I am a Pedestrian
I am a Pedestrian.
I prefer the sidewalk under my feet, the wind in my face, the exquisite scents in the air, the sounds rushing past my ears, and the completeness of walking.
I walk everyone. I walk back and forth to work five days a week. This is a thirty minute walk when it’s cold and forty when it’s warmer. I walk the Meewasin Trail for fun. The river is intoxicating every day of the year. I walk to the Farmer’s Market, to nearby shops, to Eighth Street for groceries. Occasionally, I walk far. It is approximately an hour’s walk from my apartment to the big, Canadian bookstore that I frequent. I’ve walked there about three times in the last three years. It is somewhere I usually take the bus to.
This time of the year I start to dread walking. It is getting colder. There are days below minus degrees and talk of wind chill. There will be ice and cars will pay even less attention to little, old me as they rush to and fro.
Vehicles don’t pay enough attention to pedestrians now. In the last month, I’ve almost gotten hit twice. The last time I could smell burning rubber after he applied the brakes.
Almost getting run over is a GREAT way to end the day!
The other time the person turning left was not paying attention; good thing I was. I will admit, I don’t always pay attention.
I will admit that I forget the rules sometimes. My generation, a mostly car-less one was “taught to walk on the left, facing traffic, so that we could see cars coming and move onto the shoulder.” (p. 38) There were also less sidewalks then. However, cars went slower, injuries were less serious, and drivers took responsibility for everyone’s enjoyment of the road. Now, there are times when it feels like I’m the only one noticing pedestrians.
I will take responsibility for my own safety but I want the vehicles out there to be aware that they are not the only ones using and enjoying the roadways.
I enjoy relying on my body for my own locomotion. I enjoy walking. There are many benefits to my walking.
“…went out for a walk the following afternoon. I was out for an hour. I walked two hours the next day, an hour the day after that, then three hours a day later. Somewhere in the course of those first several days, I stopped being depressed.” (p. 16)
Since I was a child, I’ve enjoyed walking in the rain. Though, here in the Prairies, that usually means that I am walking in the rain and the wind.
This is not a gentle tropical breeze that I am talking about.
This is updrafts and messy hair and wind tunnels.
How many umbrellas do I go through in a year?
1? 2? 3? Just one umbrella died this summer, at least. It’s a good thing my mom sells Avon. She always has inexpensive umbrellas hanging around for me to commandere.
I suppose, one day, I should buy a high end model. I worry though that our winds would treat such an umbrella the same as the others. Maybe, I should just go for cute. 
Oh look, they even have a warranty. Though, I have a feeling that Mary Poppins had a Burberry.
I know some of you may be wondering why not bike to work? For me, it’s a matter of paying attention. My mind tends to wander here, there, and everywhere. I feel it is safer for everyone if I keep my time behind the wheel to a minimum.
I am a pedestrian.
“I think I can recall a desire to gain knowledge of the city I lived in …. by walking its streets.” (p. 32)
You can live in a city for centuries and never really know it until you walk its streets.
On a recent Sunday morning, I went meandering. I walked back from the university along Temperance, turned a corner, and suddenly had no idea where I was. It took about ten blocks before I could suddenly go, “ah ha, I am here and I know where I must go to get back on track.”
I love that. I love getting lost walking in a city that I supposedly know.
I am a pedestrian.
All quotes are from:
Step By Step: A Pedestrian Memoir
by Lawrence Block
New York: William Morrow, 2009
Lottery Update
I almost bought a lotto ticket on Friday. I almost bought one because I am feeling very poor. I’m cutting my budget too close; almost a third of my take home pay is going into Savings. And, as of last week, my grocery money is all spent for the month. My savings, however, is growing in leaps and bounds. And now I have to ask what is more important, the day to day expansion or the safety net and next year’s trip?
What stopped me from buying that lotto ticket is that the game that replaced my regular ticket is double the price; six dollars instead of three for a lotto with worse odds (I ran this by my math genius friend).
