Category Archives: humor

Septuagenarians on the Road: #3

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SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERASo Georgia and I decided to take a sentimental journey, back to our roots. We started out on her birthday, the day after Labour Day (See https://115journals.com/2013/08/31/labour-day-weekend-reflections/)

We didn’t make the decision lightly. We divided hip stiffness into the mileage and arrived at a two day trip. We reserved a hotel room at the Waterfront Holiday Inn in Kingston Ontario, which we thought was half way from Toronto to Ayres Cliff, Quebec. We were wrong. It was more like a third of the way there, but when we got to KIngson, we realized that factoring in the fatigue of packing and hefting bags made it a good choice.

When asked if we need help with our bags, my macho sister says no. Being older, I know better. Imagine the most awkward grocery cart you have ever tried to steer, turn it into a luggage cart, top-heavy with a hanging bar, add a tiny elevator and thick pile on the hall carpet.

Still it is a beautiful room that looks out over the ferry docks and one of the six squat, round Martello towers that guarded Upper Canada from the American invaders.

Martello Tower, KingstonWe stayed in a similar room 4 years ago when we last made this trip. The place is not much changed. The question is are we?

We rest. Resting will be a recurring theme in this blog post as it is in our lives. I would say ‘in the lives of septuagenarians in general’, but Blake (see http://115journals.com/2012/05/26/septuagenarians-on-the-road-part-1/ and https://115journals.com/2012/05/27/septuagenarians-on-the-road-part-2/ ) doesn’t rest much. Resting like Archemedes’ lever makes all things possible.

Then it is time to pop the cork on the Veuve Cliquot. It is a birthday after all.

It seems wise to find a restaurant within walking distance, so we search through the available literature and come up with Olivia, an Italian restaurant two short blocks away. As it turns out there is live jazz from the Dave Barton trio with Amanda Balysy on vocals. Amanda has a retro look, blouse and skirt out of the 50s and songs to match. So the ambience is delightful. The day’s special of wild boar sausage seems too demanding for my digestion and I willfully ignore the black cod and order risotto. As soon as I lay eyes on it, I know I have been wrong. I’m used to risotto at Marcellos in Toronto where they don’t even add cheese. This dish is swimming in cheese and oil. But the optimism of the moment prevails and I take the risk.

As evening falls, the Kingston City Hall across the square becomes ever more beautiful (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kingston_City_Hall_Andrew_pmk.JPG). Its limestone glows silver and its lovely dome stands etched against the sky. After dinner, we sit in the park at the water’s edge and enjoy its beauty.

Kingston_City_Hall__#3All in all, the day has gone well, we think. Georgia settles down to watch Netflix on my Mac Air Book and I lie down to sleep. To no avail. Yes, I am tired enough to sleep, but my body has other ideas. I am aching all over. The pillows labelled soft are so soft, I feel smothered. The ones labelled hard hurt my head but don’t support my neck. But most of all I blame the risotto. Years ago, in this same town, I spent the night sitting on the bathroom floor reading John Irving’s The World According to Garp.I might have been better to spend this night there as well.

I’ve had considerable experience with insomnia – who hasn’t at this age?- and developed strategies to deal with it. In between bathroom trips, I try them all. First, I roll up a bath towel and put it under my long neck, a softer version of the wooden Japanese head rest. I do my three part deep breathing exercise over and over. I take a sleep aid. I put in my ear buds and hit the white noise App on my iPhone. Even the continuous swish of heavy rain doesn’t send me off. By now, Georgia is soundly asleep, or so it seems for she is very softly snoring. At what seems like 2 a.m, but is actually much earlier, I get up to do tai chi exercises in the dark. That seems to calm my system down. Then just as I begin to slip into sleep, someone hammers on the door next to us and calls out in a aggrieved voice, “Come on Michael, I forgot my key.” Apparently that is just the ticket. I am gone. I don’t even wake up when Georgia spends an hour reading at 3 a.m. Of course, in the morning, she maintains not only that I had kept her awake, but also that I was groaning. Perhaps she is right.

So unrefreshed, we find our way to the complimentary breakfast with a view of the water. I am unenthusiastic about eating but I need to take on fuel. Fortunately, Georgia is able to enjoy the free meal, which we have earned by being members of the Canadian Automobile Association.

There is one more little hiccup. I neglected to bring down our parking stub. There is no attendant. Fortunately, someone from the bar across the street yells out instructions on what button to push to contact the office and my car is finally released. That is one drawback to this particular hotel. We call them parking Nazis.

So we set out on the second lap of our journey and a very long lap it turns out to be. It begins with a Google Map gaff -you have surely experienced at least one of those. Instructions are to head north on Princess St, which is, as luck would have it, one way, going south. We do what we can and find ourselves crossing bridges we’ve never seen before and confronting signs to west bound 401. We reason that east bound 401 has to be in approximately the same place, but the west bound signs proliferate and get larger. Just a little kick of adrenaline from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. Once we have achieved the elusive east bound highway, we feel as if it can only get easier.

The newly renovated ONroute service centres are a plus, clean and up-to-date. You can take your own lunch in and eat it at the tables or make one up from Tim Hortons and Subway or Burger King. I carry in my rice crackers and home-made salad dressing, and manage to scrounge up salad and chicken to go with them. We take turns driving, trading off every hour or so. Some time after lunch, we cross the provincial border into Quebec. I recall that there used to be a lovely stone building in the old style, which served as an information centre. A few of those stones seemed to have been recycled into the service centre that has replaced it. I line up at the counter to ask the same question as everyone else. Google had told me to take exit 29 to new highway 30, but the maps show no bridge there. What gives? The bilingual receptionist has the interesting skill of being able to write on a map upside down and she assures me that there is now a bridge, which will cost me $1.50 to cross. If you have ever had to drive into the city Montreal to cross the St. Lawrence River on the Champlain Bridge, you may understand what a cause for rejoicing that is. As we discover the bridge is really two bridges, the first one low to the water and the second soaring up over the widest part of the river to let the ships pass up the St Lawrence Seaway.

So we skirt Montreal in that low level river land, which is fertile but also being eaten up by industry as time passes. Now all signs are exclusively in French. Sud and nord are simple enough and easy to figure out as south and north. Est and ouest are trickier. I keep reciting “est” as a clue to finding the right exit to #15, which will take us toward Sherbrooke. “Traveaux” is pretty clear, including as it does miles of orange cones and on occasion, actual workers and machines. The sign that orders us to respect the security zone or so it seems, puzzles me, until I realize that I am to pull out into the left lane when I see someone stopped on the shoulder. Then there is an urgent LED sign that absolutely eludes me. I can not catch even one word. We fly by oblivious.

