114. Best laid vacation plans

I am known for never planning vacations until the last minute. I think it is because I am very mood-driven and I am moody; how do you know in 2022 where you will feel like going in 2023?

This is how it goes: I call my travel agent and tell her I want to vacation in city XYZ. She sends me a quote, that is ten times the budget I had in mind. I say “WHAT???”. And she says (yet again, year after year), that all the affordable places are booked up because people plan their vacations a year in advance. And I say “WHAT???”.

For my first big post-pandemic trip, I planned a trip in April, for travel in October. Way in advance, the way I am supposed to (supposedly). When it was booked, I said it felt surreal and I wasn’t excited, because it was so far away.

Who knows, I could get hit by a bus and die before the trip. Right?

As I said, my trip was booked in April. In August I started to get excited… it was coming up and I hadn’t been hit by a bus yet. My destination? Lahaina, Maui. Which was burned to the ground by wildfires before I could get there.

Plan B. I was very curious about Morocco. So I planned and booked that destination instead. Morocco was hit by a devastating unanticipated earthquake before I could get there.

Plan C. Costa Rica. Why not? I am glad I couldn’t get the flights and hotels to line up. The President called a state of emergency before I could get there. (At least I didn’t lose any money on this one).

You cannot make this stuff up. You just can’t!

113. Post (supposedly) - COVID

So much has changed since the pandemic.

It has only been in the last week or so that supermarket and store shelves are well stocked, and there are no bare spots. Hallelujah. (It’s weird, I got used to bare shelves, so the full shelves were a surprise).

No one wants to work, so there is an extreme staffing shortage, which means no one knows how to do their jobs, and no one cares to learn how to do a good job. The days of “customer service” rage are well over.

Restaurants are so expensive, the sting of the bill takes the pleasure out of whatever pleasure was had despite poor service and average food. Eating out used to be my passion, but I have had so many disappointing experiences since the pandemic, eating out is no longer an “experience”. I would rather stay home.

People are still getting sick and dying, but no one is keeping track and no one cares.

“Life” used to force me, an extreme introvert who is often riddled with anxiety, out into the world. The world now comes to me online. Banking. Shopping. Meetings. Social get-togethers (Zoom).

Living alone, my challenge is to build in enough contact with 3D people, as I need it for my mental health, even though I often hate it. It used to happen naturally - I had to plan inside time, not outside time!

I have started with exercise classes. Four classes a week. But I can actually zip in and out of class without talking to anyone. I need more. I will get there.

112. You know you are an empty-nester when...

I bought a beach cover-up online. In the photos it looked like a shimmery tie-dye fabric.

When it arrived, there was no ‘shimmery’.

My beach trip is a month away. So I went to the craft store and bought 1,000 sequins, and have started sewing.

My life has launched straight from harassed and harried with no time, to bored and unharried.

1,000 sequins. Why not?

111. It's been a while

Weird limbo not-really post-Covid but unmasked sloppily vaxed times. Day-by-day.

I have some insight about my relationship with my Mother. I have been trying to reconnect with her, she is getting old, and she has finally lost the HUGE POWER over me. She pushes my buttons, and I understand what she is doing and why she is doing it and who she is, and I don’t go into a tailspin like I used to.

But the big reunion is not a given, and as I am reminded that just because your mother is a mother if she doesn’t act like a mother, the relationship may no longer be tortured, but it is hollow.

This is the formula that replays.

1. Mother gaslights or winds me up, or more charitably, she unknowingly blindsides me and puts me in an uncomfortable position in a situation I didn’t want anything to do with in the first place.

2. When I address the situation with her, she misrepresents, or more uncharitably, lies, about what happened.

3. Then she acts like she is the victim, (which she can do after doing #2 above, recreating reality, aka inventing bullshit). And there is high DRAMA. “OH, I DIDN’T KNOW”, “OH, DID I OFFEND YOU”, “OH, I HAD NO IDEA”.

   And I can usually navigate these three steps. Her drama doesn’t have to become my drama.

4. We are now at the final step in the formula. I am frozen out. She doesn’t respond to emails or calls. I have been frozen out since I was a little girl. And I am not talking about the cooling off period all parents need. I mean for weeks or months. I am being punished for standing up to her.

It’s really quite brilliant, as it puts her in the driver’s seat, and gives her all the power and guarantees the relationship is on her terms.

My mother brings nothing positive or of consequence to my life. She doesn’t mean well, she doesn’t support me, she doesn’t support my kids (her grandkids). On the contrary, when she is around the kids I am on high-alert to protect them from her mind games. When she is finally gone, (if it’s before me - you never know), I will be relieved.

I don’t think I will regret not having tried to re-engage one last time. You know how everyone says you should divest yourself of toxic relationships? Sometimes the toxin can be your mother.

As I get older and have time to think about how my life has unfolded, I see the impact my childhood has had on my (in)ability to sustain relationships. I didn’t have any positive role modelling, I didn’t have siblings to contend with, I moved countries often enough to keep me permanently uprooted, and I am an extreme introvert.

I live alone, because that’s how I am happiest, but I am happiest alone because I am ill-equipped to find a happy zone when spending a lot of time with other people. I could have worked on this when I was younger, but when I was younger, I didn’t know that I needed to strengthen my interpersonal skills, my ability to face conflict, my responsibilities to build others up, my ability to take negative feedback constructively, my ability to stand in my own space and not simply accommodate and wrap my life around others at my own expense.

I really am an odd duck

110. Occupation

It was painful to see a grown human being having to be carried stretcher style because he refused to walk when arrested for his illegal acts. How has it come to this?

I am relieved that when the occupiers go home, they live in surrounding towns and other provinces. Especially western provinces. While there are racists in Ottawa, for there to be a menacing mob, they can’t rely on locals only. I feel safer knowing these aren’t my people.

