feeling.

How are all of you coping with all this? I know I’m not alone and neither are you.