Like all Canadian children, I have studied French, in my case until I was in grade 12. Moreover, I have a brother who lives in Belgium and speaks French most of the time. I have spent long holidays there and in France. I just finished watching Spiral on Netflix, a made-in-France police drama, with  sub-titles, it must be said. I’m more than willing to give it my all, but really! Nothing but French. The stop signs say “Arret”. Even in Europe, they say “Stop”. When I am flying along at 110 km, I could use a little help.

We can just glimpse Mount Royal over the river on the horizon. Then a solitary mountain rises from the plain, a volcanic cone. The country grows more rural. The road begins to rise and curve and finally, we begin to see the soul-soothing mountains of our childhood, the northern-most Appalachians.

By the time, we round the corner into Ayres Cliff, we have been on the road for six hours. I seem to think I know where the Auberge Ayres Cliff is and I am not wrong, although I hadn’t realized it was right in the middle of town, a quiet tourist town of one main street and side streets leading down to Lake Massawippi. I stayed somewhere near here 16 years ago, but it takes me a full 24 hours to realize it was the same place and when I do, I seriously wonder if senility has crept up on me. It is a hard place to forget. It is said to be 200 years old and while that may not be an exact number, it is certainly very old. (www.aubergeayrescliff)

It has a huge patio at the side, full of expensive wicker seating and those outdoor heaters and little canvas-covered nooks, all on wooden decking. It also has seating on the veranda. We check in at the bar where some of the locals are having lively conversations. I’d like to join them, but we have to go up to see our room. Up is the operative word. We are the only guests, but we have booked two adjoining rooms, which are on the third floor. The second flight of stairs is made up of a large number of steps -each one 14 inches high.

The rooms are furnished with a double bed each, with good mattresses and dressers in a VIctorian style. And a  fan. There are no chairs. There certainly is no television set. No mention is made of this but apparently we were warned on the website. I give Georgia the room that has a more or less level floor, it being her birthday, and allot myself the one that slopes so dramatically that it takes all my tai chi balance to walk across it.

And yes, we want to have our bags brought up, a task that falls to the slim bartender/receptionist/ farmer’s daughter and a guy who gets up from dinner with his family to help her.

It is clear that we would not have got much sleep if we had come a few days before, on Labour Day weekend, but summer is over, the temperature has fallen, the tourists have left.

True to their hype, they have an excellent Angus beef fillet mignon. After dinner and the long slog back up the stairs, I get Georgia set up on the internet to watch Netflix: she is well into season 5 of Weeds and well fed with simple food, I fall fast asleep in my Alice in Wonderland room.

to be continued

Labour Day Weekend: reflections

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SAMSUNG DIGITAL CAMERA(And yes, I can spell. It’s just that I follow a different tradition. Stubbornly, it seems.)

The dreaded weekend has come. The end of summer. A cacophony (strictly speaking a ‘murder’) of crows announced it this morning.

Oh, sure, we can assure ourselves that September can be the best of summer still, but that’s bravado, positive thinking gone rogue. Realistically, we know the light is failing. Vegetable gardens started telling us that weeks ago. Here at least, at 43.7° N. where the squash and cucumber vines have died back and the tomatoes are refusing to ripen. I can no longer count on light at 6 a.m. and the evening moves faster into night.

There were more swallows than ever sweeping across the sky two evenings ago, as they fatten up to cross the big lake and leave these shores. This evening, they may be gone. And it doesn’t help that I know they will come back to Capistrano on March 19th next year. It’s at 33° N and the swallows take another 40 days to get here.

Autumnal, that’s the word. ‘An early autumn walks the land/ And chills the breeze/And touches with her hand/The summer trees….’ etc. ( Courtesy Johnny Mercer) I would say it is all the more affecting because I am in the autumn of my life, but that would be false. The autumn of my life, I glimpse only in the rear view mirror. While I sometimes question how many more springs there are left, I never ask how many falls.

This weekend, the skies above are rent by low flying fighter jets, as the annual air show gets underway. While there are those who love the thrill of a group of jets roaring just above rooftop, I am not one of them, although I admit there is no need for coffee and the pumping adrenaline more than offsets the weary wintery-ness of age.

In the spirit of the occasion, let us consider Labour Day weekends past. Here in at 43.7° N., school begins on the Tuesday after Labour Day now as it did over 70 years ago when I started. My mother and I had planned that I would wear my sailor dress, light blue with a navy blue sailor’s collar and a narrow red stripe, and she would walk with me, holding my hand and teach me how to cross the street in our little town. The best laid plans and all that. Turned out my mother was far away in a maternity ward of the hospital that morning when I woke up. I was outraged. How could she? I was fed breakfast by my cousin next door and towed unwillingly to school by the grade 3-er across the street. Very early indeed, in case her friends saw her with my lowly grade 1-self, sailor dress or not.

The upside of this was that every Labour Day thereafter I got to celebrate my sister’s birthday. In addition, my mother’s betrayal led me to bond with Miss Graham, my teacher, to such an extent that I continued returning to school for the next 50 years, as student and teacher.

The year that I gave that up going back to school the day after Labour Day was so traumatic that I could deal with it only by setting out to drive across the continent to Los Angeles. Crossing the border in my heavy laden Tercel I was knocked sideways by the American border guard. (Metaphorically that is.) He was worried about whether I had green apples and where my ex-husband was at the moment. No and don’t know. He successfully banished all first-day-of-school nostalgia quite out of my head.

Driving across the continent by yourself takes a while, the sun streaming in through the driver’s side window, day after day. Mind boggled by the wide rivers and the deep canyons and the endless oppressive desert. Terrified of falling asleep at the wheel, of taking a wrong turn on a freeway. My expensive car phone without service most of the time. Then just so tired, I had to hole up and sleep in a well air-conditioned ‘better’ motel where the furniture wasn’t bolted to the floor. When I finally emerged and drove down off the Santa Monica Freeway to glimpse the Pacific, I had left my school self behind. But what did I discover in my daughter’s house? No not green apples! My ex-husband!  Just what the border guard feared. A reconstitution  of a family separated for 15 years for the purpose of defrauding the U.S. government. Somehow.

This year, I have other plans. My sister and I are going to return to the mountains of Quebec’s Eastern Townships where we were born. Her birthday treat. Not that there is family there any more. Well, maybe one. Eighty eight he’d be, if still extant. And the old house we loved isn’t tidy and white any more. The barn is just a heap, a mound of earth where the ramp to the haymow was. My grandfather’s fields, cleared with such killing effort, have been put back to trees. Unbelievably, actually planted with trees! You can barely see our slope-shouldered mountain for the woods. Nevertheless, we will drive the gravel roads and breathe the spruce air and feel our native earth beneath our feet.

And these two one-upon-a-time teachers will take solace in an excellent hotel on Lake Massawippi where the furniture is definitely not bolted to the floor.

