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!

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

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.

Leap #LeapYear #SoCS

LEAP

The girl with the striking blue eyes. My main image of her now from our childhood, her head framed by a bunch of curled blonde hair, but her smile made her eyes pop, slightly wild with abandon. Two little girls playing Jacks over recess. Next it was Pogs.

“Frogs?”

“No. Don’t you remember Pogs? And try not to step on my toe this time.” Roger tensed up at the mere suggestion of this, but Beverly knew how he could be. It was worth repeating. “Guilty feet have got no rhythm you know? Or hadn’t you received the memo?”

“Quit quoting Wham lyrics and finish the story,” Roger said, rather than answering on the flattened toe thing.

“I just think that some people seem to miss out on the whole adulting thing and stay forever locked in cycles of poor judgment and they’re lost.”

“That’s how life could be for some souls,” Roger said, hoping to put things in perspective. “Our child will soon be here…and life ends and begins again. I don’t mean to come off as harsh, but I’d like to focus on us right now.”

Perhaps, words coming out of his mouth sounding harsh, but his kind brown eyes didn’t reflect it.

“I know,” Beverly relented. “It’s getting harder and harder to dance with this here, have you noticed?” she said, gesturing toward her pregnant stomach.

“So here we are again, four years later,” Roger said, turning the ring on her finger he’d first placed there on their wedding day. “But why we ever chose to get married on Feb. 29th? I’ll never be too sure.”
Beverly knew he’d have picked another day, but she liked the unconventional.

Now here they were again, approaching a Leap Year end to February. “What were the odds that we’d be so close to the baby arriving at the same time.”

Sure enough, within the final days of the month Beverly started feeling the contractions.

“Maybe we’ll make the news,” Roger said as a distraction as they made their way to the hospital.
“You know, like those babies born first in a brand new year or something.”
Beverly squeezed his hand, a little tighter than necessary, but really…?

Once they were all checked in, the doctor popped his head in the room and left again, but that didn’t have to mean there was something wrong. Again, she squeezed her Leap Year husband’s hand and this time, he squeezed back.
But no need to fear. The rest of the labor progressed rather quickly for a first child, and now they could sit back and wait for the media to hear about this special birth.

“I’m going out to make a few calls, but it looks like you could use sleep anyway.”

“So you’re not abandoning me and your first born right?”
Speaking with an added level of drama. She settled back to snuggle the baby, watching him leave with a grin.

“It’s raining frogs out there,” said a voice. It couldn’t be Roger. It was a female voice, not that of her husband.

“Um, you mean cats and dogs.” Though it was snowing, not rain.

“No, I mean actual frogs. I just thought you would want to know.”
All the snow they’d had, did something go wrong, Beverly thought. Did I die in childbirth?

“Is that your first?” the woman asked, a seemingly routine question immediately after announcing that frogs are dropping from the sky.
Maybe this woman had seen Magnolia too many times.

“Besides that, can I just ask, who are you and what are you doing in my room?”

“I came with the frogs and they are my friends. Don’t worry. We’re only here this one day. The scheduling does not let us come even every year, but every four instead.”

“Can I help you with something else then?” Beverly asked, patting the baby gently on the back.

“Every February 29 I come here, with my frog friends, to greet and congratulate new mothers and I even offer newborn cuddle duty.”

Holding her little Leap Year baby, Beverly could certainly see where this friend of the frogs was coming from on that one.

“You don’t recognize me, but I’ve lived with the frogs for a while now and I’m less myself than I once was.”

Beverly glanced from her babies face and with her beautiful brown eyes like her father, and then back up at the stranger in the doorway.

Those eyes, it suddenly hit her.
Then, from over the intercom came a voice all business like:

“I’m afraid we’re locking the hospital down. There’s no need for alarm, but if you look outside, you may have noticed that it has changed from snow to frogs out there. Not safe at this time for us to leave the
prot”ect”ion
of this hospital. We’re calling in our janitorial maintenance team and they are all over it.”

At this, the stranger snapped to attention. “Oh no, my friends.”

Before Beverly could say a word, she was alone again with her child, but again she looked from her baby’s brown eyes to the eyes of that woman who was now off to join her frog friends on this Leap Year night, no longer staring back.

“Sorry I took so long,” Roger said. “Did you hear what’s going on out there?”
He walked to the window to briefly glance out at the scene on the other side of the glass before coming back to her side and gently lifting the baby from Beverly’s arms. “Take a break. You still haven’t gotten any sleep.”

Was he sure, Beverly wondered.
Again, Roger had walked back over to the window, little bundle asleep in his arms. “Wake up little girl,” her father said, slightly, ever so slightly nudging the infant.
“Look, little one,” he said. “All this for you. Frogs arriving to welcome you on this special day.”
Roger didn’t even sound overly concerned about what this Leap Year had brought.
Until… ”Wait, what’s that?”

