AN ACCIDENTAL FRIEND

A funny thing happened the other day.

There I was sitting and scrolling through Facebook, no doubt procrastinating some chore that needed doing, when up popped a friend request.

I have to confess here, when I was new to Facebook my friendship door was pretty much wide open.  If you asked to be my friend the answer was almost always “yes”.  I have since learned to be much more discerning.  I don’t do politics.  I don’t do religion.  Except for my grandchildren I don’t ‘friend’ kids.  I block ads, and have had to unfriend a few folks who don’t understand that being friends means that they should be friendly.  Nowadays my friend list grows much slower than it did before.  This keeps Facebook being one of my Happy Places.

So, when a random, unknown request comes to me the chance of a ‘delete’ response is pretty high. 

I’m not sure why this didn’t happen last week.  Was it because there was nothing on TV and I was bored with no one to talk to?  Was it because Covid has curtailed so much of my human contact that I had a deficit to fill? Or, did I just have a premonition that this was going to be a good thing?

I didn’t answer yes immediately.  First I went creeping on her – this random stranger – and found that she was well educated and lived in Saskatchewan too, which meant that we probably had things in common and that she quite possibly belonged to one of the Facebook groups that I did.  I think it’s the first time I’ve ever accepted a total stranger, but I said “yes”.  I also decided to be totally upfront and asked her if I knew her from somewhere – I was curious, why had she picked me to ask to be her friend?

Her answer completely put my mind at ease – she had hit the friend button by mistake.  I knew at once she was ‘of my people’.  I can name a half dozen people who are my friends because of the exact same move on my part.  Personally I call it the Fat Finger Syndrome.

Now this could have gone nowhere.  We could have acknowledged each other’s existence and just gone on with our lives, but that’s not what has happened. 

Sometimes you just hit it off, you know? 

I think she just might have the perfect amount of nerdiness to complement mine.  We share interests in bird watching and gardening, we both have experience in the role of a Saskatchewan farm wife and I think our second conversation was all about recommending our favorite books and authors to each  other. 

Except for today there hasn’t been a day since we ‘met’ that we haven’t had an ongoing Messenger conversation, and I suppose there is still time.  I’ve been out in my garden all day, and I bet she has been in hers too.

She’s into research and has sent me numerous links on subjects that we’ve been discussing.  She’s even researched me and knows I wrote a book and talked to Peter Mansbridge once.  The Internet never forgets a thing!

She teaches English as a second language and tends to post grammar and vocabulary advice, I tend to need grammar and vocabulary advice, so that works out nicely too. 

Ours is a friendship born in the Land of Serendipity.

It’s not that I’m likely to start gathering new friends in from the unknown because this one time worked out so well, but I have to say that this experience has been the perfect antidote to Covid isolation.  I hope she feels the same way.

 

 

 

A MASTER TASK-MASTER

My Fitbit is so proud of me!

I’m not sure when it became a thing to want to impress electronic monitoring devices, but I seem to have turned that corner.  Possibly I spend so much time alone that any ‘pat on the back’ I earn is something to celebrate, but I have to tell you when I feel that happy, prolonged buzz on my wrist and look down to see the fireworks graphics signifying 10,000 steps I know that the rest of the day is just gravy.

We didn’t start out this way.  I got my fancy watch as a Christmas present in the dead of winter when it’s not easy to come by even 3,000 steps without putting on three extra layers of clothes and braving the elements.  I found out very quickly that the company that makes Fitbit is building and marketing extensions of our consciences.  Instead of a little angel sitting on my shoulder encouraging me to do the right thing I now wear a fancy watch on my wrist that buzzes me at ten minutes to the hour to remind me to “get up out of that chair and do something”!   

It has taken on the roll of a task-master, always bossing me around.  It is amazing to me that an hour can disappear so quickly when I am engrossed in something that I am reading or writing, but I do respect its efforts to help me shape up a bit. 

During that nice spell in January/February I was making both the dog and the watch happy by getting in my 10,000 steps, but when Old Man Winter decided to double down that ground to a halt.  Then I slipped and tried to break some toes – my step count plummeted further.  Once you break your stride it’s really hard to get back to it.  My records (because, of course Fitbit keeps records!) March and most of April are dismal.

About the time my Fitbit was preparing to declare me dead spring happened.  Not that I began taking walks for walk’s sake, but there were now things to do outside.  It’s nothing for me to take three trips around the yard per day checking if any of my perennials are up yet.  We bought some beef calves to feed out over the summer and I am repeatedly invited over to the corrals to ‘see how fast they are growing’.  As well we are installing a water line from the dugout to the garden which required a couple of my afternoon’s worth of work.  Instead of forcing myself to ‘one more mile’ to earn my 10,000 steps fireworks I was being pleasantly surprised with that reward while setting the supper table.