Septuagenarians at Sea: #2

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Rick at tiller '12(I’m categorizing this post as humour but don’t get your hopes up.)

So I set off late to meet Blake and go sailing, but since Blake is unlikely to care about punctuality, I’m not worried. What I am apparently is absentminded. I sit at the “punishment” light at the bottom of my street, daydreaming. Four minutes later I wheel left and then right up the ramp to the Gardiner Expressway. No traffic. Great! Soon I am flying by the last exit to the Lakeshore which runs parallel and, oddly enough, along the lake shore. The Gardiner is about to achieve elevation. I realize I should have taken that exit. That last exit! I realize I should, in fact, have turned right at the punishment light and taken Lakeshore Blvd. I am on the wrong road altogether!

Okay, now I’m worried. Surely if I take the Spadina exit, I can turn right, go south and double back on the Lakeshore. I sail down the exit. Absolutely no right turn. Because the Lakeshore eastbound lanes are where the turn should be.The westbound lanes are no where to be seen.  Darn.

I turn left, avoid the first left turn as unpromising, carry on up over the railway tracks and slide into the left turn lane for Front St. Oh good, we have an advanced green. Not so good, we have a driver who is waiting for something better. That’s what my horn is for, tinny though it is. At Bathurst, I catch another punishment light. An orange and green taxi and my red Yaris, wait and wait and wait. Then we are released to turn left and re-cross the railway tracks. Left or right? Left or right, Joyce? Make up your mind. Okay I pick right.

Alas. While it is the right direction- I can see the Tip Top Tailor sign on the top of  a building, I can’t get there- I am on Fleet St, which parallels Lakeshore W, but never the twain shall meet. I have to keep driving west, on the other side of the dedicated streetcar line, well-protected by concrete barriers. I steam on in the direction of the Exhibition, our seasonal adventure in frivolity. Okay finally, an available left hand turn onto Strachan. With an advanced green and a mere 7 cars waiting. The light changes. We’ve got it. Guys! Guys! I am 7 cars back but the only one willing to tell those stupid tourists at the front how to turn on an advanced green.

Since there is a T intersection at the Lakeshore, I make the left turn easily for once. And at last I am back where I should have been 20 minutes ago.

Blake is sitting in the club dining room, over the remains of his late (very late) breakfast, unperturbed, and he orders me a glass of pinot noir to calm me down.

By the time we collect his little dog and take the water taxi out to where Sirroco is moored it is mid-afternoon. Not that it matters. Sailing proceeds on slow time. The bugs have to be swept up. Well, some of them, anyway. The mainsail cover has to be removed and shaken. We have to decide which genoa to use. The wind isn’t quite as gentle as Blake led me to believe, so I vote for the #2. Astonishingly, he agrees. As usual, the main gets caught as he pulls it up.

Rick rigging sailHe starts the motor and hands me the tiller.

Excuse me. Hasn’t there been some mistake? Apparently not for he is off up onto the bow to pull up the gennie. “Just aim for that buoy,” he calls back. “It doesn’t really matter but it makes a good reference point.”

There are two things about steering a sailboat with a tiller. It’s like driving from the back seat of a car and once the sails are up, visibility gets worse. Then there is the fact that if you want to go starboard (right to you landlubbers) you push the tiller left and vice versa. Oh my goodness! There is a motor launch bearing down on us portside and downwind a smaller sailboat. The southwest wind has freshened and there is a nasty little chop. Panic! Panic! Then suddenly, my almost 40 year-old body-memory takes over and I discover, not only that I can steer, but I know who to avoid and who has to avoid us. Once the sails are up, I find it easy to keep them full by nudging the tiller gently. It’s like playing a huge kite high in the air. I am part of the boat.

We sail west to Humber Bay and come about. By now the dog has given up her post as a living figurehead jutting out from the prow and has come back to the cockpit. She is wearing a dog life jacket with a convenient carrying handle on her back. A long line is attached to it. She has on occasion fallen or jumped in, swum about and been pulled back aboard. Never at speed. I once learned a physics lesson while trying to fill a pail with water at 6 knots. I bore the stigmata on my palms for some time.

“Do you want to sail around the island?” Blake asks.

‘Twas ever thus. It sounds like such a good idea.

“Will you get too tired?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” I reply. I seem to have spent my life agreeing to such good ideas. And living to see it was not wise. I imagine that I will be very very tired if we sail around the island, but it is such a good idea. So we do. In my defense, I can only say that we skip jumping off for a swim.

Now that we are going downwind, we seem to be standing still. Only the trees move in relation to the CN Tower. Perspective seems distorted. The people walking on the island seem like ants, but I know we are not that far away. Kayakers and paddlers on boards, miniscule. The freighter at the wharf, not so much. Like Alice in Wonderland, I resort to nibbling – on a cheese tray and handing large chunks to skipper Blake on the knife blade. We forgot the crackers.

The dog has been sitting on me so long that both of us need to stretch. A good time to come about again. But the southwest wind isn’t as strong as it was. Perhaps it is evening coming on or the city moderating its influence.

city from boatBlake decides to put the motor on and take down the sails, handing me the tiller just as we are about to pass in front of the ferry dock. Which is fully loaded, two car ferries straining at the bit. While it is true that we have the right of way over large motorized vessels, it is not a point I want to press. But, hey, I take my ease. I make my own decisions and they turn out to be the right ones. I do draw the line at getting the boat through the gap and hooking the mooring line up over the cleat.

It has been only 5 hours, but 5 hours of the most beautiful water and sky. Five hours of peace that passes understanding. It feels as if I have had a week’s holiday.

And it will only be 2 days before this septuagenarian body gets rested.

Sirroco, taken on a previous voyage

Sirroco, taken on a previous voyage

Starving in the Dark: septuagenarian faces flash flood

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Last week, a Calgarian, worn out by the flooded Bow River perhaps, wrote a letter to the National Post in which he invited Torontonians to starve to death in the dark. Alberta has the oil after all. I thought “yeah, yeah” that’s an old one – 40 yrs at least.

On Monday, I am reading with my feet up, worn out by my negotiation with a Toyota salesman. It is all but pitch dark at 4:30 p.m. but I’m used to that. It has rained torrentially at that hour many times this year. It starts to pour. I keep reading – a fictional account of the London blitz as it happens.

On Sunday, I got caught in one of these downpours. I huddled in a doorway for 15 minutes, watching water 4 in. deep race down the street. The rain got steadily worse. I put up my umbrella and set out for my car, two short blocks away. I met a guy with a clinging wet t-shirt, who smiled ruefully. My pants were soaked up to the knee and by the time I got the umbrella down, so was my the car seat. I sat in the car reading, waiting until I could see out the windshield. When I could, I chose my route carefully, avoiding the deep dip in the road to the south of my place where it floods. I’ve learned at least that much this year.