“What?” Beverly asked, with a sharp intake of breath that hurt. “I don’t know if I can get out of this bed, but what is it?”
She tried to move off the bed, but for a moment she felt dizzy and nauseous.

“Easy,” Roger urged, letting her lean on him while he supported their baby in the crook of his other arm.

“So, what am I looking at?”

Across the parking lot, there could be seen a tiny figure, arms out stretched and twirling as more and more of them just kept coming down.

By March, the frogs had vanished, baby Britney was home with her parents, and all would remain frog free, all the rest of the days of the year, until maybe, when next a Leap Year rolls around, look out your window.

In and out, like a lamb, lion, frogs and their friend.

Twirling twirling. That little girl with the blue eyes and blonde hair, who loved holding newborns and rocking them to sleep while her friends kept on falling.

RIPAG

KETCHUP ON PANCAKES: Episode 18 – Farewell 2019…By The Fireside #Family #Humour #Creativity #Podcast

It’s 2020 already and we glance around in surprise that we’ve made it here.

In the last year or so, we traveled, we made music, and we learned lessons about love.

Check out
Episode 18
of the podcast.

We managed to produce only two episodes of
Ketchup On Pancakes
in 2019, so busy with
Outlook
and other things, but we say farewell to all that made up the year beyond the podcast that started it all.

We at KOP, along with our trusty fire stoker, wish you the best in 2020.

A World On Fire, #JusJoJan #SoCS

A quiet Saturday night in Canada, but
Wow
to what’s going on on the other side of the world from here.

And to the news between the US and Iran. Wow!

I say it as an exclamation a lot, to myself, because it feels super redundant to utter out loud to anyone within earshot.

I love this time of year in my country, snow or no snow, because I like being cozy inside and then, when I step out my door, to feel the fresh air, so cold. I love the stillest days of winter most of all, those still, silent nights those of which songs have been named.

I can’t imagine what Australia is dealing with right now because I’ve never had to experience such a thing. I remember watching the news when western Canada was dealing with terrible wildfires, hearing people in California speaking of it on Facebook. I can’t imagine even having to deal with smoke clouding the air and choking my lungs and burning my eyes. Having to outrun flames sounds nightmarish.

Over twenty lives lost there now, millions of animals and wildlife perishing so far, and yet climate change denial is still rampant. Wow, really?

I “WOW” this more than anything because, even if you don’t believe things are as bad as all that, at least let situations like the one in Australia now help you see that we can and should do something. Even if we choose to not put the blame all on our shoulders, fine, but at least we can do something, in the smallest belief it could help dangerous and devastating situations like wildfires take less of a toll. Why not? What’s the harm?

We frame things as serious, as serious as it often is, in the hopes that people will, you know…take it seriously. Then, we’re crying wolf or portraying ourselves as Chicken Littles. The sky’s not falling, okay, but it is smoky in places. If we talk so serious all the time, people will tune the warnings out entirely we’re warned, but then what does that leave us all with in terms of options to address what’s making the news in the first place?

So we have to sit with the realization of all those poor creatures, not understanding what’s going on, unless somehow instinctively. I sit here, in the northern hemisphere and January cold, thinking of all those poor animals, my two animals safely here with me.

Canadian firefighters and those from other countries have gone to help. What are the politicians doing?

Are there not enough natural events occurring these days for our world to contend with that humans have to go and create more havoc with their own real life choices? What is it with clueless, greedy, selfish, brutal men running the world, making serious decisions that will impact so many, creating an environment of fear and anxiety? What if we let women run the world, just for a little while, to see if things might turn around? What’s the harm in giving it a try? All men, stand down!

I saw how serious news stories were handled on the ground and up close when they involved New Zealand recently, (mass shootings and volcano eruption) by their PM, a woman. I wish there were more of her.

I don’t generally like to generalize, but I’m tired of the anxieties. If it’s this way, this greatly weighing on my mind and heart, I shudder to think of what it’s like for anyone immediately, directly effected in in the path of destruction, whether natural weather and climate or manmade disasters in progress.

I say my wow’s and my huh’s? I say it till I grow weary of saying it. I long to be a child again, not to block out news by simply not seeking it out because that feels irresponsible, but to be a kid again and simply not grasping the significance of all these things going on.

Oh two-year-old Mya my dearest one, how I envy your child’s cluelessness, in great contrast to that cluelessness I spoke of above from adults who should know better.

Be Seated, Please #SoCS

Grab yourself a cup of coffee, find your favourite piece of furniture, and be seated.

There’s the one with the hard yet smooth arms and the scratchy cushions.

Or the yellow one with square cushions in Oma’s basement that was surprisingly comfortable for naps.

And then the one that survived a tornado, many decades old and ripped, but well loved. And then the one with the knitted afghan covering its surface.

Some, sofa beds, that pull out and some that do not.

Chesterfield: a town in England or a word I’ll always connect with my grandparents from a different generation. Sofa. Loveseat, like a bike I can ride, built for only two.