The warmer it got the more time I spent outside.  I put some early potatoes in.  I cleaned up my flower beds.  I moved my seedlings out to my greenhouse, and then back in, and then out, and then back in – and so it went until my heaters could handle the few degrees of frost we were still getting.  I planted a few more things and inherited the evening chores because the man is gone seeding till after dark.  Every day my Fitbit fireworks happened earlier.

On the weekend I planted all the rest of my vegetable garden – fireworks by 3:30.

On Tuesday I hauled (what seems like 14 miles of) garden hose out of storage with the help of four year old feeders who thought I was there to give them chop, and unspooled said hose to set up a watering system – fireworks at 2:15.

Thursday I watered all my perennials and then filled all of my deck planters – fireworks at 12:28.

I have to put bedding plants out in three different gardens next.  There’s no telling when fireworks time will be.

But, to put this all in perspective, I have to give credit where credit is due – if that crazy man’s alarm clock didn’t go off at 5:00 a.m. none of this would be possible.  He’s the master task master. 

 

COVID COPING SKILLS

Back in the ancient past – you know, pre Covid – when we took everything for granted, I was a different person.

For starters I was 15 pounds skinnier.  Well, if I’m being honest here, ‘skinnier’ is a misleading word to use.  There have been a few short windows in my life where ‘skinny’ might have applied - 1980 for instance, but you know what I mean – this sitting around with nothing to do but bake has not been a good thing.  I try to look on the bright side: it’s made me a more cuddly Grandma.  On the downside it’s not healthy, super cuddly Grandmas probably have a shorter shelf life.

On the plus side, my bank account has gained weight as well.  The fuel bill is a shadow of what it was pre Covid and my car still doesn’t need a second oil change in over 15 months.  Add to those savings the other expenses we haven’t incurred ... restaurant meals on our way to and from destinations we never went to, things we would have bought when we were there, and our usual DQ indulgence we treat ourselves with on the way home.

I won’t even mention the tropical beach holiday that we were due this past winter.

I’ve always considered myself comfortable with my own solitude, but I now realize there is a limit to this.  There are folks who have to be around others all the time.  They thrive in bustling crowds and seek company and companionship constantly.  This was not me until about halfway through 2020. I revelled in the peace and quiet of my yard and gardens and enjoyed books and listening to music in my very own TV room.  I could spend countless hours typing away on my computer, lost in time.  Then Covid restrictions told me that this is what I had to do.  Apparently when it is my idea it is okay, when it is someone else’s rule it begins to feel like a prison.

We developed mild paranoia over which items might disappear from store shelves.  At the height of the toilet paper insanity I took a long hard look at what my pantry needed.  I went on to buy flour and yeast before that crisis hit, and plant a huge garden.  We still have carrots and potatoes in the cold room and the frozen fruits and vegetables will last us until this year’s crop is ready to pick.  I don’t know which is better – the fact that we were self sufficient or that it gave me something to do all summer. 

 We are an adaptable lot though.  Throughout this past year we have been educated in things we never saw coming.  Thankfully my age let me off the home schooling hook, but I heard lots about it.  The second bout of it went much smoother because of the experience gained by the first time ... and it was only two weeks long like they promised!

I have a couple new talents I never dreamed would be a thing before Covid.  At the beginning of mandatory masks I had trouble figuring out who people were with only half their face showing.  Not any more!  There must be part of our brains that likes to ‘fill in the blank’ and this Covid time has given it the exercise it needed to develop its world class face recognition software.  Now, if I was any good at remembering people’s names I would be unstoppable!

I have also been transformed from someone who doesn’t care to go shopping to someone who just wants to wander through a mall and buy stuff ... like for a whole darned day!  Maybe two!  Partly because after a year of buying nothing but groceries I am down to my last two pair of socks and have been wearing sweat pants all winter because they are so , ahem, comfortable, and partly because I JUST WANT TO GO SOMEWHERE!!!!!

But if I think I’ve progressed, the other half of this dynamic duo has taken a giant step forward.  I admit the ground work has been laid over the past decade: he can handle a cell phone, he texts, and he knows his way around Pintrest and Google.  Last night was a whole new ball game though.  He decided he wanted to watch Battlebots with all four Canadian grandsons at the same time.  He knew he needed a Zoom meeting for that ... and he knew the right people to get it done.  His daughter had to set up the meeting and his wife had to log him on, but it was his idea.  He gets full Grandpa points for that one.

