Life in a Time of Great Stupid🙈🙉🙊

Subtitle: Looking a Gift Horse in the Butt😀

So the other day, home from my daily bike ride and swim in a publicly owned fresh water swimming hole, I realized this is it, I'm living my best life. That thing we're supposed to do? I'm doing it.💃

I basked for a moment. Then, not one to tempt fate, I moved on to worrying about all the bad stuff that could happen, any minute, to snatch my best life living away, like being denied access to said publicly owned fresh water swimming hole.😱

I know, I know. I'm not living my best life if I'm worrying about the future. Also, I'm still regretting the past. Like why did I persist in relationships with men who prefer living alone as evidenced by their decades since of living alone? Women have terrible judgement and are always looking for projects to cram into our bustling lives, making over a man being one of our favourites. If a man wanted a woman he'd have her. One? He could have a dozen.👵

Also, the air quality in Ottawa today is at "try not to breathe" (Quebec's forests on fire, as Western Europe is about to appreciate) so any best life living has to be done indoors.😟

Yesterday, when the air quality in Ottawa was also at "try not to breathe" (we're off the chart used to measure air quality so we can only assume every breath is hazardous now) I organized fabric into "to sew" piles and decided I'm done weeding out clothes. Everything stays. I'm going to start dressing to go out again (once we can safely breathe the air). Live my best life by example in all my best thrift shop scores.💃

Last... week? month? year? I read an article in the NYTs, free for some reason, featuring a middle-class couple, GenXers (not Boomers) with two daughters, 20 and 13, who purchased a vacation property, a "simple cabin" on an island. Alas, the "simple cabin" was sinking, due to lack of a foundation (the cabin, not the island, although that island of garbage the size of Manhattan floating around the Pacific doesn't have a foundation and it's not sinking). And so thousands of dollars later and with the help of friends and rellies, the day was saved, and now this couple owns two properties in which to expand their middle-class living.👪

I'm not envious, nor am I pointing fingers. As I say, I ride my bike to a publicly owned fresh water swimming hole every day, publicly owned bike lanes almost all the way. In terms of keeping it simple, which this couple reportedly wanted to do, it doesn't get much simpler. Although eventually I want access to the much larger privately owned fresh water lake beside the much smaller publicly owned fresh water swimming hole, but I'm good for now, placard at the ready should it be required. Fair warning, City Hall.💪

So yes, I'm not pointing fingers, or picking on anyone in particular, because owning a couple of private properties, especially a waterfront cottage, is middle-class life for a lot of Canadians and has been for decades now. Plus vacations away from those properties, including abroad. Or at least to Disneyland or maybe an island resort. Whatever. We're surrounded by expectations, our own and others.👪

Cripes, if not for our once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, we might never have experienced the relief, ever so briefly, really, of not having to live up to them.😷

I know people who've had to sell their cottage (we call it a camp in Northern Ontario but I've been in southern Ontario and/or Ottawa too long and say cottage now like yooz guys) because they could no longer abide the trespassing by other cottage owners (their property included a tap for the fresh water spring feeding the lake) and their various and sundry contraptions motoring around the lake, a lake that includes a public beach anyway. Also their kids were grown up and maintaining the property became too much work, the expense no longer worth it, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.👎

Now cottage owners living on land are even having to contend with cottage owners living in the lake, in shipping containers, of all grotesqueries. And since the lake is actually publicly owned? I guess we're all having to contend with it.👎👎

As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, "It's always something."👿

Meanwhile, we publicly owned fresh water swimming hole people live with the threat of it being taken away from us if it gets too popular with we the public to whom it belongs. We're made to feel afraid the wealthy neighbourhood it's in can deny us access at any time, its designation as a conservation area (there's a condo development around it and I hear more lawn mowers, leaf blowers and chain saws there some days than I do in my not urban but not suburban either 'hood, and there's weed spraying pretty much everywhere) used to close it off to us, while the private condo owners around it maintain their private access. So we all adhere to the 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. hours like good little interlopers and do what we can while we're there to keep it clean and quiet.😇

And it works. Everybody who goes there to swim loves it. Some people don't even swim, they just sit on one of the three benches and gaze out over the water for a bit. Or chitchat with strangers who are then no longer strangers. There aren't change rooms or washrooms and only a tiny beach once the water goes down (the city stopped pumping water into it, claiming it wasn't doing anything to keep up the water level all summer) so it's not a place to hang out for any real length of time, although people still try, while us regulars encourage a "swim and go" attitude - by example. Also by grumbling amongst each other about beachgoers. And since us regulars go pretty much every day, we see more of each other (literally!) for at least four months of the year than we do anyone else in our lives.💞