As I read about the horrors of rescue in the London blitz, lightning flashes through the window. Okay, supper time. As I walk toward the kitchen, I observe that I cannot see out my windows.

Full disclosure – I still harbour a 2 year-old within, who found herself with an unconscious baby sitter in the middle of a hurricane. By that I do not mean ‘inattentive’. I mean-down-for- the-count and never-right-again unconscious. It was only one long hungry day before I was rescued, but of course it seemed like forever. I am actually reassuring this hysterical inner-child when the carbon monoxide alarms scream, various things beep and the lights go out.

No problem. Right? It’ll come right back on. GIve it a minute. Fortunately, I do not know that the underground transformer that feeds the west end is now 30 ft. deep in water.

So it begins.

I activate the CBC app on my phone and discover the subway is flooded and shut down. The streets are jammed with wet pedestrians. The traffic lights are out and rush hour is at a standstill.

Frank, my landlord, emerges from his own underground lair to watch the storm through the front storm door. (So that’s why it doesn’t have a screen.) An hour later, the upstairs tenant arrives reporting that she was the last person allowed south on the Don Valley Parkway. She drove through the river, which was already over the road. The cars behind her were turned back, driving the wrong way to exit in the middle of the city. Her trip took twice the usual time, she is all but out of gas and there are no working gas pumps.

I leave my apartment door open and consider food.

Besides the screaming inner-child, I have dietary limitations. The list of things I can’t eat is far longer than the list of those I can. I cannot, for example, eat bread. I can eat brown rice and there is some in the fridge and there is cold chicken and salad mix. No problem. The trick is not to tarry in front of an open fridge door.

I haul the lantern out of its closet and discover the D cell batteries still work. I light the available candles -beeswax of course. Regular candles make my eyes burn. I eat my cold dinner. How I long for tea -herbal- you guessed it. Sitting there, I decide that if civilization starts coming apart, with these ‘refined’ needs, I will be among the first to go. Well, there’s some good news.

The rain has more or less stopped. Using my CP24 app, I find that a train is sitting in the expanded Don River and 120 commuters are awaiting rescue by boat, tiny zodiacs as it turns out. They have had to scramble up to the upper deck and some of them will not get off until 12:30 a.m.

Meanwhile geysers of sewage have exploded out of utility holes. Cars have been abandoned, including one Ferrari. Fireman are rescuing people. Then my fading phone declares that it cannot access the internet. It’s only 9:30 but it’s time to go to bed.

I have a lovely dream. The carbon monoxide alarm has beeped and the room has been suffused with light. I wake up. Not.

In the morning, the second hand Twitter rumour is- power back by noon. This will change throughout the day and I will gradually lose my initial desire to join Twitter. Hope is not a winged thing that perches etc. Hope is a canard, a con. It misleads and keeps you from acceptance and necessary action. It takes me 24 hours to set up a rescue for my freezer goods, e.g., and in the meanwhile I lose over $50 worth of stuff.

How to live now?

Take inventory. There is still hot water. Most of the city has its power back. With all the blinds open, I can more or less see. No paper and the phone can no longer get a signal, too many others already on the system. I warm breakfast up in a pan of hot water, milk for cereal, green soup. I take a hot shower. I drive to the tai chi club where I can make tea, exercise and charge my phone. I even do 2 sets of tai chi. During tea break I go down to the basement restroom. What is this brown residue on the floor? I call for volunteer help and grab a mop. Patty joins me. The other, much younger class members, do not. In fact, one of them waxes outraged because she has to find another toilet. Meanwhile in a search for a pail and hot water, I have stumbled wetly into the downstairs practise hall. The carpet is soaked and a little pool sits in the middle. We give tours hoping to drum up help. Not so much. We phone a report in to an actual employee, wring out the mops and carry on with our lives.

I, for example, have to call on two cats whose mom is away. They are glad to see me and a note on the counter invites me to make tea. What a great idea! I plug the kettle in. I give one cat her medicine. I feed them. Hey, what happened to my tea? I know the power is on up here. But, the thing is, it isn’t. It’s what you call a rolling black-out. These black-outs roll with me as I roll westward. I see the traffic lights fire up behind me and go black in front.

By dinner time, I have been without hot food 30 hours and my weak digestion can’t take any more and besides, the food in the fridge is now inedible. I set out for a restaurant. First, I have to get to a place with power. This involves waiting 20 minutes at just one non-functioning light. Once there, I find the parking meters on the street don’t work and I know our parking officers will give tickets on Judgement Day, so I search out working meters. There are now only 22,000 householders without power and all of them have converged on Bloor West Village for food. Cash only. I found I had raided the hidden money envelope but still had $100 left, so that’s all right. I stand in line for 25 minutes. I can see empty tables. The maitre d’ can too, but he keeps handing out menus and bustling off, leaving us there. Very hungry.

Eventually, I am seated, single and wasteful though I am. I read to keep from raiding adjacent tables and when I finally get food, I nearly weep over the mashed potatoes.

In the evening, Blake, who has never lost power, shows up to take my freezer goods into custody. I serve him a warm beer while we sit in semi-darkness.

By next morning I discover that I get tea and ice at the super market south of me, which must have a generator. I am there by 7 a.m. and soon have an ice chest set up with lunch stuff. Should have done this yesterday. Why didn’t I? No idea. Hope precluded it? Or was it mental dysfunction? I note that we all seem to be suffering it.

At non-functioning traffic lights, you stop, look, take your turn. Do this 10 times and when you come to an actual red light, you start to do it again. The woman upstairs locks her keys in her apartment, fails to pick the lock and decides to kick it in. So much noise! And it doesn’t work. Our door locks have steel plates! I lose my glasses, find another pair and come back to discover the first pair right where I lost them.

We are all suddenly very neighbourly, except to the old guy who brags that he has power just 10 houses away. People share their barbecues, carrying pots across the street. We no longer share the estimated time of (power) arrival. We are cynics, one and all.

On Wednesday afternoon, I get gussied up- poppy red dress, leggings, good sandals and set off for a second round at Toyota. I am just pulling into the parking lot when Frank calls to tell me the power is back on. I can’t say I believe it will last, but I finish the car deal and go to the green grocers and the butcher shop, pretending I believe it.

It is indeed on. I have light and a kettle that comes to a boil. I do manage to set the fire alarm off, having apparently forgotten how to cook, but after two days, it is over.

Thursday morning, I assume it is life as normal. I get to the tai chi club late. I’m still so discombobulated it takes me ages just to do a simple task like get dressed. I go through the club’s back door and an odour like something burnt sends me reeling. I know that smell. Mould! It’s okay, I’m reassured, the water has been vacuumed up. It’s fine. Try the upstairs class.