 It makes me wonder what else there is to learn out there if this lasts much longer.  That’s not a challenge, mind you.  I don’t actually need to know.

 

FUNNY: NOT FUNNY

Hear ye!  Hear ye!  I will now call this assembly to order.  Please be seated, there is much to discuss.

So, Howard, would you like to set up your flip charts and show us what the numbers are today?  No?  What’s that you say?  You’ve had to order larger charts because the numbers are too big to fit on the old ones?  Can you see about borrowing some from the finance department?  They’ve got some that can handle up into the trillions.  God help us if we go over that.

Okay, Geraldine, while we wait for Howard to work that out, could you explain what you are doing?  Measuring the room?  What on Earth for?  What do you mean there are too many people per square foot?  It was the biggest room we could get.  Would you rather meet out in the open?

No!  No!  No!  I didn’t mean that we would try an outside meeting!  Settle down, I wouldn’t subject you to that.

Can we please just get on with this meeting Geraldine?  Everyone is wearing a mask and was hosed down with sanitizer as they walked through the door.  That should do the trick.

Who is next?  Floyd?  Do you want to speak on the state of small businesses?  Ha Ha, very funny.  No one actually wants to speak on this topic, but it is your department.  It’s why you’re at this meeting.  No, no, go ahead, take some antacid.  How many ulcers are you up to now?  My doctor just spotted another one for me the other day, and he says the trembling isn’t Parkinson’s.  Just a nervous tick; probably go away in a year or two.

Mabel?  How about you?  How is the restaurant industry doing?  Awe!  Please don’t start crying.  There there!  Can someone give Mabel a hug?  A virtual hug, mind you!  Keep your distance everyone!  Mabel, I know this snowstorm isn’t your fault.  Everyone was just getting moved out to their summer patio space and feeling good about this one small thing and then winter came back.  We can’t be blamed for the weather too!

What’s that you say Frank?  We can?  Says who?  Right wing media?  Conspiracy theorists? Ah!  Of course.  Never mind Mabel, sit down and compose yourself.  We’ll come back to you.

Has anyone seen Howard?  He was just about ready and then got a whole new download of numbers?  Poor guy.  Personally, I don’t know how he keeps them all straight.  I’ve seen so many numbers over the past year they have lost their meaning.  Statisticians sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown comics ... whah whah whah ...

How about someone from the medical community?  Oh, I see.  They drew straws to see who got to attend this meeting and the guy who won is curled up in the corner fast asleep.  Probably the first sound sleep he’s had in days.  No just let him rest, we all know how bad it is over there.

I’m sorry people.  I know this is hard.  It’s not like we knew what we were getting into when we signed up for this government gig.  Anyone who thought it was just going to be an ego trip has had that bubble burst, and the rest of us who felt that we had something to give to our constituents are beginning to think there is probably a clause that says “every single decision you make will be wrong” in tiny print at the bottom of our contract.

The thing is it doesn’t matter what people say, this isn’t over yet.  We are close.  We are rolling out the vaccinations as fast as we get them, aren’t we Sally?  Oh, by the way, has anyone got any ideas on how we can motivate more people to get vaccinated?  This business of individual rights putting the overall public at risk can be so frustrating!  Yes, yes, I know ... that’s not our call.

Oh well, we may as well get to the reason for this meeting.  We all know how bad it is out there.  We know people will be angry about what has to come next ... well, except for those who have lost someone to this virus.  It’s such irony that the number of deceased is both too high because of the loss, and too low to impress the healthy and unaffected at the same time.  We will have to forge ahead with what we think is the best course of action.

Please don’t start crying again Mabel.  We’ll get through this.

The vote was taken last night and it has been decided that it is best to leave the rest of the school year in distance learning mode.

I know that there are at least 101 things wrong with this plan.  We can only hope that there are 102 things right.

We have arranged for Sasktel to announce they will be dropping data charges until end of June.  It’s kind of like putting lipstick on a pig, but it’s the best we can do.

 

A TAD BREEZY

I’ve stuck my nose outside a couple times today – my weather app is correct; it’s a tad breezy out there.

I had plans (note the past tense).