I don’t like feeling poor. If I never had to think about money again I would be ecstatic.
White Poppies
I wish there was somewhere in Saskatoon where I could buy a white poppy for Remembrance Day. The only poppy available here is, of course, the Red Poppy. For those of you not in the know, the white poppy symbolizes peace. The Red Poppy is for remembrance of the war dead. The White Poppy movement started in the United Kingdom, in 1926, as the No More War Movement. I have no problem supporting the troops and remembering those lives, both military and civilian, lost to war. I’m just not comfortable supporting war as a way to deal with conflict. There HAS to be a better way!
Let me start with a little background, for those of you who don’t know me. My dad joined the air force, I assume, just after he finished school. I do know that by the time he was twenty-five, he had a wife and four kids. I was the third daughter and was born when he was stationed on an army base in Germany. My older sisters were born on bases in Canada. My mom was an unhappy army wife, alone and ignored in a foreign country. Not soon after I was born my Dad was out of the service… I’ve heard rumours of a dishonourable discharge. Nobody’s ever discussed it with me. He left us soon after to start over with a new family. Alcoholism ran rampant in his life.
My mother’s father grew up somewhere in Poland, he told me tales of being conscripted into the Russian Army (WWI I do believe), of riding horses during this war, and of starving in Russia & eating tomatoes for the first time. He ate his tomatoes with sugar, which was the way he ate them to the day he died. He hadn’t eaten tomatoes before as he had been told they were poisonous. He didn’t make war sound adventurous or fun or noble.
Most of my siblings, at some point in their life joined the Cadets. The eldest and youngest were active for years. The youngest got her pilot’s license because of the Cadets. My stepmother has been, and still is, very active in this organization. I lasted a week. Didn’t like the marching, the guns, being told what to do and when to do it. It was never an organization where I felt validated or safe.
I can understand the lure of joining the military. It provides you with structure, shelter, and food. It can give you a community to belong to and believe in. A younger brother and niece both joined out of family obligation. Neither lasted. My brother did basic training and was back home shortly after; why it didn’t work out I was never told. My niece went overseas with the Cadets and was sent home early, again I don’t know why. Maybe this is why I have a problem with the military, it seems overridden with secrets.
I am also concerned about who makes up the majority of most armies. By that I mean who is on the frontlines shooting and getting shot at. “We are the dead” as it says in the poem; In Flanders Field. It is the poor and disenfranchised who make up the majority of the dying in both the military and civilian ranks.
This military culture, we (society) glorify scares me. I know this culture. It is a culture that results in a reckless lifestyle that leads to too much drinking and abuse. The ads should say see the world, kill those more disenfranchised than you and escape from your life and responsibilities. Can’t we hope to achieve peace without waging war?
I want a chance to show that I’m tired of this mindset. I want to stand for peace. I want a white poppy to wear.
Weird and Wonderful
Yesterday was Halloween (Samhain) and today and tomorrow I will be in the midst of El Día de los Muertos. This time of year I reflect and honour the goth within. You may have noticed this from last week’s post. I’m continuing the theme this week as I participate in two different memes today and answer them both in a roundabout way!
The memes are from Art on the Darkside and Weekly Geeks.
First off, w
e have a fall, harvest, halloweeny picture for you. He looks a bit bored, don’t you think. I don’t know how many Trick or Treaters he saw but I had none. This is one of the perils of living in a downtown apartment. Most people with children are in the suburbs! I didn’t put him up. I just took his picture and cropped it for my own pleasure.
It seems strange to have Halloween on a Saturday. I don’t remember weekend Halloweens as a child. I don’t even remember Trick or Treating in the light. In my memories Halloween is always dark. I remember rushing home from school, grabbing a pillowcase (that was our treat bag – it was a small town and we planned on hitting every house) and going out with my friends and my younger brother and his friends. The next day was spent in a sugar hangover from all the treats we didn’t normally have.