I am sickened that parents have deliberately put their children between themselves and police. Children as human shields.

I am stunned that someone brought their 2 year old child into the crowd on a sled, DURING the aggressive police action. Insurrection as a spectator sport?

I am unsurprised by the lack of education and wild beliefs of the protestors.

I am unsurprised by the disconnect of people singing and dancing and professing this is a love-in, while two blocks away their fellow occupiers were assaulting police with fists and teargas. Whatever you are smoking, can I have some too?

I am tired. I haven’t slept in days. I mean nights. Last night I ended up glued to the TV long past the time all the reporters had gone home. If the police had told me that their workday starts at 9:00 (when they began to surge), I could have had a good night’s sleep.

While much of the problem is that the occupiers are uneducated and unemployed, I also think we are seeing the consequences of an absence of source material. Before internet, people had to do research from newspapers, public news services, and encyclopedias. Politicians and academics would share their analysis of what is true (the world IS round). Now, all information comes online from undetermined sources and we have learned that even the wildest ‘news’ (vaccines turn you into a robot) are believed. It is just too easy to dupe people.

Watching the grace and flawless precision with which the RCMP horses made their formation on Elgin Street, took my breath away.

Watching CBC and CTV reporters shivering in the freezing windy cold day after day and night after night has perplexed me. We do need a street shot, but why can’t they go inside for their reporting? Inside, away from the honking horns, where we can hear them. Hypothermia is a good cause too.

I just learned that Bank Street was named after the Bank of Canada. I never made the connection, even having worked at the Bank of Canada. It might be because the Bank isn’t really situated on Bank Street. Maybe it was in the olden days.

I haven’t mentioned the racism within the occupiers. I don’t need to, wherever that are a bunch of white radicals, the racists are there.

I will mention that in the old days (a month ago), racists wore sheets and did their nasty deeds under the cover of dark. Now they wear racist T-Shirts, carry racist flags, yell racist slogans, in broad daylight. And for weeks they were untouched. Welcome to Ottawa racists.

I am glad the media is covering the racism as a thing. Racism hasn’t always been a story in white Canada.

I have been freaked out that being a black woman, I walking down the street downtown would have put me at risk of violence and assault.

I am pissed off that white people can take their masks off and walk through the occupiers, with no concern for their safety. White tourism.

I am frustrated that if you tell me the representative being interviewed, I can tell you, in advance, what they are going to say. Conservative Candice Bergman (occupier sympathizer) blames the PM. As an aside, I would like to know where she stays when in Ottawa, so we can send the occupiers there, to encamp outside her room. Running their diesel engines, honking through the night). The Civil Liberties group is outrages that the emergency act has been activated. They deserve the same treatment as Candice. If they had sleepless nights, it might feel like more of an emergency to them. The Mayor, used the entire situation for crass political gain, he played dirty sexist racist politics, and has set back the progressive police agenda, by ridding the city of two black leaders and two women.

I think I am deeply feeling this because that stretch of Wellington Street where the occupiers have been, only last year was my ‘hood. When Covid hit, I would walk 3-5 times a week along Wellington from Bay Street to Elgin and back. EXACTLY where they have been. I know every crack in the sidewalk. I take their desecration personally.

I am angered that they are using our Canadian flag as a symbol of their thuggery. Clever though. I did know it is illegal to fly the flag upside down.

I see the irony with the arrested leader not being able to fly home because she isn’t vaccinated.

I see the irony that the arrested leader’s husband arrived in Ottawa by private plane.

I wonder about the freezing of cryptocurrency accounts. If criminals can’t use it, will the value drop?

I am perplexed about why my friends aren’t as seized by this as I am. Probably because they are white. Their outrage is theoretical.

Catherine McKenney. Our hero. We should give them the keys to the city, but they probably wouldn’t want them. Seriously, what an inspiring role model.

When I see the methodical and moderate policing approach, I am proud for the Canadian way. I pray they remember this the next time there are black or Indigenous protesters. It is very Canadian. I would have started by shooting and then deescalated from there.

I am highly amused at the number of times law enforcement and our politicians said “please” when asking the thugs to go home. We said please. Why didn’t it work?

I was jarred by the juxtaposition of our nation’s capital being taken over by lawless thugs, living the unprecedented test of our democracy in real time, while the PM was tweeting about his daughter’s birthday and the olympic games. No criticism, I don’t know what I would have done. It was jarring. Oh, I said that already.

I shake my head at my white friends who want to give them a cup of tea and talk it out. My white friends. They are not taking abhorrent values and low IQ into account. You can’t reason with everyone.

The scale of the police operation astounded me. And yet, they are calling it ‘routine’. Thousands of officers from all over the country. Where are they sleeping? Hundreds forming human shields to literally push the occupiers out of our city. Where to the officers pee? Police people, police dogs, police horses, police trucks, police batons (do they own them or are the batons on loan? What if you don’t like the one you are given?), police pepper spray, police helmets and shields. Police megaphones. Police flyers (please leave, we said please). Police tweets. (Everything written had grammatical mistakes, sigh). Ten foot fencing. Concrete barricades. Yellow plastic handcuffs (what? Yellow is a happy colour. A kid’s colour). Speaking of children, Children’s Aid Services.

I am impressed (and terrified) at the self-sufficiency of the occupiers. I just learned that trucks have full living units in them (who knew?), but that aside, they had fuel (to idle trucks 24/7), BBQs, stocks of socks, concert stages, a crane (wtf?), concert speakers, bouncy castles, hot tubs, food, water, tents. Deodorant. OMG Deodorant!! And of course, millions of dollars.

They were escorted out of town yesterday. They have left me and my city totally shaken.