Good old March – the old lamb/lion or lion/lamb month is going to live up to its reputation in 2021.  It started off pretty chilly, yet quiet, but now as the end of the month nears those in the business of weather predictions are warning us to anchor our outdoor possessions if we ever want to see them again.  Apparently things are going to get ‘blustery’ tomorrow – you know, as opposed to the light breeze we are experiencing today?  It’s hardly windy at all today.

I had thought I was going to go out to do some yard clean up this afternoon and enjoy the warm sunshine on my shoulders.  Turns out the cat might be right – sunbeams are better enjoyed on the couch.

There’s an old story about Saskatchewan’s constant state of windiness.  Something to do with us being sandwiched between two provinces that either ‘suck’ or ‘blow’.  Not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings I won’t say which is which but our predominate wind direction is west to east so you can work it out for yourself.  Our personal claim to fame is being the straight-sided ‘Gap’ province in the middle – you know; flat and boring, nothing tall enough to slow the wind down. 

It’s an inside, middle of Canada kind of joke.

So, so much for raking and cleaning up the straw we used for insulating the well and covering the roses last winter; that will wait for a calmer day.  The same goes for cleaning up the deadfall branches in the tree shelterbelt – no point in doing a half a job.  With at least 24 hours of promised gusts up to 85kph my guess is there will be more to pick up by Wednesday.

It’s a pity to waste these lovely temperatures though.  This would be the perfect Sunday afternoon to enjoy a socially distanced outdoor glass of wine with my neighbour on the deck, but today there’s no blaming Alberta for this gentle zephyr we are experiencing, this one is compliments of North Dakota and our deck faces south.  Another plan that won’t happen today.

As per usual, we are being warned to put things away or tie them down.  I have only two things out on my front lawn – the two Christmas deer that are mere wire frames which the wind will blow right through and are never-the-less still anchored into frozen lawn.  I’m more concerned about our big old trampoline/wind sail that likes to flutter threateningly in front of the picture window when there’s a big blow.  Unfortunately it has melted free of its icy winter tether.  It has only actually taken flight once and no one was here to see it, but the fact that our chimney bricks were scattered across the back yard and the trampoline was in a heap in the trees kind of told the story.  As a trampoline is hard to ‘put away’ I will just cross my fingers and hope for the best.

The only other outdoor plan I had for the day was to barbeque steaks for supper.  The ‘breeze’ has gone down a smidge as it prepares to change directions and ramp up for tomorrow’s gale so there is a possibility I will manage to get the fire lit. 

It will be nice if at least one thing goes according to plan.

 

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR CAN MAKE

Apparently this time last year was our last normal week, and it was totally wasted on us because we were oblivious.  You know, just drifting along thinking that life was dull and boring ... and maybe we should look into a week on a beach in Mexico to liven things up a bit.

Ah, those were the days!  There’s nothing like a twelve month dose of house bound and constrained to make dull and boring look good.

Wide eyed and innocent we heard our government officials say words like ‘pandemic’, ‘shelter in place’, ‘lockdown’ and ‘quarantine’ – strange, alien terms that couldn’t possibly apply to regular folks like us.  Only, of course, they did.  Apparently that’s how pandemics work.

Borders were slamming shut faster than windows in a rainstorm.  So much for a trip to Mexico!  And all those snowbirds - high tailing it north as fast as they could get there, sanitizing every gas pump and door handle they came in contact with all the way home.

They were better off than the poor people on cruise ships, floating Petri dishes of infection turned away from port after port, thinking they would never get home.

I will confess here, I was busy getting my kitchen renovated and wasn’t paying a lot of attention to what was going on.  It all seemed so far-fetched and surreal until the day my daughter called me, panic in her voice “They’re closing the schools on Friday!  The kids might be home for six weeks!  What am I going to do?!”

Six weeks.  How quaint was that?

And then we were into the thick of things. 

Toilet paper; remember the toilet paper insanity? And the worldwide shortage of yeast?  And everyone who had a square foot of dirt deciding to plant a garden? And the mask/anti-mask fiasco that still rages on?

As time went by our vocabularies were stretched too.  Not so much by new words but by new meanings for old words.  Remember when ‘bubble’ meant something that expanded and contracted out of a toddler’s nose while you went to find a Kleenex?  Now we live in them, with our closest friends and family – but not too many.  The only good bubble is a small bubble.

Who, outside the medical profession, knew what PPE stood for before 2020?

And remember when ‘remote learning’ was flipping between two documentaries on TV?

In the beginning we watched the provincial health updates in a kind of competition to see if our province could claim the lowest case numbers.  As time wore on we watched in horror as the numbers kept climbing – didn’t people understand what social distancing meant?  It’s a giant game of Keep Away!  The winners don’t get sick!  If we play it right only the virus dies!  If we didn’t know how to read a graph before, we sure do now. 