I have a bit of a sugar hangover today. I saw coloured popcorn at the Farmer’s Market yesterday and just had to have some. 
Grandma Katie (she wasn’t related to us, she lived next door until we moved when I was thirteen) always made coloured popcorn for special occasions. It’s what she gave out for Halloween. Her house was always our first stop. Every child in town got a small lunch bag full of popcorn; the bags were probably six inches tall. She must have made popcorn all October so that she would have enough. It’s a shame that Treats are no longer homemade! So, the popcorn I bought yesterday was way too sweet – Grandma Katie’s popcorn wasn’t sugar flavoured, just coloured.
El Día de los Muertos is a new tradition. I discovered it when I was in Montreal. I’ve always been a bit on the goth side. My best friend and I use to hang out in Graveyards and I still love a quiet afternoon in an old graveyard. I think it’s important that we remember who came before us and that some day we will be gone. Then all that our loved ones will have will be memories or stories or the odd picture (I hate having my picture taken – always have).
I love the fact that you can buy skeleton paraphernalia that depict your dead friends and relatives. I want to make a skeleton reading a book, hiding in the corner, surrounded by her cat and dog. This would be me; this is how I would want to be remembered even though the image is old. That was me over forty years ago though, on second thought, it’s me now too minus the cat and dog. Though I wish I could have a cat here in my apartment. Oh, how I ramble on!
So, Weekly Geeks asks are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual. My answer would be no. My life has always been weird and creepy. I was a child in the sixties when trolls were a popular childhood toy, a teen in the seventies when Stephen King started writing horror but then again I’ve always been drawn to the Gothic. Never had the money for the wardrobe but horror is something I read widely in. And I covet the clothes.
Right now, I’m listening to Wicked and I must say my sympathies lie with Elphaba.
This weekend remember all of us are only here for a moment and can only hope that someone will remember us as we really were. Me, I’m weird and goth and like to hang out in graveyards.
Dead People’s Stuff
I am surrounded by dead people’s stuff. Sometimes I feel like I live in a graveyard. Sometimes I want to live in a graveyard; especially in the fall, when the cemetery grounds are calm and gray and dreary. I would so fit in with the Addams family. I covet their house.
Next week it is Halloween (Samhain) and El Día de los Muertos. This is the time of year to reflect and honour our ancestors. I don’t have to go far to do this as half of my apartment is furnished with dead people’s stuff.
I’ve been collecting furniture from dead people all my life. (The image that comes to my mind is of me knocking on doors of old houses, Victorian mansions, Gingerbread cottages, etc, and the doors being answered by a variety of ghosts, young, old, ancient, etc. Oh, if only I could draw!)
What I mean is that I prefer to buy second-hand rather than new. I like my possessions to come with stories; even if they are only stories I make up myself.
So, though I can say most of my stuff is second-hand, only about half of it was actually acquired from dead people.
In the living room, there is Ruby’s couch. Ruby was a friend of my moms. She died just after I moved to the city. I bought the couch because it folds out into a bed. It makes my mom think of Ruby but I only see the practicability of having an extra bed.
Also, in the living room is my grandmother’s (my mother’s mother) television. My mom and sister bought it for her when she moved into the home so that she could watch her soaps in the privacy of her own room. Like me, my mother’s mother was a quiet woman. She preferred her privacy.
Yes, the television is too small for the space it is in. I like it that way!
Just down from the television is a table my grandfather (my mother’s father) made. It use to have a linoleum top. About five years ago, I borrowed my sister’s garage one summer and redid the top of the table. It involved a lot of sanding and painting and varnishing. It is not finished on purpose. The incompleteness reminds me that my grandfather chose not to teach me those types of skills because I am a woman. The incompleteness also reminds me that nothing is permanent. Life is mutable, ever-changing and even though, for me, change is not always good, I try to remember that change is necessary.
