Dancing In Irreverence

58: Fall Plans

I checked in on what I had posted in my last update to see if it would spark any ideas for today and it turns out I had predicted that I would write about my fall goals. I forgot I said that, but that certainly makes it easier to come up with something.

I actually wrote a whole post last week about finishing this year’s Reading Challenge and my reading habits over the last few years, but it was so boring that I decided not to publish it. Just trust me, it was very dull.

So, fall is here now! I’ve started my first knitting project – I decided to unravel (or ‘frog’ in knitting terms) the complicated cable knit sweater I made for Michel five years ago. It turned out quite beautifully but it never fit right and I wasn’t happy with some aspects of the design so it has pretty much been sitting in the closet since then. It’s great yarn though, so I am going to use it to make the men’s version of the Oxbow Cardigan, which is my favourite sweater that I’ve knit and a very wearable design too. (I included that sweater in my 2020 Highlights post.) I have about 6” of the first sleeve done so far.

After that, I might make myself a Flamingo Pink sweater because I bought some fun clearance yarn online last week. I don’t normally wear a lot of bright pink, but there’s no time like the present to start.

Another thing I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks is something called Morning Pages. It’s an exercise from a book called The Artist’s Way and essentially it’s just a brain dump. When you wake up in the morning, the first thing you do is grab your book and write 3 pages of whatever comes to mind, as a way of ‘silencing your inner critic’ and just creating in the present regardless of what the end product is.

You’re not supposed to let anyone read it, and you aren’t even supposed to reread it yourself, which is good because my hand writing has gotten really bad, especially first thing in the morning. It is, even to me, illegible but that is fine for the purposes of this exercise so I don’t worry about it.

Along with 13 weeks of reading and specific exercises, the Morning Pages are supposed to unblock your creativity; on the cover of the book it calls it “A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self”. I don’t know if I’m blocked or not but I figure it can’t hurt to give it a try. So far I don’t really have anything to report back, but I’m keeping at it.

I also have a few things on my fall list that I’m kind of sceptical that I will actually do, but I put them down anyway:

Lunchtime walks – I’ve been meaning to get out more for the entire last year that I’ve been working from home but it never happens. I am way more inclined to just work through lunch so I can be done earlier, but I am hoping I will come upon some motivating tool that will change this
Permaculture course – I signed up for some free online classes a few months ago and almost immediately abandoned them; I do still want to take them but I don’t know if fall/ winter will be the best time to get started again. Once I’m done with The Artist’s Way I will give it a try and see if it sticks this time; if not, I will wait until spring
House Deficiency List! –Haha, it’s the list that never goes away. We have made progress though and we’re prepared to commit a few hours each weekend to getting some things done so let’s hope this is it.

I have way more things on my list that those mentioned above, but mostly they’re just things that I am interested in spending some time on, or trying out, and the list is more of a reminder of what they all are rather than a checklist. The problem with that is that I keep thinking of new things to add to the list so it just gets longer and longer. Or maybe that isn’t a problem, I don’t know.

After just over a year since our last getaway, we are heading back over to the Island next weekend. This time we’re going to stay in Victoria and the main purpose of the trip is visiting with our friends. We had hoped for some dancing options when we were initially planning the trip, but that is still off the table so we will just have to do non-dancey things instead.

I can’t remember the last time I spent a few days in Victoria without having another agenda (dance workshops, work, etc.) so it will be fun to go there just as tourists. There are tons of options and we’re just figuring out a plan right now, which means that I have a ready to go topic for my next post after we get back.

57: Summer Musings

It’s been just about a full year since I had to end my (involuntary) trial retirement and (involuntarily) start working again. I can’t decide if it seems like more or less time than that because the past year has contained a sense of impermanence that I can’t quite explain.

I don’t know exactly what’s causing this feeling but I would guess it’s a combination of things:

First, the world is still in a state of chaos and things are changing all the time. You never know from one day to the next how, or if, it will affect your daily life so you have to just roll with the punches. Don’t get too set on any future plans because nothing is guaranteed. I know this can actually be a pretty good way to live, in general, but I do like planning things so that part is kind of a downer.

At this point, I don’t know if there will be a definitive end to the pandemic like I was expecting earlier on (even as recently as this spring when they announced the Restart Plan) but the feeling of waiting for things to get back to some kind of normal is still hanging on anyway.

Second, I think I was so spoiled by my trial retirement that I’ve never really accepted that having to work is my ‘real life’. It’s just something I do each week for 4 days. Again, I don’t actually think this is a bad outlook, it’s quite freeing in a way.

Since I started working again it has been consistently busy, like crazy busy, because of the real estate boom. Had I remained working in the office, I think I might have lost my mind by now, but because I’m at home and I am mostly able to work independently and without distractions, it’s actually been pretty good. Having a lot to do makes the days go by quickly and before I know it I can get back to my real life.

As a side note, I keep seeing articles about how working from home is causing people to work longer hours and feel like they have to be available all the time. I am not having this problem at all. Here is the solution: At the end of the work day, shut your computer down. If your work phone rings, ignore it. (I know, I know! Not everyone can just walk away like that; maybe they have more important jobs than I do, or perhaps a skewed view of how important their work is, but this is what works for me.)

During my work days, I am available, responsive, organized and professional. I do quality work and I get a ton of shit done. In my free time, I forget about all of it.