A ‘next wave’ isn’t something a surfer looks forward to at the beach.  ‘Zoom’ isn’t the sound a car makes when it goes by real fast.  ‘Mandate’ isn’t meeting your boyfriend for dinner and a movie.  And the designation ‘essential workers’ covers so much more than the medical and policing professions – apparently grocery store workers and meat packing plant workers are kind of important too ... along with the bus drivers who get them to work.  It’s been a steep learning curve.

So, here we are in 2021, and although there were days it felt like we were stuck here forever, the light at the end of our tunnel is getting brighter each day.  I can only imagine what it was like for our grandparents living through the Spanish ‘Flu epidemic of 1918, but because of what they learned then and how that science has been taken seriously and carried forward, researchers were ready with vaccine experience that only needed to be tweaked for this particular virus when it inevitably popped up.  As much fun as this has been, it could have been so much worse.

We began 2020 oblivious to how our world would wobble off our comfortable old normal.

2021 finds us on the cusp of freedom to roam as we please.

May 2022 be the year that we move past wanting to punch anyone who uses the term “our new normal”.

 

THE GREAT AWAKENING

These past few days I’ve been experiencing the subtle yet irresistible feeling of awakening.  It probably has something to do with going from 50 below zero to watching the snow melt off the deck, but I think it’s more than that.  The news programs are shifting their reporting from the number of cases and deaths caused by Covid to the number of vaccinations accomplished: it feels like we are putting two winters behind us at once.

As is always the case, I am fighting the urge to plant seeds because I know it’s too early and my house will look like a jungle long before I can move those spindly plants out to my greenhouse.  Mother Nature doesn’t germinate anything for weeks to come so I would be wise to hold off a little longer.  The urge to see life and the colour green is strong, though.  I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.

Also, the load of laundry with sheets and towels in it almost made it to the clothes line on Monday.  I long for the heavenly scent of fresh air to fall asleep in, but common sense won out – they would have needed finishing up in the dryer anyway.  But soon, very soon!

I swear I saw a gopher run across the road on my way home from town yesterday.

All the dog bones and deer hides are resurfacing in the front yard as the snow recedes ... and I actually look forward to going out and cleaning up that mess because it means something to do outside.

And, the anticipation to sleep with the bedroom window open is powerful.  This privilege is the counter balance of my loving spouse insisting on flannel sheets during the winter months.  In retrospect I can see there are certain things that should be carefully negotiated into a prenuptial agreement.

All of these things are the annual harbingers of the season of spring that everyone in the Northern hemisphere rejoices in by mid February.  The end of Covid winter is so much more magnificent.

Yesterday I received a phone call from Sask Health to set up an appointment for my 100 year old mother-in-law to get her vaccination.  Although I had been waiting for this to happen, even expecting it to happen, when the call finally came it felt a little like being told she had won a lottery.  It was exciting news.  I drove to town specifically to tell her, partly because she doesn’t hear well over the phone, but also because it seemed like a celebration was in order.  The news was bigger than just her appointment, it signalled that we are moving past the front line workers and into the general population – Covid spring was on its way!

On the horizon is the precious treat of just dropping in on a friend for coffee – in their own kitchen, the more the merrier.  Soon we will be able to converse with random folks anywhere and everywhere without spending the first five minutes trying to picture the bottom half of their face so we know who we are talking to.  Just think of how much fun it’s going to be to go to in-person auction sales and ball games and dance recitals and community fund raisers.  Won’t it be nice not to have to limit who can pay their respects at funerals, or who can come to Christmas dinner?

I have a friend who lives in Manitoba.  We normally get together for lunch, laughter and a girl talk therapy session a couple times a year.  Obviously it has been forever since this has happened – never was the need for this kind of therapy been greater, or more ill advised.  Our next lunch is liable to be an extra long one!

It hasn’t been all bad.  I have been educated in the ways of Zoom meetings and all this isolation time has me writing more.  We have saved all kinds of money – our fuel bill is way down because we don’t go anywhere, our vacation fund is untouched, and I haven’t gone shopping in over a year. 

I know that the time line for putting our masks away is not a short one, and with the new variants popping up there may be some adjustments to make, but we are on the right path. 

In some ways we are kinda back to normal – aren’t we all watching curling like good little Canadians?  Maybe by this time next year we can do it the way we like to ... in person.  Or even better – on a tv set in Arizona.