Under the table is a foot stool that I bought when my small home town’s undertaker died. He lived just down the street from us and I wanted something to remember him by. His only daughter had died young and he always made a habit to say hi and ask after us when we were gone. He was one of the good ones.
In the kitchen is Aunt Jenny’s kitchen table and chairs. I also have some of her cooking pots. She was not my Aunt Jenny. She was my pseudo step-dad’s aunt. I never met her. I heard much about her. She lived alone, but for hired help, in her own house until she died. This is how I wish to die – in my own home.
In the bedroom is Ruby’s dresser. Notice how none of my stuff matches. I am not a matchy type of soul. I like the mish mash of this and that. I like the opportunity of making what was someone else’s mine. I replaced two of the drawer pulls, on this dresser, with dragonflies. They fit well, don’t you think?
Also, in the bedroom is the last comforter my grandmother ever slept under. It is part of my winter bedding because it is down filled and warm, even though it is over fifteen years old.
That is about half of what I own.
There is also:
- a green rocking chair that I bought at a garage sale,
- the kitchen table that was my mom’s old table that I use to add more cupboard space to my kitchen,
- my bed, which was a wedding gift – go here to see my summer bedding,
- the bookcases I bought second-hand (an amazing bargain),
- the hope chest my dad gave me for my 16th birthday,
- a small bedroom cabinet that I bought new (horrors),
- And two of my mom’s old kitchen chairs.
Oh, and my roll-top desk. I’ve wanted one since forever and finally was able to find one, for an obscene price, at a church sale just after I moved back to the city. I like to think some old lady use to sit here and write long rambling letters to her loved ones.
I like being surrounded by dead people’s stuff; continuing on their stories. I hope that when I am gone someone else will use and love my stuff with the same respect.
Sick Alone
I was home sick last week. Alone. I spent twenty hours in bed on Wednesday just sleeping and over two days had no more than a cup of oatmeal to eat. I left the house once. To go across the street to buy necessities: tissues, toilet paper, white bread, ginger ale.
Not sure what I had. The symptoms were all over the place: runny nose, fever, aches & pains. Mostly, I was tired and didn’t want anything to eat or drink.
And this concerned me; that I wasn’t eating or drinking much. I worried about getting dehydrated and confused. I know how quickly one can die. I remember Jim Henson – one day kind of sick, the next day too late to go to the hospital.
My Eldest Sister is a nurse. She’s been attending a lot of the pandemic preparation seminars. She has me worried. I’m not over concerned about the H1N1 flu, and I will be getting the vaccination once it is available, but I do worry about being sick and alone.
I was worried about getting confused and making bad judgments because I’m sick, tired, and feverish. There were times this last week when I wasn’t sure when the last time was that I took medications.
I usually can easily live alone. I can entertain myself for decades, even without television or the internet. Right now, I have a year’s worth of books stashed in my apartment – about two hundred or so. I have a high tolerance for combating boredom. I can, and do, entertain myself. I read, I write, I make up stories in my head; I watch television, own my favorites on DVD and have toys to play with (shh).
Loneliness is not usually the problem. Though, truth be told I never felt this alone in Montreal. Where I had no family and only a few friends, but we all were alone and that meant we felt obligated to check up on each other regularly.
What really concerned me this week was basic survival. How could I get food, water, money, when I couldn’t leave the house and I know no one in the city that I would feel comfortable asking to run these errands for me? If I were back home in the small town I grew up in, the grocery stores would deliver and let me buy what I needed on credit. I wouldn’t need to worry about having less than ten dollars in my apartment.
I’m starting to seriously consider having an emergency kit. I have a case of water now left over from the last time the city turned off the water without letting us know. I have the necessary medical supplies, thanks to my sister’s worries. I have a freezer full of meat and enough food for about two weeks but it all needs preparation and what if I can’t cook, for both medical or practical reasons.
What would I do then?
Honestly, I don’t know.