It's the best part of life here in our nation's capital.💘

But because it's publicly owned, and we live in a time of great stupid, so many of us believing we need to protect ourselves (from who? each other? the future? the air?) by owning as much property as we can afford (or not), we live with a knife over our heads, i.e. the threat our publicly owned property can be taken away from us at any time, as we have no indeterminate right of access. Why? Because we live in a culture that prioritizes individual wealth over public health, i.e. a stupid culture.😡

And so it was that just as I realized I'm living my best life I also realized how much better it would be if I wasn't holding my breath all the time (I mean metaphorically, although I'm keeping it shallow these days, even indoors) worried we the public will one day be denied access to our own fresh water swimming hole.😬

I'm tired of it. Because it's not just our swimming hole under constant threat of being privatized in one way or another, it's everything publicly owned. And instead of standing together to protect our publicly owned property from being privatized, like healthcare, we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to own cabins on islands.💪 

Like I said, life in a time of great stupid.😐

You Say You Want an Evolution

Facebook friends have been posting an article about our evolution, taking us back 4 billion years, past apes and reptiles and what look suspiciously like the silverfish I used to spot in the bathroom of my apartment in downtown Ottawa, to self-replicating mRNA molecules.👾

Kidding, self-replicating RNA molecules. No m.😜

Not kidding, I'm a Creationist now.🙏

The thing is, the article concludes with the prediction of a "Great Averaging", to come at some future date. As in no more diversity, just same/same human beings.😕 

This was confusing to me (hence the confused emoticon) because I assumed we were already there, and have been for quite some time, same/same, diversity a word we use to cover made up stuff like culture, race and gender. Our gang colours, as it were.👥

I mean, sure, we're individuals, but so are my grandcats. We're as "same/same" within our species as they are in theirs.😼

Cripes, ants and bees are more diverse than we are, more diverse even than our grandcats, who can at least be Siamese, British Shorthair, Manx, Snowshoe, Singapura, Bengal and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc. Meanwhile, ants and bees have actual Queens. We just call other same/same humans queens - or kings, so they can pad out our news hours and/or murder us with impunity.👸

But even CBC knows, deep down, King Charles III is the same under his bejewelled crown and ermine robes as Joe Sixpack and Sally Housecoat from Tallahassee, who are the same as Malala and Cher and back around to his cast out son, Prince Harry, and Prince Harry's wicked step-mother Camilla.👺

Also, how many Wallises and Dianas and Meghans, how many Camillas, ffs, will it take for CBC to admit Buckingham Palace is just Coronation Street in drag.💂

Speaking of CBC, last evening's Ottawa newscast, already chock-a-block with ads featuring lone cars/jeeps/trucks racing through empty cities/deserts/wilderness, graced viewers with a several minutes long interview featuring a woman who recently purchased one such vehicle. She advised viewers if we, too, want to purchase a new vehicle, we must go to a dealership and beg a sales associate to let us buy whatever's available on the lot, no matter the price - or - fuhgeddaboudit.🙅

I only wish I was kidding but the interview went on to include a check in with a sales associate at a car dealership who confirmed, yup, what she said - or - fuhgeddaboudit.🙅

I also learned the Stanley Cup was finally won by somebody, somebody else bought the Senators (the hockey team) and somebody something the Raptors.💤

But back to the "Great Averaging"/end of diversity (which I still contend was always here). We used to refer to death as the "Great Leveller", but Twitter long since overtook death and now Artificial Intelligence has overtaken Twitter.👽

Just look at how happy Yoko Ono's John Lennon was to be alive again and singing alongside Linda McCartney's Paul at Glastonbury last year, like Wings and Silly Love Songs never happened.👻

When has a rich man not spent his humanity trying to buy divinity? 

But I'm lucky because I have faith, in spite of having been president of our housing association, and on my way to swim at a pond, I pass an elementary school and see children playing with each other, same as it ever was, running around, making noise, puppies at the dog park. Some of those children transcend their entirely made-up gender, as do some of the pond goers, also same as it ever was. Some are neurodiverse, too. Again, same as it ever was. But because we're well into a time of "Great Averaging", and our individuality is still and always will be the essence of our humanness, we all just want more and ever more recognition of it, the freedom to live well as our unique selves within our entirely made-up, diverse or not, various and sundry gated communities world over.💃

A while ago, before I read the article, I was watching TVO's The Agenda. Steve Paikin was interviewing an expert on gender. Eventually he asked the question, with regard to boy vs girl, how much of this gender stuff is nurture and not nature. Her answer? "All of it."💣

His response?👀

It was mine, too, not because I didn't know it already but because it was so succinctly put. Finally. So forget the "Great Averaging", in spite of having been president of a housing association, I'm putting my faith in our "Great Humanizing".😇

Making Do

I've been watching videos on trauma, trying to piece together why I started having panic attacks last spring, and my takeaway so far is to pay more attention to what I'm doing, and thinking, because thinking leads to reacting, and what I think and how I react is within my control to change.💁