Listen if you take a canary down a coal mine don’t try to argue with it. If it falls over, get outa there. In this case, it is the canary that escapes.

By now, my head is aching badly, very badly. I can’t go back there, I reason on my long drive home. Maybe never, at least not until cold weather.

At home, I decide to try one thing. I email the location leader, telling him that mould is a health hazard not just a bad smell. Then I call ma soeur, Georgia, who listens to me rail. When I get off the phone, I see the message light flashing. The location leader has called our contractor who said hell yes, the carpet has to come out and the floor has to be treated with fungicide. I call our leader back, full of gratitude. Now my exile is down to a week or so while the place gets cleaned.

Now if only this headache would quit….

Naked Windows: a voyeur’s confession

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kitchen windowMy kitchen window has been naked for the last few days. I have disassembled the Venetian blind and am in the process of washing the slats. I raised my eyes from the sink the other night to discover my neighbor was also naked – as people usually are in the shower. Detail was indistinct, but it was apparent which member of the family it was. An unsettling insight. Why is that? The house I live in is the mirror image of the one across the double drive and the bathroom windows on both are original, having never been upgraded. Fortunately, someone has stuck an opaque film over my top pane. Not so on the neighbor’s, although both have pebbled glass on the bottom. Shower before dark, I guess, and count your blessings that those people haven’t taken down their kitchen curtains.

Naked windows happen to everyone who moves frequently. Sometimes I feel as if I hold a world’s record for that. Inevitably, there is a house or an apartment where the previous people denuded the windows when they left. The last of the furniture gets carried in at dusk. The big truck drives away and, suddenly, you realize that you are on a lighted stage and the neighborhood is getting a good look at the new kid on the block. Finding sheets for the bed is already a challenge. Tacking one up over a window is downright daunting. You undress in the bathroom with a prayer of thanksgiving for the skylight.

It is some time usually before you can tackle the window covering problem. It’s hard to say whether naked windows are worse in the summer when the sun wakes you up just after 5 or in the winter when you can’t avoid turning on the lights and turning the place back into a stage.

My fallback position is to buy vinyl mini blinds, but that works only if your windows are standard size. It takes weeks more to get Sears to cut them to size for irregular windows although Ikea drapes are pretty instant. Most of them can be modified for a rod or a drapery track. Somewhere in that mass of unpacked boxes there are curtain hooks, but you can’t find them. That is why I have several hundred hooks of various shapes in the top of the broom closet. Don’t get me started on the agony of screwing the blinds onto the woodwork. It’s bad enough to make me settle for blinds only for the first few years because I can’t face putting up rods.

Behind the duplex I live in, across the yard and a sunken parking lot, hidden behind trees is a four-story apartment building. For years, it was just there, doing no harm, except for Wednesdays when the garbage dumpster got hoisted onto the truck and the empty one deposited. Then one of the ash trees got ill and one summer morning a team of acrobatic tree-men arrived to put it out of its misery. I, for one, was happy to endure its slow demise, but liability laws dictated otherwise. After they had swanned about on high wires, amputating 18 inch lengths and lowering them down with much yelling of encouragement, they ran the whole thing through a chipper and drove off with the mulch. Silence fell, a silence that still resonated with tree death, as if the other trees were still shivering or timidly unfolding their arms. I stood in the silence looking out at the great hole in my world and saw…. that was no hole. That were eight tableaux. There was the crossing guard putting on her florescent vest. There was a thin chested man -with no shirt – looking at the internet. There was a room that Scheherazade would be comfortable living in. There was a mother showing her toddler the sparrow on the window ledge. There was the totally uncluttered home of a couple who dressed in the white robes of some religious outfit or other.

I mean – tell yourself not to look. How is that possible? Every time you adjust the blinds or open a window, there they are- five or six different dramas playing out. The thin chested man never wears a shirt, at home anyway. Full disclosure here -I am a girl, if an old one, so this next bit is not as creepy as it could be. The most astonishing is the while-robed woman who runs up and down her hallway every morning passing through the living room and past both bedroom doors over and over again, wearing –  red bikini pants and bra!

Buz Lurhmann stole this idea from me for his recent Great Gatsby. The camera pulls back from Myrtle’s apartment in New York City. Tom Buchanan, whose mistress Myrtle is, Nick Carroway and other hangers-on are drinking bootlegged booze, listening to jazz and generally having a hell of a time. We see her fire escape landing where someone seems to be recovering or someone is playing a horn. (I can’t remember.) Then as the camera pulls back and back, we see more and more windows, all in high definition, all sporting men and women similarly whooping it up and just enjoying the jazz age. Did Tom really rent Myrtle a place in Harlem? That scene, which just grows and grows, was worth the $10 I paid for matinee admission.

Really living where I do, I could cancel the cable and still be entertained.

Is That Supposed to Be Funny? – consider satire

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Satire, like irony, gets misunderstood, especially when delivered deadpan. Deadpan artists find themselves harangued by the serious-minded at home and in the boss’s office. More than once, I have found myself explaining this difficulty to irate parents and the principal. I have taken a vow then and on other occasions not to “joke” with maturing minds or in emotionally fraught situations. To no avail.

Satire can be dreadful.

Think of that awful man – what was his name?- Jonathan Swift, who made a “modest proposal” that the babies of the Irish, who were being starved out in the eighteenth century, should be served as Sunday roast to their English landlords. Now I ask you is that an essay to teach to young minds?

Several things made me think about satire: my post “Zero Dark Thirty: lessons in self-love” http://115journals.com, reading Jo Nesbo’s novel, Headhunters and Martin Amis’s novel Lionel Asbo: State of England as well as George Saunders‘ Tenth of December.

My post on Zero Dark Thirty considers the dark subjects of torture and family abuse, not amusing, indeed deeply unsettling, not to say anguishing, so dreadful that my instinctive response was to resort to satire, to treat them flippantly. I depended on the reader to work it out that since it was apparent that I know the dreadful effects of such brutality, I was not actually treating it lightly. My words grew out of deep compassion for suffering, just as Swift’s did. He portrayed the monstrous behaviour of the English landowners by proposing a solution that mirrored that monstrosity.

Martin Amis’s novel, LIonel Asbo: State of England is about a lottery lout, a recidivist, so often in and out of jail for petty crimes that he has changed his name to ASBO, naming himself for The Anti-Social Behaviour Order, a distinction that he claims to have won at a younger age than anyone before him. Basically, he was society’s enemy long before he started school. He is a brutal low level thug who keeps vicious dogs and feeds them Tabasco sauce to render them meaner and more effective help in his loan-collecting business. He has taken in his orphaned 15 year-old nephew, Desmond Pepperdine. They live in a 2 bedroom council flat high above Diston Town, a fictional suburb of London,, and the dogs live on their balcony. Desmond has a small secret: he is having sex with his 35 year-old Nan, Lionel’s mother and Desmond is certain that Lionel will kill him when he finds out. Meanwhile Lionel goes back to jail and while there wins millions in the lottery and emerges a media darling.