When I was a young woman, new to the city, I lived downtown in an apartment on the third floor. Every once in a while, an elderly neighbour (probably in her 70s or older) would show up needing help opening a tin can. I always helped. (I hope this helps my karma in the future). I learnt, over the course of my two years there, that she lived alone on the first floor. The lone elderly woman in a building usually filled up with university students or young workers new to the work force and city. My apartment building, where I live now, is also mostly university students and lone middle-aged workers too poor to afford a house. I know maybe six of my neighbours by sight, two by name. I don’t have the sort of courage that it takes to go door to door asking for help until someone smiles and helps.
That old woman died alone in that apartment building just before I moved out to Montreal. I think about her. Who was she? Why did she have no one? She died alone. They cleaned out her apartment and threw most every thing she owned into the dumpster behind the building. This is how Garbo entered my life. She belonged to that old woman and I felt something of hers should be rescued and passed on to someone who would try to remember an old woman she never really knew!
This is Garbo – she is named after Greta Garbo (because all of us prefer to live alone!).
This is why I think it’s time I had a preparedness plan and kit. I’ve looked over the list and it’s nice to know that I have at least half of it already. I also know that I need to keep what few social connections I already have, nurtured. I need to keep in contact with my family and learn how to make new friends. Alone is fine, but the older I get, the more I realize that I also need a community to help me nurture myself.
Yes, I am a healthy, independent woman. I can live in harmony with myself. The trick is learning to feel a little bit less solitary in the wide open spaces alone and to learn how to be a contributing community member and still be comfortably solitaire.
Lottery Dreams
I bought my last lottery ticket a week ago.
No more tickets to dream on.
No more nights lying awake, thinking, “If I win, what would be the first thing I would do?”
- Pay off my student loan (yes, I’m too practical)
- Buy a new bed (damn, this one is too short. My toes go right to the edge. I feel like I’m channeling Goldilocks! This one is too hard. This one is too short.)
- Move to an apartment where I can have pets (I miss having a cat)
- Go on a trip around the world (honestly, I want to experience this as it was in the early 1900s – so, unless they invent time travel anytime soon
) - Support the family’s dreams (I mostly have what I need)
- Quit my job & try to write one of the novels floating around in my cerebrum…
And this list is partly why I’ve stopped buying lottery tickets. See – too practical, mostly have what I want and the last item; that last item I could do already if I wasn’t letting fear still my voice. I could write and work at some job that I would never have to bring home, just for the money.
I’ve been buying lottery tickets for a long time, since the early 1980’s. That’s almost thirty years! Winnings that are considered common now (ten million plus) were considered rare and spectacular then. I can remember the rush to buy the first time the lotto topped ten million, by the end of the week the winnings were calculated at over double that. The lottery I played paid out a percentage of sales to the winners.
I’ve bought one ticket almost every week, two to three dollars at a time – it started out at two and went up to three somewhere along the way.
It seemed a small price to pay for the chance at a dream.
Back when it seemed like my dreams were never-ending and impossible for me to fund on my own.
Dreams like…
- Seeing a play on Broadway
- Traveling to San Francisco
- Buying raspberries & Concord grapes whenever I wanted them
- Having a new wardrobe
- Buying a big, old Victorian house
Buying a house no longer appeals. Especially a big, old Victorian – because I now know just what kind of upkeep is required to maintain one! Plus, I don’t get a tight fearful knot in my stomach anymore when I think that I will never own a house. It’s not a house I wanted, it was a home and I’ve made that for myself. All on my own with my own resources.
Home is how I feel not where I live or what I own. This feels like home.
As stated before, I played the lottery for almost thirty years. I bet you’re wondering how much I won over that period of time. Nothing big, no big treasure chest to gloat over like Scrooge McDuck. I won $60.00 once the first year I bought tickets, I won $99.00 recently, a ten here, a ten there – a smattering of free tickets every year. Just enough to keep me playing.
Just enough to keep me dreaming and thinking that my dreams were too big for me alone to achieve.
