Existential Snow

Finally there's snow in Ottawa and more coming. It's been weird, this brown winter of ours. Very unsettling. I want the snow because it's good for the pond, but also because it's "normal", although every year now I get stressed out about wheelchair users, etc, trying to navigate it in Ottawa.

Why isn't our militia in charge of snow removal? Have the best equipment possible, train everybody how to use it, and when there's a storm call everybody in to man the barricades.

Don't put me in charge in spite of my great ideas. I was president of our housing association already. Today's investors are stupid, selfish and shortsighted.

The other day I was off to my final therapy appointment and while I waited for the bus a couple of women joined me. One of them unloaded her life story, or rather, her messed up daughter's life story, who lives with her, along with her granddaughter. It's the mood swings that get to her. Also the ADD and ADHD.

The other woman talked about her job in a nursing home. She hailed from Africa, where she said older people are treated quite differently. Her problem was with management and it not wanting her to interact so much with the patients.

While she was talking I wondered why we don't have all sorts of people requiring more care than they can get on their own or in their families living in them. One of the problems with the nursing home my mother was in is everybody's so elderly and infirm they can't be of much help to each other, although M., who was certainly experiencing cognitive decline, took to helping her eat. She'd also give me little reports on my mother's mental state, once commenting she didn't seem to know it was Christmas.

"Oh M. Christmas is two weeks away still."

<M. laughing merrily>

"Well that explains it then!"

They sat together for meals. My mother, M., I., and A.

M.I.A. alright. 

There's so much we need to fix. On my way home I met a woman on the bus who cleans houses for a living. She told me she's having trouble finding work now because she doesn't have a car anymore. At her last interview the man said, "I need somebody with a car."

She asked, "Why?" But he didn't answer. Just repeated something about emergencies. She figured he needed somebody with a car because he'd lost his licence and really wanted a cleaner who could run other errands. She said she'd've been perfect for the job but it'd been years since she could afford a car and no longer had an active licence to drive one.

She couldn't imagine doing a driving test now, never mind the expense of a car.

Public transit fares went up in the new year but I see lots of guys who can't afford the fare hop on for free using the side and back doors. Drivers are in a bubble now and other riders are on their phones or elderly. It used to be they'd keep their heads down but not anymore. The streets went feral during the pandemic and we haven't reclaimed them.

It's as if we think we can just paper over all the gaps revealed by the pandemic. Why? Why do we want to paper over people who need help just to get by? If paid meaningful work is so crucial to our collective health, why isn't it a priority of our governments to ensure we all have it.

Where are our publicly funded police with their big fat budgets to restore civil society their unions helped destroy by siding with the fascist Freedom Convoy over the rest of us?

I say smash the union, fire the brotherhood and start over. Only anti anti-vaxxers need apply.

Homemakers should be paid, by the way. That's how we balance the unpaid work burden shouldered primarily by women.

C'mon, men, help us. You're good at getting paid for the work you do. We aren't. Help a sister out.

By the way, if you're still under the delusion the Freedom Convoy wasn't just a bunch of neo-Nazis rolled into downtown Ottawa to bully the locals, on their way out they dumped buckets of their shit on the door step of an aid agency for the homeless.

First they stole their food, then they left them the processed remains.

My therapy file is closed now. 

Eating has changed for me. I'm back to being a pre-teen, so before the eating disorder I hadn't realized was still with me, even in my 60s. I've already gained 5 of the 10 pounds I'm after. Because I'm in my 60s I'm making sure it's muscle, too, running stairs, lifting my 2.5 pound weights (time to move up to 5 pounders) and what My Blond Companion calls "pirate yoga".

It's just stretching. I've cut out the "arrgh, matey!" moves.

What was that crazy need to prove myself worthy of existence by balancing my knees on my elbows?

I'm here therefore I have every right to exist.

Cripes, I even pay my taxes, ffs. No offshore accounts. No fare dodging. Just slowly but surely paying my way as every middle-class Canadian needs to do to make up for everybody else.

We hit the sweet spot of life. Born middle-class in post-WWII Canada. It's the Feminism, girlfriend, you know it.

The other big change in my life is boundaries. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. Mothers everywhere, read me now, read me again later - or just ask your adult children - you need more and better boundaries.

Let me put it the way an old AA friend put it to me once upon a time: Your adult child has a higher power and it's not you.

Also, keeping your family together is not up to you alone. Relationships between other family members are not your responsibility to fix.

No one leaves a family that's working out for them. Choices abound in this middle-class Feminist society of our Great White North. Sometimes people will make ones that hurt your heart.

Sometimes you will make choices that hurt theirs.

Keep the faith. It still snows in Ottawa in winter. But ride a bus every once in a while. Cars are isolating and keep us in a bubble. Riding a bus will help you recognize we're all in this together wherever and whoever we are.