The novel covers a number of years, during which Desmond is able to give up incest, get an education, marry and have a baby, all while still living in the flat – Lionel having risen above it or being back in jail- the dogs still on the balcony, still scoffing down the Lionel-mandated Tabasco sauce, still ravening monsters. The question is does Lionel learn about Desmond and Nan. The question is not who let the dogs out.

British reviews were not flattering. The Brits themselves were deeply offended. What does he mean ‘The State of England’? They said it was Amis’s final insult as he moved to New York City. Which only goes to show that his satire succeeded brilliantly.

What is the target of Amis’s satire? The ever younger age at which the disadvantaged are having sex and getting into trouble. Being famous for being famous. Lionel’s girl friend, “Threnody” is a glamourous model who insists that her name be spelled in quotation marks. But it is the absolute despair of Diston Town, the unemployment, the complete lack of opportunity, Amis takes aim at. Culture and beauty and interesting ideas don’t even come into the picture. And the absolute lack of humanity: Lionel who has more than enough money to help out, does nothing, on principle, even for his own family. His mother dies in poverty of extreme old age before she is forty. Exaggeration is a tool for satire and of course these things are grossly exaggerated. Aren’t they?

Jo Nesbo’s  satiric novel, Headhunters, is a surprising change of pace for a writer who specializes in mystery thrillers. Set in Norway, Nesbo’s home territory, it is narrated by Roger Brown, headhunter par excellence. He begins by detailing an interview with a potential placement for a job as CEO of a well known company, a man who is 14 centimeters taller than himself. Roger is a relatively short man, 1 meter 68, about 5 ft. 8 as near as I could figure out. (I know, I know – I live in a metric country, but I still do height in- what- imperial.) Like Nesbo’s detectives, Roger conducts the interview according to the FBI nine step interrogation model -submission, confession and truth are its basic principles. Roger rejects the candidate but outlines how improvement can be made.

Roger Brown is a driven man, financially over-extended in an effort to please his beautiful wife Diana, who, he is afraid, will leave him for a taller man. He moonlights as an art thief, stealing valuable paintings off the walls of the wealthy, including this client and replacing them with photocopies. Into his life walks a taller man, Clas Greve, who shows up at Diana’s art gallery and charms her into getting him an interview with Roger. Turns out Greve is even better at the FBI’s nine step method than Roger and soon gains the upper hand in the interview. Turns out Clas has found a hitherto unknown Rubens while renovating his apartment. Turns out Greve takes advantage of his height differential. The self-assured Roger soon finds himself out of his role as master of the universe, the mere tool of the more masterful Greve.

There are genuinely funny scenes, which had me laughing out-loud, not least of which occurred in an outhouse on a remote farm. Let’s just say that Roger finds himself in reduced and unsavoury circumstances.

Headhunters like Nesbo’s detective stories includes the grotesque and unexpected but it differs in allowing a measure of redemption.

On one level, Nesbo is satirizing the Gordon Geckos of the business world. He carefully itemizes their designer suits and ties and their Italian shoes, carefully calibrating the nuances of the hierarchy. He is attacking ego and greed and the lust for power with his considerable wit and insight. But on another level, he is satirizing our human propensity for trying to control life that is fundamentally chaotic and beyond control. Even if we are 6 ft. tall.

George Saunders’ Tenth of December is a book of short stories that Saunders says reflects the good fortune of his life at this point. (These are far from his own words and he could have fooled me.) Saunders is referring, I assume, to his commercial success and his contentment with his creative writing professorship at Syracuse U. One of the stories is set in the near future when drugs are capable of resolving any inconvenient emotional state while, in reality, creating others equally problematic. In “Escape from Spiderhead”, convicts are serving their time in a research facility. Initially, the experiments deliver drugs that heighten pleasure and even include what every writer dreams of – “pepped up” language centres. They move on to include extremely good sex with an inmate of the opposite sex and then they morph into something much darker, something which tests the subject’s willingness to harm another. In “Exhortation”, a boss writes a memo encouraging those under him to do their jobs with a more positive attitude; otherwise, he and they will be replaced by a team that will. It might well have been written for those doing the experiments in “Escape from Spiderhead”. In “The Semplica Girl Diaries”, a father who is fast losing his middle class status, seeks to gain status by filling his garden with Semplica Girls. Gradually, Saunders reveals that these are not cute garden gnomes but living women, from third world countries, who have contracted to be strung together and displayed in fetching arrangements. In “Victory Lap”, a teenaged boy, an only child, who has been warned never, ever to put his precious self in danger, watches the kidnapping of a neighbour girl in conditioned paralysis, until he can’t. My favourite story is “Tenth of December” in which a boy lost in a fantasy world in rural New England, comes upon the trail of an older man, dying of a brain tumour, who has decided to commit suicide by freezing to death. In the ensuing and hilarious chase as the boy tries to catch up and save the would-be suicide, a sudden turn of events proves heart-stopping and redemptive.

Saunders’ stories, published in New Yorker and the Atlantic between 2000 and 2011, deal with contemporary situations, including returning veterans, who have lost their families and their way. They deal with the hollowing out of the middle class and the on-going economic downturn. They satirize parents who try, despite their reduced circumstances, to give their children nothing but the best. “Victory Lap” takes aim at health food nuts and ecological freaks who attempt to stunt empathy. “Puppy” is a darker look at the gap between the well-to-do and the poor. Suicide crops up in 2 other stories, which do not have such positive outcomes as “Tenth of December”. Yet, in one case, it represents a moral victory and “Tenth of December” seems like a reminder that life, with all its pain and despair, is worth living intensely right up to the last second.

Septuagenarian at Doggy Bootcamp

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What I want is to get on with my post about satire in which I discuss with my usual clear-eyed insight novels by Jo Nesbo and Martin Amis and short stories by George Saunders. What I want is to finish my post about my new way of cooking rice, which is apparently actually old and Persian.

What I want is to be the 27 year-old second ballerina, I dreamed the other night, with a gorgeous male partner, capable of lifting and protectively holding me.

What I’ve got is 50 more years and doggy bootcamp.