William was the first to get me thinking otherwise. William, with his intense stare (I wrote a poem once about that stare). We went to library school together. We were classmates. I was kvetching that I didn’t have the money to go to the annual out-of-town conference. He said, “If you saved up those three dollars a week for one year, by this time next year, you’ll have enough.”
And I thought, “Yes, that’s possible. It’s possible for ME to fund my dreams.”
That was such a radical thought. I blocked it. It didn’t see possible, that I – welfare raised, poverty stricken – could choose to achieve my own dreams. Even though, here I was going back to school at thirty, living on student loans that would eventually get paid off. (They almost are paid off, after ten years of nickel and diming it).
William was the first to get me thinking that I could be financially independent but he wasn’t the last.
A recent work colleague, young, bright, good with money, inspires me to keep dreaming and planning.
And still, I didn’t stop buying lottery tickets to dream on. Even as I was dreaming less, for smaller items, for the doable.
So, why stop now? Why was the last ticket bought a week ago? September 18, 2009. Is this going to be the last lottery ticket I buy? The last lottery I never won. Am I going to stop dreaming?
That’s the plan.
I mean, “Yes, this is going to be the last lottery ticket I buy.”
And, “No, I’m not going to stop dreaming.” As I type this, I’m also planning a big trip for next April. I’m just not 100% sure of where I’m going yet.
Why did I stop buying lottery tickets?
Because, now I believe, that it is possible for me to achieve my dreams on my own. That I can earn the money I need to fund even the largest, most magnificent of dreams.
Tribbles and Bits – August
August is my busiest month.
Actually, it starts at the end of July with my mom’s birthday. She was 75 this year. We had supper at my Eldest sisters that Friday. I worked until 1 pm and then my mom and younger brother and his youngest came into the city to pick me up. Part of my gift to my mother was to go home over that long weekend and help her with her company. She finds having people over for too long exhausting. So, when I can I go home and be the disciplinarian – my mom has forgotten how to say no (at least to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren).
It was a busy weekend. A lot of travel. Both out and back into the city, Friday at my sisters and Sunday at the lake. I was gone from Friday to Monday night. My mom, brother and nephew drove me back Monday night and stayed over for the Ex parade on Tuesday. Ex stands for Exhibition which, in this part of the country, still mostly stands for Summer Fair. That is, an exhibition, usually competitive, of farm products, livestock, etc., often combined with entertainment and held annually by a county. Not that there’s much of an emphasis on Farm products here in the city but there are still a few such displays.
After the Parade they went home and I relaxed, at least for a little bit. Didn’t have long to rest since I was back at work on Wednesday and my Eldest sister came up Thursday night so that we could go see Blue Rodeo at the Ex. At the Grandstand. Outside. In the Rain. Thankfully, the Grandstand has covered seating. It’s been a very rainy summer. I was unaware of how many Blue Rodeo songs mention the rain (and I’m sure they sang everyone of them that night).
Friday I went back to work and my sister used my apartment as home base as she explored the Fringe.
Friday evening she picked me up from work, neither of us could decide on where to go for supper – neither of us really cared. We decided to start a restaurant file so that the decision is easier next time. We just wanted to eat, not make decisions.
Friday night we had tickets to Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan’s Anthony & Cleopatra. Anthony and Cleopatra led me back to Rome which had much more violence and sex than I remembered. I’ve spent this weekend re-watching the series.
Saturday morning we went to the local Farmer’s market and then shopping until the early afternoon. By four, my sister had headed home and I had an hour and a bit to clean my apartment before I went off to see my one and only Fringe play. This year is the first year that I’ve only seen one play and spent so little time exploring the Fringe scene outdoors. We, my sister & I, usually see anywhere from three to five plays but this year I was just too busy!
This is the play I saw. There were only nine of us in the audience. Of course, it was one of the last plays on the last night of the Fringe.
It was about Dante & Beatrice, Petrarch & Laura, and the nature of romance.
So, honestly, I guess you could say that a lot of my August, so far, has been about exploring the nature of disastrous relationships.