I slept many a time on such a small space, but more small for others than for me as I never did grow tall, like all those whose feet would hang off and dangle.

The long ones or the L-shaped ones or the sectional in my brother’s living room that the kids are always being warned not to jump on.

Or the one I spent sick day after sick day on, when some thought I was faking sick to get out of school, because nobody could or should miss that many days of sixth grade.

I did jump off that one, landing on an ankle, spraining it – injury coming before illness.

All those bowls of salty chicken noodle soup I ate there, listening to soap operas through the stereo speakers. All the awful days of nausea and fatigue I just couldn’t fight and all the surgeries recovered from, on either side of the L.

The velvety one, bought at yard sale, meant for college. Ending up in Toronto, sleeping on the separate segments it came in, waking up in the night to one sliding away from the other to reveal a crack down to the floor.

Heavy, wooden frame and a bed into sitting position, a futon doesn’t really count as one, but I thought (at eighteen) it was cool I could have both couch and bed in my own bedroom that I had always had to share with my older sister.

The set I purchased as new furniture with my sister after buying a house, that came with armchair of same fake leather and three glass coffee tables. I’m no longer that weak, unwell little girl, but a grown woman on her own.

Tears in the material and it was first to go. I still have that armchair though.

He found me a colleague’s no longer needed set, including loveseat, of green fabric I believe it was. Scratched up said colleague’s truck, used to move said furniture, but the loveseat still sits here today, as part of my current mismatch of living room furnishings. The loveseat is my dog’s place now, and he’s always unsure just what to do when someone comes over and dares sit on it.

And, finally, I start a short story (eventually to go into an anthology and my first story in print) about my current
couch
that I hope will last for a while yet, even with the origin so unforgettable.

Recliners on each end, but feeling more like the seats from the minivan we had growing up than a living room couch. We did used to detach the middle van seat and leave it in the garage or down in our basement, to make room for hauling things or kids (back when seat belts were less mandatory).

Now the one I bought it with is no longer around, the splitting of things during the breakup, but I kept this minivan seat couch. It already has small holes all over it and I hoped, when I got him, that my cat wouldn’t scratch it and destroy it before its time.

You know, Lumos, you can just jump up onto it instead of digging your claws into it and climbing up.

People sit here, where I so often write, and leave with cat hair all over them, but I love my couch.

And so, once more, I find safety and comfort on my couch. So I must wrap up this post because now all I can think to write that involves this week’s prompt word is a children’s show that played in paediatric hospitals, when I was often in them (stuck playing the waiting game rather than Hungry Hungry Hippos): a show about a big, comfy couch (I forget the name of that show). Blaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!

Stretch and Still #SoCS

Unsure if anyone truly noticed the absence of activity here these last few months. That’s right-it’s been two months since I’ve written on this blog.

The
silence
has felt strange to me, a void of something I’d been doing for five years of my life.

It’s like anything else, a muscle that must be worked. Without the work, I find myself forgetting how to do simple tasks that were always a main part of this blogging process for me.

I’m evolving, I guess is what it is. I’m doing new things that aren’t involving this blog directly now. It feels like a lousy excuse, but nobody else holds me to this place but me.

I am on radio now. Ooh, look at me! Ha!

I am writing, not less, but differently. Wait…less sometimes too. Scary stuff to me and the silences make that thought hard to stomach.

I don’t stop thinking, but that continues on in a silent stream of consciousness action. Just not here. Never here anymore it seems.

So I heard this week’s prompt and I knew about the silences. I knew it and so I’m writing through it.

The silence scares me, I admit. It threatens to drag me away somewhere. I cling to the edge of this blog with my fingernails (threatening to break), wondering whether it wouldn’t be easier to just let go.

No no…I don’t have to. This is my place and I am comfortable here, but maybe it’s harder and more of a necessary challenge to pull away sometimes, or risk never growing at all.

I spend a lot of silent moments and I think of sound as the opposite. Then I know I don’t have to be silent when I’m here. The point of being here is to not stay quiet like I’m drawn to being.

I sit in silent contemplations. I will always, but I love this place too much to leave it for long.

Two months does feel long enough, but I know I am always welcome here.

Compassion During Times of Division

I try really hard to stay compassionate. It’s not easy, especially toward some, but I am committed to the cause we’ve put forward here.

#1000Speak for Compassion

Due to current world events between Trump-era America and the Brexit Shambles, the theme for 2019 is how to get beyond complacency or apathy to find compassion in times of division, and how to be compassionate towards people we disagree with, without condoning cruelty.

Complacency is a feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, often combined with a lack of awareness of pending trouble or controversy.

yourdictionary.com

Apathy is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, or passion. An apatheticindividual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, or physical life and the world.

Wikipedia

While the world will never be perfect, and while we are not completely in a dystopian society, morale has definitely shifted on a global level, and the red flags are waving creating a perfect platform for a future, “I knew this would happen.”

Division…

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