Georgia thinks it’s funny. Georgia says write about that. But she’s just a baby septuagenarian, just barely started, so what does she know? Blake and I have seniority. I’ve known Georgia since I was 6, longer than anyone else still extant, that is to say ‘above ground’. Blake I met when I was 16, so he’s the oldest friend apart from siblings. We have had various septuagenarian adventures together, but this one is a solo. (See 115journals.com under septuagenarians)

The crux of the matter is that Blake has gone walkabout or, more prosaically, flown off to the west coast to see his daughter, who is, coincidentally, my daughter. The thing about children, even adult children, is that they cement you together. So when Blake cast about to see who could dog-sit, I came immediately to mind. Why not? He had taken the measure of my mothering skills some years ago. And I had mothered quite a few dogs as well, notably a big black Newfoundland throughout her long, lumbering life, but also a couple of her playmates including a spaniel. A 7 kilo sheba innu would be no problem.

“She’s a zen dog,” he assured me, alluding to her Japanese origin, “and she only needs to be walked 3 times a day.”

I felt better already.

March in the north -can I call Toronto north?- is unpredictable. Last year temperatures got up to 20 celsius, well into the 70s F. This year not so much. It is below freezing, there are brisk winds, especially from the north and a windchill. Okay, no problem. First walk of the morning: undershirt, merino wool long-sleeved undershirt, short-sleeved wool undershirt, ribbed cotton turtleneck, wool cardigan, vest and long down-filled coat, not to mention wool tights and fur-lined cap with ear flaps that tie. What?! Did I say I’m old? Did I say I was born in an unheated bedroom? Did I say God didn’t hand me an internal thermostat?

Right, we’re ready to head out the door. Despite the gear, I can still bend over enough to put the dog’s collar on. True she immediately starts to retch and gag. I still have something to learn there. Out the door. Well, not quite. We have to stand testing the air first. There could be danger. Down the front walk, turn right. Stop dead. There is a tree here and there are messages on it that have to be carefully ‘read’ by sniffing. Boy dog messages no doubt. ‘I was here. Where the hell were you?’ It isn’t a matter of gently tugging on the leash. Her 4 paws are glommed onto the frozen ground. There is no moving her. The bad news is that there is a tree in front of every house. And I have forgotten much in the last 25 years. A quick stoop to mark is not the same as an actual pee. It will take several walks to teach me this.

The second or afternoon walk is meant to be longer. Typically Blake hikes with the dog along disused rail tracks or up hidden ravines that wind under city streets and emerge miles later in its centre. Then they hike back, I make a foray down the bike path beside the woods in the afternoon. We come upon five robins foraging for worms in puddles that are about to freeze over. Initially, there is a strong smell of skunk, but that  doesn’t concern Ms Zen. She moves on inspecting the leave-strewn margins minutely until, finally, she finds exactly the right spot. It transpires that I have a lot to learn about poop and scoop. Suffice to say, I am glad she is in favour of a quick return. I desperately want to wash my hands.

The rest of the afternoon is devoted to rest and recuperation. Yes, I exercise every day but  I don’t go out in the cold and walk up and down hills. After dinner the wind is roaring and another walk is on. I long for the good old suburban dogs who stood in a writhing heap at the back door. I would open it, they would dash out and one of them would shout when they wanted back in.

And how does Blake even have a life? All I can seem to squeeze in is a short trip for groceries. Tai chi class seems to be out of the question. Gear up,walk, take the gear off, collapse.

Days pass. It becomes clear to me who’s in charge. She chooses the direction or rather her nose chooses the direction. There is absolutely no discussion. If I tug the leash too hard, she throws up. Simple as that. One sunny afternoon, we get as far down the paved path as the mown lawn. Having done her ‘job’, as my grandmother used to say, she stands gazing into the woods. These are the woods where she, Blake and I came upon 3 deer last year. She stands and stands. She gazes and gazes. A twitch on the lead. No response.

“Let’s go,” I say, my voice rising, my best kindergarten teacher voice.

She looks at me balefully, as if to say, ‘that voice!’ She looks back at the woods. She wants the lead off. She wants to run up and down those wooded hillocks, following those hidden paths. And if she were my dog I would let her. If Blake were here he would let her, but not and not. (Dear Blake, The weather is getting warmer. Your house is fine. Your roof hasn’t leaked. No one has stolen your car. Yours truly, Joyce p.s. Your dog is lost.)

It is only when a white-haired man comes down the path that she deigns to move. She thinks it might be Blake.

The first 2 nights she sleeps in her bed in the living room near the front door. Surely, he will return for her! On the third night, she accepts a helping hand onto my bed. I’m not keen on a bedmate but, otherwise, she is just going to stand beside the bed and stare at me. Weekends I sleep in the second best bed (See 115journals.com “Consider the Second Best Bed” ), a narrow bed. I sit her bed beside it. No dice. I drop a quilt there. Well maybe. As a septuagenarian I am acquainted with the night and I observe that she alternates between the bedside and the living room couch. In the morning, I discover a wet spot there.

Now Blake has assured me that this former show dog never has an accident. I believe him. I am familiar with an ‘on-purpose’. My Newfie dog once protested the fact that she was not permitted on the couch while the cats were by emptying her capacious bladder in the middle of my bed. Fortunately, I wasn’t in it.

Okay, no problem. Georgia can tell the story of having to change her entire bed at 4 a.m. because her Springer Spaniel did have an accident.

When Ms Zen arrived 5 days ago, I typically got up bent from the hips and shuffling, your standard septuagenarian gait. Ten minutes of tai chi put the spring back in my step. Now I walk like one of those extreme body builders I used to see in Venice Beach. My thighs are so stiff, they can barely scrape by each other. It takes a long hot shower to limber me up enough to do tai chi to limber me up. On the other hand, once it gets going, this old body seems more balanced and functional.

While it’s true, she eats only home-cooked meals, Blake brought them, frozen for easy ‘heat and serve’.

She’s just rolled her body off my bare feet and gazed at me with what looked like adoration.

January, Muscle Spasms, and All That Good Stuff

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The first 3 weeks of January went swimmingly. A molar had to have its cap removed, be re-drilled and re-covered with a brand-new $800 crown. Then I had a colonoscopy. Mention that and someone is sure to intone -‘It’s the prep that’s the worst!’  These people evidently skipped the actual procedure. Meanwhile the pump on the washer quit and the Sears man had to come back 3 -count ’em ladies and gentlemen 3- times. Each visit required a generous window of time and no one in the house could devote 6 hours every Wednesday to this pursuit except me. By the time the washer doctor pronounced the 2 year-old front loader healed, I didn’t remember what clean clothes smelled like.

Then things got rough.

I wake up at 3 o’clock to a terrible racket and stumble to a window. Outside large tree limbs writhe in the wind, the rain flies horizontally, lightning flares and thunder crashes. In January!! As I turn back, my right leg begins howling in pain. By 5 a.m. I have written a long journal entry, downloaded Michael Connelly’s, Black Box on my kindle and got well into the story. Only then does the leg let me go back to sleep.