A cynic’s eye view of love. My eye view of love. Definitely not into the summer love or Summer of Love mythology. LOL.
Nobody writes love poems about me anymore (but they did. Oh yes, they did!).
So, my August thus far. 2 1/2 days of work, 5 days of family, 3 days of work, 4 days of family, 5 days of work, two festivals, 2 birthdays, 1 Farmer’s Market and too much money spent and the month is only half over.
You know, I don’t think I mind being this busy.
Laundry Day
Here we go ’round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush,
so early Monday morning.
This is the way we wash our clothes,
wash our clothes so early Monday morning.
I did my laundry today. Sunday is, of course, not the traditional day to do laundry. If I were following tradition I would wash my clothes tomorrow. LOL.
As Monday is Wash Day; Tuesday is Ironing Day; Wednesday is Sewing Day; Thursday is Market Day; Friday is Cleaning Day; Saturday is Baking Day; and Sunday is to be a Day of Rest. According to the song.
I like schedules. I like to know what I am doing when. It is a comfort. The schedule above might work for me if I had a Monday to Friday type of job. But I don’t! In fact, my days on and off change weekly – which I will admit drives me crazy.
So, that’s one reason the above schedule doesn’t work for me. The other being I don’t iron or sew and my apartment is so small that I tend to do all my chores at once. So today was not only laundry day, it was also cleaning day and I still had time to shop and I will watch a movie after I finish this, my weekly blog post. Oh, the blessings of having modern conveniences to help me do my chores.
My grandfather, in his youth, would have been appalled at me doing any sort of work on a Sunday. He mellowed as he got older – partly because it suddenly became his responsibility to cook and clean and do the laundry. He saw how absurd and unrealistic it is, in a busy household, to only do one chore a day.
I know he remembered when laundry took all day. When one had to boil water, and wash clothes in basins, and then hang them up to dry. By the time I was a child my mother had a wringer washing machine and by the time I was a teen she and my grandparents, as well, had evolved to using automatic washing machines.
When I was in Kindergartin, my best friend got her arm caught in the wringer washer and was off school for about a month. Ouch!
How I do laundry has also evolved. Not quite as drastically though. I lived in one place where I had access to a wringer washer but for the most part, I’ve being using automatic washers and dryers all my adult life. Not for me the clothing line. I hate how my clothes feel when they are left to dry on the line. Though I will admit there is an artistry involved in hanging clothes out to dry. My BF swears that line-dried clothes smell so much fresher.
I’ve been lucky. Almost everywhere I rented I’ve had access to a Laundry Room. Whether in the basement or just down the hall such a service is indeed a luxury. And, in my opinion, well worth the cost. Which has gone up from a low of a quarter a load to my current charge of a dollar and a quarter. So, to wash and dry costs me $2.50 a load and I rarely have more than a load a week. Though, today I did have both a dark and a light load.
I’ve had to lug my clothes to Laundry Marts. Thankfully, I’ve never had to carry my laundry more than five blocks (this was in the suburbs of Montreal). I’ve never owned a car and though I’ve lugged both a vacuum and many bags of groceries home on the bus I draw the line at everyone having sight of my dirty laundry! Keep your eyes off my laundry!
Most Laundry Marts do look like this
There is both a practicality and a certain romance to Laundry Marts. I never found romance there but there did always seem that maybe I could, as Dr. Horrible did.
I am very grateful that I can do my laundry just down the hall. It only took me two hours today to wash, dry and put away all my clothes. And I was able to sit in my own chair and surf the internet. Which yes, these days, I could probably also do at the Laundry Mart just two blocks away.
I hoping that the next stop in my evolutionary laundry road will be somewhere that will let my do my laundry after midnight if that is so my want. I miss combining midnight movies and laundry on calm, quiet evenings.