I can think myself into quite a state, I've noticed, now I've started paying attention to this hamster wheel brain of mine. Allowing myself to try out prescription medication to address baseline anxiety was a significant step for me, having always been suspicious of pharmaceuticals, instead aggravating my condition with beer and pot.😜

I was and am as guilty as an anti-vaxxer of believing against all medical evidence to the contrary the health measure to mitigate the effects of the illness is the danger and not the illness.😷

Of course, the first behaviour I changed when I started taking the medication (fluoxetine, as in, Prozac) was to cut out beer and pot, and it's quite possible it's all I needed to do. Self-medicating may work for some, but not me. Your just enough is my too much, which I should know by now, but addiction's a helluva drug.😀

My preferred state isn't even mildly tipsy as it turns out (and this is what every addict wants, none of us want to overdose in an alley) but rather to be engaged in sober reflection while working on a crossword puzzle to take the edge off.💤

Contentment with how it is right now is the state of grace I didn't know I was looking for but here it is.🙇

Also, leaving Twitter, which is a big deal, to read novels has been helpful in "thinking it through", "it" being the stuff of life. Reading makes me think of writing and writing helps me reframe the stories of blame and guilt I tell myself into stories of resilience, thanks to being armed with a sense of humour.💃

Also my mind isn't darting around anymore and I'm better able to think the present through to everything not being my problem alone to solve RIGHT NOW!!👮

In fact, nothing has required my flight, fight or freeze response. Nothing. Not a single goddamned thing has happened since I started thinking it through to require my flight, fight or freeze response. Also, I'm having the most illuminating dreams, which I occasionally post on Facebook where it turns out I'm friends with an illuminating dream analyst.😎

Hell is other people, sure, but also comfort, joy and insight.💕

The other evening I was watching CBC Ottawa news and at the end of his weather report Vikta Paolo smiled, and maybe because I was alone at the time and so more engaged with his animated delivery than I would have been had My Blond Companion been watching with me, I smiled back.😊

I felt an immediate release of tension and a radiating warmth around my heart. It was instant, the fluctuation from one state of being to another, just by smiling in response to another person's smile.💥

(Dear men who tell women to smile: You smile. And stay away from women. Children, too. You know what I'm taking about.😠)

Then, still smiling, I hauled myself out of the chair and made a "Fridge Wars" dinner of this and that, praised by My Blond Companion later for its delicious ingenuity.👍

Somewhere back there I skipped my mother to turn into Gram, who claimed her greatest reward in life was making a good meal out of what she had on hand, especially when we ate it all, no leftovers.👵

(Don't worry. I don't need the affirmation to appreciate my creating the sublime out of making do. I've long been my biggest fan. In fact, I'm so good at it, I decided to make it my retirement plan.👵)

Gram was the source of much fascination in my youth. Her needs so basic, her wants in line with her needs. For years I only ever saw her in one dress, although she had two, and I saw her every day because she lived with us. But like a housekeeper, not a grandmother. It was hard to believe she was my mother's mother. Of course it was hard to believe my mother had a mother at all and wasn't just born being ours, coming home from work to check the mail Gram had put on the mantle before changing from her high school librarian clothes into her casual clothes to have a martini and watch Mike Douglas.💤

It wasn't until I was alone in her seniors residence apartment, during her stint in hospital before the nursing home, going through photo albums of her travels, rescued from the laundry garbage by another resident after she dumped them all there, I realized I didn't know my mother at all. You don't know yours, either, but like another person terminating an unwanted pregnancy or transitioning gender (especially if that person is an adolescent or child) that's none of my business.👤

(One more time: Patriarchs want fascism, not freedom.👺)

Even at the time I heard about the album dump I knew it was likely a reaction to not being able to see the photos anymore, her vision too deteriorated. But the lady across the hall rescued them because, well, I suppose she thought my mother would regret it later. I'm glad they were rescued, though, because when I saw the photo of the stranger who was also my mother, I understood both of us better. I don't know where they are now and I don't care. They really only meant something to her, and it makes perfect sense to me now that she would throw them out once she could no longer make out the images.💔

Anyway, it's with Gram in mind I'm determined to continue reframing the stories I've long, too long, been telling myself, banishing blame and guilt from the narrative, keeping it simple, putting a hilarious slant on all those old stories and sending them out into the world in another book. Later. Because thanks to Barbara Gowdy's "The Romantic" (2003), which I recently read, I've been inspired to write another book about my many office temp jobs. I want to do my part for the historical record, lest future generations think the 80s were all about snorting cocaine through $100 bills in the washroom at Bemelmens (Toronto, where I did not snort cocaine through a $100 bill in the washroom).💪

By the way, if anybody knows how to get in touch with Meredith MacNeill to read my previous and only other book so far "That Looks Good on You - You Should Buy It!" please let me know. She'd be perfect as me in the CBC television series adaptation, which would really help with my Making Do retirement plan.💃