Painkillers? I would lament the fact that I can’t take any of them (tender stomach), but since they don’t seem to kill my pain anyway, I won’t bother. Actually I lie, liquid morphine works very well, but as I’ve said before, it’s so hard to come by.

As for the leg, nothing a little exercise won’t cure, so I go for walks. I take up the rug and do tai chi in the living room as I wait for Sears. The right hip gets stiff and sore. As I take myself off to a tai chi class, the agony has spread to my lower back. But I am still working on the theory that it’s nothing I can’t work through.

By the time tea break arrives, I have been disabused of that notion. My right hip is beginning to set like cement. A minute too long and I won’t be able to bend to sit down to drive home. I turn the heat on in the Obus Form car seat. I crank up its massage feature to high. I resort to prayer.  In my driveway, I sit studying how best to get out of the car. I discover there is no best. There’s only pain.

Okay, no problem. I have ways to deal with pain. First the castor oil pack, lots of castor oil on a flannel and a heating pad. An hour later, look at that! I can walk. Only problem is I need a derrick or a crane to get me out of bed. Right, let’s try patches, lots of those patches embedded in this case with Chinese herbs, guaranteed to relieve pain, or so my past experience says. But no, not so much and, apparently, not wise to apply them on oily skin. Why not just pass out and sleep it off. An hour later, the pain wakes me up. Let’s try the tennis ball. First lie on the floor, wedge the tennis ball under the tight spot and relax into it.OMG!!!! Does the CIA know about this? It could be way more effective than water boarding! But I keep at it and a few minutes after I get up, a blessed relief floods over me. The spasm has eased.

I am so happy! And blissfully unaware that this will be the pattern of my life for the foreseeable future with one surprising twist. The spasm travels. While it seems most at home in the right hip, it is content to visit the right calf, the right knee and the right thigh, especially as I try to go to sleep. (How is that fair, I ask you.) Just for a change of venue, it zips up to the right shoulder blade, flashes along the neck and zooms down the backbone. At the moment, it has wandered right out of home territory and is visiting my upper left back.

The only time I leave the house for the first 2 weeks is to see the massage therapist and the acupuncturist. The treatments work wonders – for about 24 hours.

I get hysterical. Well, of course I do. I whine on the phone. I up my already high dose of calcium and magnesium. I meditate. I examine my soul to see what darkness lurks there.

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the pain diminishes. I still have the travelling spasm, but I can head it off, so that it doesn’t become full blown.  I go back to tai chi class, only half of it at first. I find that one move, Creeping Low Like Snake, if done very, very gently, opens my back and softens it.

Instead of a marauding tiger tearing at my flesh, it’s more of a domestic cat now. Trouble is, I’m not much of a cat person.

If Not Now When?

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I am battling the flu, if such a passive activity can be called battling. To mix metaphors, it is the aching flu with a side of severe muscle spasm. I seemed to have beaten back (that old battle image again) the spasms, but when I went to get out of bed, I nearly fell over from dizziness. How is that fair? A new symptom when I’ve already had this flu for a week?

I long to be unconscious. I long for major pain-killers and Gravol, none of which I can take because, if I do, my stomach will kill me. I dream of liquid morphine, but those liquid morphine stores are so hard to find these days.

I was sitting with heat on my lower back, massaging my right shoulder, trying to ease my neck, when suddenly it occurred to me: if not now when.

This now is mine, whether the gift of providence or the hard-won achievement of my own spirit. And it is a precious gift that I should not waste. Moreover now, is all I have.

The past, which I do not long for and dislike revisiting, no longer exists. The future does not even have as much reality as that hazy, disowned past. The future is unpredictable and therefore, unimaginable.

So here’s to now,an unseasonably warm day, given to sudden downpours of window- tapping rain. Now in a well-heated room with a prospect of lunch. Now where my periphery is aching, but my centre is perfectly at peace.

Las Vegas: a non gambler’s perspective

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palms #2

I’m not a gambler. That’s because my father was. Even a little bit of his meagre income squandered on the ponies had a significant impact on that week’s meals and the one time he won more than a week’s wages did not make up for that.

I was once the owner of sailboat, which, they say is like standing in a cold shower tearing up hundred dollar bills. The difference between that and gambling, in my mind, is that with gambling, you skip the shower.

And yet I find myself in Las Vegas from time to time, staying in a hotel. On Christmas Eve it was the Palms. We had chosen the Palms because one of us had stayed there last Christmas and reported that with wood panelled rooms it had a warm vibe . Besides the rooms were going cheap. How surprised we were to find there had been a total renovation. Now the tigerlike eyes of a woman, framed by palm fronds gazed down over every bed. The bathtubs had been removed and replaced by showers big enough to accommodate a small crowd behind transparent plexiglass. The coffee makers had gone the way of the bathtubs. This meant that whenever I wanted tea, I had to travel down to the cafe to get hot water. On Christmas morning at 5 a.m., I made my way there to discover that the usually crowded casino had only three diehards, eyes glued to their slot machines.

For as you may know, the casino in any Las Vegas hotel is unavoidable. You enter through it. You cross it to get to the front desk. You recross it to get to the elevator and every time you want to buy a bottle of water or get a meal or go out to visit a relative. Initially, the noise drove me crazy, but I have found that it’s like traffic when you’re driving. Pay attention only to what’s relevant.

The Las Vegas that I know is not party central. It is a more suburban experience where neat Spanish-style bungalows line curving streets. Twice we have rented houses big enough to accommodate the extended family gathered from across the continent. The first one could have slept about 20, but it had a few disadvantages. One of the toilets roared when flushed and on the wedding day, the city turned off the water for non-payment. The other was smaller although it still had room for 10 and a pool where you could escape the summer heat. You could escape it in the house as well, but the air conditioning was so fierce that you risked frostbite. Some of us devised a strategy: we stayed inside until we got chilled, then we sat outside until we got fried even with pool breaks. The kids of course just stayed in the water until about 10 p.m. Party central, yes, but….

We did stay at the Monte Carlo on the strip one year and I was bowled over by the Babylonian opulence of it all. I sat waiting for kids to get off the rides in New York, New York. The fountains at the Bellagio alone were worth the trip, not to mention the buffet despite the line-up.

Ah, the buffet! Las Vegas has cheap buffets, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Like the reasonably priced drinks you can get at the casino bars, the food and even the room is just a ploy to keep the gambler feeding the machines money. Meanwhile feast your eyes on a glass pyramid, an Eiffel Tower and other bizarre edifices that delight a playful heart, never more than when the lights come on at night.

We go there for weddings and funerals and, sometimes, for Christmas. Thanks to the bold imagination of 2 family members who upped stakes and moved there in their retirement and who never played more than the nickle machines, Las Vegas has a homey feel.