Have I mentioned I’m strange. ;-p
Staying Up Past My Bedtime
July 19, 2009 at 8:50 pm (Life, Movie Commentary) (sisters, Good Girl, Harry Potter, Siblings)
I am a Good Girl. I rarely ever stay up late. Usually in bed by eleven. My apartment is too neat and my bed is always made unless I am sleeping or napping in it. I’ve been this way as long as I can remember.
This is my bedroom. Sunday morning. That is Zuzu waving to the camera!
Sorry for the delay. Had to go get the dishes soaking. They have to be done before I go to bed (as does this post). Can we say compulsive.
I know what I am. I know why I am the way I am. I know how I want my life to be. Ordered. I have little problems with who I am. It works for me most of the time.
The last time I was out past Eleven was to go to one of the Lord of the Rings movies with my Eldest Sister and my Middle Half Sister. It was in Winnipeg around the beginning of this century but before 2004. Before that was a party in Montreal, where we ended up sleeping over and the first time was quite likely my 19th birthday when my two older sisters met me at the local bar (and unbeknownst to me) bought me doubles all night. Do you see the pattern here? My late nights are so infrequent that I could probably catalog them all over the last thirty years.
So, why was I out late last week? Well, last Wednesday to be exact? I’m sure you can guess. What came out on Tuesday? This! That’s right… Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Don’t worry – there will be no spoilers in this post. (Can’t guarantee that about IMDB though, you might not want to click that link!)
I’ve read all the books. I’m a reader first, after all. I usually wait for the movies to hit TV even though I’m a huge Snape fan – he’s to die for! So, why did I see this one at the theater so close to Opening Night?
A co-worker, a HUGE fan of the Harry Potter universe had no one to go to opening night with. Yes, I know, we didn’t go opening night. We both worked Wednesday and she had a big meeting Wednesday that she needed to be on the top of her game for. Otherwise, she would have been there Tuesday at Midnight. Me, not so much.
A movie starting at midnight would have put me home around three am – much too late for me to be up on a work night!
As it was, we went to the 10:05 pm showing. My co-worker called me at eight to arrange to leave for the movie. Which seemed to me to be way too early. I was planning on meandering down around 9:30. Foolish, foolish me. All you fans out there know how misguided that would have been. :-0
We got to the theater just after eight-thirty. No line outside. Good. We go into the theater, show the usher our ticket and were ushered into the inner lobby. (This was to be the second last showing of HP 6 that night). And as you can guess, this is when I saw the line-up. There were separate lines for both our showing and the next one. Not sure how many people were in line but our line was about triple the length of the line for the 10:30 showing and it was just before nine. We had over an hour to wait and the other line longer than that!
I’ll admit I was a little surprised. Like I said, I don’t usually wait in line for movies. I’m old enough to know that eventually I’ll get around to seeing the ones I want to see. Of course, I grew up before the Internet so never worried about Spoilers! Spoilers were the main reason my friend had to see this movie now. She was worried, justifiably, that someone would tell her something about the movie and spoil it for her. As happened that evening before she met me.
All in all, staying up late was a good experience for me. I enjoyed the movie. I’m not a big fan of waiting in line though and they didn’t let us into the theater until about ten minutes before the movie started. So, I didn’t have time to get popcorn and drinks. We wanted to get our seats first. I suppose one of us could have gone well the other stayed in line. But my co-worker, more experienced then me (she’s been to every HP Opening Night as well as to other Opening Nights), expected them to let us in sooner than they did.
Waiting in line was okay. I was a little amazed at the politeness of the crowd, got to see some interesting costumes, and the movie was worth the wait. It was close enough to walk to and dispute being a creature of habit, the walk home reminded me how much I enjoy walking after dark. We got back to my place, where my co-worker had left her car, just after one am and I was in bed by one-thirty. Thursday, there were no bosses at work – holiday season, and so the day was low key and I got my work done despite the fact that I didn’t get my normal amount of sleep.
I may have to do this again!
Maybe, a home showing where I could serve this!
Permalink 2 Comments