A Middle-Class Life

I've become pretty good at muting CBC ads targeting gullible seniors, new car/truck suckers and sports gambling addicts but every once in a while I forget, and the other news hour there was one for the lottery, the jackpot at $55 million.👀

For some reason, after decades of not even considering buying a ticket, I suddenly found myself thinking maybe I should. But before doing so I decided to consult with My Blond Companion about it, there being no point in buying a lottery ticket without the expectation of winning, and $55 million is a lot of money.💃

Relationship + money = discussion.💁

Well, no sooner did we start discussing the possibilities, his positive, mine negative, when I realized I didn't want to win $55 million after all, and we resumed watching the news.👵

Imagine living so privileged a life the possibility of winning $55 million isn't worth the price of a ticket. Well, a walk to the convenience store, too, in front of which sits a very unstable resident of our 'hood who can neither be ignored nor greeted without incurring her wrath/my guilt at the wild disparity in our living conditions.💩

I still shop for groceries paying whatever it ends up costing, but I'm shopping for two adults eating a black bean based diet, and cook my own beans.💪

No fair judging me for avoiding the convenience store altogether, either. Just the other day I made the mistake of smiling at a woman I sat beside on a crowded unmasked bus and she immediately began to unload her made-up life story, a wealthy heiress cut off by her family, and so having to travel the country house sitting for strangers.👸

I'm as bad as anybody these days with the ages of others but she mentioned being in her 50s, so who knows how long she's been living this fantasy. It was my own fault. She looked normal.👵

Again, no fair judging me for judging a person by their looks, although you can judge me for smiling on the bus, which is totally asking for it.😇

No fair judging me for anything if you still own a car. Our country's on fire, ffs, and all I see while waiting for a bus is single occupancy fossil fuel burners driving by. Our landscape is littered with cars. The new mayor of Ottawa, a CFRA haircut named Mark Sutcliffe, is currently demanding a roadway given over to cyclists and pedestrians be returned to cars. We could've elected a really good mayor, too. Instead Catherine McKenney is trying to improve Ottawa from outside politics: Fix Your City

Pretty much every day for four months of the year I ride my bike through a prosperous middle-class neighbourhood to get to the pond for a swim. It's the life I wanted when I was 12 so how lucky am I to be living it at 64, eh? The neighbourhood brings to mind the childhood we all wanted, for ourselves and then for our kids, the one we lived in books and television shows and movies.👪

I think it should be a field trip for kids from all over. There's even an elementary school where during the school year I get to see kids playing outside same as they ever did. If I'm riding by at the right time I see parents and caregivers doing a drop off. Tire swings hanging from mature trees, basketball nets, adirondack chairs.🙈🙉🙊

One day I noticed a woman from my 'hood, a Qanon cultist, parked outside one of the houses, getting stuff out of her trunk. I know her to be well down the rabbit hole, and have seen her on tv clips disrupting local school board meetings, the Freedom Convoy she supports having moved on from harassing healthcare workers to harassing educators. It was jarring. But she appeared to be familiar with the house she was visiting so I figured she must be providing a service of some kind. Cleaning, most likely.💭

My mother was widowed with four children under the age of ten in the early 60s and still I grew up with Mrs. S. and when she retired Mrs. B. coming once a week to clean our house (and visit with Gram), that's how middle-class my childhood was, or how determined my mother was to live a middle-class life anyway.💁

Maybe it's all the compassionate inquiry videos I've been watching but, as harmful as the cult this woman is in has been and continues to be, because Christo-fascism is the entire why of it, seeing her in this context, non-threatening, widened that crack to let yet a little more light into my life.😇

Several weeks later I rode my bike down a different street than usual, but in the same 'hood, to avoid tree trimmers taking down some of those beautiful mature trees, necessary in the wake of derechos and ice storms, and I saw a very angry looking man stomping down the street, headed to the elementary school where there was a day camp in operation for the summer. At the same time a young boy exited a house with an upside down Canadian flag hanging from it. The man yelled, "Hurry up!" And the boy ran down the driveway to catch up to the man, I assume his father.👺

Sure enough, the boy was dropped off at the school, while the man stomped back to his house, an upside down Canadian flag defacing his million dollar property in a neighbourhood of my childhood dreams, a neighbourhood it's a privilege just to be able to ride my bike through every day on my way to swim in a fresh body of water he could walk to in a fraction of the time.👶

Well that crack I just mentioned widening to let yet a little more light into my life didn't narrow, but it didn't widen, either. Instead I felt the threat of an angry man, an irrational man, a bully convinced of his victimhood, and peddled away to avoid his street in future.😷

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is our wants seem to be in denial of our needs, such are our middle-class lives, with many of us believing we need more instead of knowing we already have too much (there's a reason the retirement course, i.e. taxes and financial planning around them, is the most popular one in government) while others of us sign up with anti-social cults promoting the violent overthrow of democracy.❤