signs

i’m glad my computer knows what day it is

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

For one mad moment as I sat down to write my post, I thought: oh crud, I have to date the thing—and on this particular day that was enough to make it all feel like just too much to take on. Date?? What date it is? I haven’t a clue, something in August and I can’t be bothered trying to find my calendar or googling for help and why don’t I remember anyway? Didn’t I know this morning what date it was? I’m sure I did…

So then I thought: screw the post, it’s all too complicated.

Then I remembered—posts date themselves. In which case I decided I’d say this—and not much more: it’s been a mad mad time of late. So crazy in fact that I’m considering a separate blog dedicated to the madness. Possibly soon to appear, preceded by an announcement on these very (self-dated) pages.

In the meantime, having given up on the original post, may I offer the following— (for no good reason except I enjoyed stumbling across this place, imagining a simpler time when posts did not date themselves, summer was longer and holiday spots, it seems, were wonderfully Batesian…)

Hey, what’s that?

Hmm. Says motel, but I’m not sure…

No, wait. It is a motel, and look, they’ve got COLOR (sic) tv!  Oh my god, let’s stop HERE!!!

Perfeck.

~

a good sign

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Seen next to a busy street.

Had to stop of course.

None of the gardeners were there.

So I wandered about being amazed and delighted at the variety of contraptions and ‘constructions’

—humbled at the idea that people would come all the way out here to the middle of nowhere to work in the heat, tending rows of cucumber

and string beans

cauliflower

tomatoes (112 plants in this patch alone)

as well as lettuce (not to mention zucchini, eggplant, brussel sprouts, beets, carrots, herbs, peppers, kohlrabi…)

for the benefit—at least in part—of others.

~

deciphering messages

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

Funny the domino effect of things.

Or whatever it is.

Yesterday I read Rona Maynard’s musings and reflections on ice cream. Today the stuff is everywhere I go. On CBC this morning with Matt Galloway. On the side of the semi that pulls out in front of me and makes me say bad words as enormous tubs of vanilla, cherry, chocolate, pecan-swirl momentarily tower over me—I can’t remember the brand. 

And, oh look, there it is again on a sign that I’ve probably passed ten or twenty thousand times on my way to the place where I buy happy meat and eggs and the best butter tarts I’ve ever tasted—but I’ve never noticed the great honking strawberry cone before. 

Most bizarrely of all, it’s in my mum’s fridge.

Three individual servings of vanilla and butterscotch, untouched and melting. So instead of making the usual oatmeal or toast for her breakfast, which has been getting little or no reaction recently, I pour the ice cream into her coffee, then pour some more over canned peaches.

She laps it up, asks for seconds. 

She’s almost ninety. What can it hurt?

A recent stroke has left her unable to do much for herself and this gets her down—everyone ‘doing’ for her, helping her dress and wash, preparing meals. She recently stopped enjoying food entirely, so when I see her licking her fingers, everything makes sense, the semi, Matt Galloway, Rona Maynard—it occurs to me there’s a message in all these ice cream sightings—ie. life is too bleeping short for oatmeal every morning—at least give the poor woman a dollop of coffee toffee mocha crunch with it…

And of course it makes complete and perfect sense.

Funny indeed how these things work.

~