This summer we’ve been taking advantage of the option to go dancing outdoors every week and we meet up with friends for patio visits and outdoor dinners most weekends. Realistically, there isn’t a whole lot more I actually want to do with my time anyway (besides be able to go to live music events and well-attended dances where I don’t have to worry about if the person I’m dancing with has been behaving reasonably in their daily life or if they’re a ticking time bomb of germs that’s going to help get the whole province shut down again any day now.)

But I think we all feel, on some level, like this new social era might be temporary due to weather and the possibility of upcoming gathering restrictions, so it’s especially important to make the most of it while we can.

I do enjoy spending time at home too though. If we have another fall and winter of forced confinement, I am already mentally prepared for it. I think.

I can practically guarantee that my next post will be a big list of things I plan to do this fall, because that’s what the beginning of fall always brings and I love it.

…

Update on the summer bedroom we started last month:

It’s almost done, just like summer. We have a weekend or two of finishing left to do, and then we need to find a bed to put down there.

56: Phase 3

Oops, I guess I kind of forgot I had a blog for a while there, but I’m back now. This will be another general update post because that’s all I’ve got.

Since my last post, BC has entered ‘Phase 3’ of the Restart Plan and, unrelated to that, we had a crazy heat wave.

I am now fully vaccinated and with Phase 3 they have lifted the mask mandate and eased a lot of restrictions on gatherings. Generally, this hasn’t really had too much of an impact on my life. We are still meeting up with friends outdoors and in small groups, we still wear masks indoors in public places and we haven’t returned to eating in restaurants regularly.

Why? Well, on the first point, it is summer and we just put a patio in our backyard so the outdoor get-togethers are a no-brainer.

Mask-wearing is just doing our part to keep things trending in the right direction. I’m not bothered by wearing a mask and I feel it is a visual signifier that I am part of a community and I want to do what is recommended to keep everyone safe. Even though the mask mandate has been lifted for a few weeks now, I still see the majority of the people at the grocery store wearing masks and I am glad that so many people are willing to do their part to get things back to normal.

As for eating in restaurants, we just haven’t really missed doing that. I can see us going out occasionally in the future, but there’s nowhere I’m desperate to go any time soon.

The one exciting exception to our usual small group gatherings is the return of outdoor dancing! Last Thursday was the first “Swing Dancing at Showboat” and it was fantastic. This event is not an official dance; it’s just an informal gathering on Thursday nights during the summer months. Of course, during the summer of 2020 there were no dances at all, so it was kind of a significant progress marker that it could start taking place again.

Being the first gathering after almost two years, it was a bit complicated for a lot of people, but I think overall our community is very respectful of other peoples’ comfort levels. Quite a few people attended just to visit and see some people in person again, some people danced only with select partners and/or chose to keep their masks on, and some people just jumped right back in.

We went again this week (last night) and the crowd had grown, as vaccination numbers increased and also people had seen photos from the week before and were drawn out by the magic of it all. It really is magical. Dancing at the Showboat has always been magical, but after such a long absence it definitely feels more so. I have a feeling that it will soon become a bit too well-attended though, being the only dance option available.

In other ‘getting back to normal’ news, I had a dentist appointment this morning and a haircut this afternoon. Both things I haven’t done in almost 2 years. It’s been kind of convenient having hair long enough to just stick in a messy bun, but now that it’s summer, it’s time to chop it off.

And speaking of hot weather: The heat wave. It was over 40⁰C here and I don’t know if that has ever happened. It was terrible and worrisome.

It has been bad enough the last few years having to deal with forest fire smoke for weeks on end and I definitely did not need a heat wave to understand that we need to be taking action on climate change, but maybe it helped some people see the light. I hope it did anyway.

In our case, it prompted us to start finishing off a section of our basement to build what we’re calling a ‘summer bedroom’. Generally our house doesn’t get too hot, but if we’re going to continue having extreme heat like this, we need somewhere cooler to sleep and for Gilly to hang out. She’s going to be very excited when she finds out we have a basement. She’s always suspected it was there but has never been allowed to explore.

The downside of this new project is that it puts the garage renovation on hold, and I think I mentioned in my last post that the garage renovation has already put all our other projects on hold, so the deficiency list that we were trying to finish up this year is quickly moving down the priority list. At some point it will all be done though, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

55: June Update

It’s June! Almost halfway through 2021, so what have I been doing with my time? Here’s an update:

I finished the Indigenous Canada course I was taking online, and have been working on learning more about the history of my own ancestors, as well as the Indigenous history of BC specifically. (As a side note, the enrolment in this course has increased significantly in the past couple of weeks since they discovered the remains of the 215 Indigenous children at the residential school site in Kamloops . I think a lot of people had no idea that Canada has such a terrible history and very recent past, so it is really helpful that this course is a free and convenient way to start educating yourself.)

I signed up for a free trial on Ancestry.com and traced each branch of my family back to when they arrived in Canada as settlers. I am not good with remembering dates and what significant events relate to those times in history, so I still have a lot to look into, but at least I have a framework now for approximate years and where they all came from.

I also took a primer course in Permaculture. It was just a basic overview of what Permaculture is and I found it really fascinating. There are a lot of free online courses available on this topic and I am planning to learn more, but I am not currently in the middle of any of them.

In related news, we have a few food items planted in our garden now: raspberries, haskap berries, garlic, arugula and rhubarb. It’s a small step towards a ‘food forest’ but it’s still exciting. The front garden is starting to look quite established, and we added our butterfly garden on the boulevard, as our contribution to the neighbourhood initiative I mentioned in my last post. The backyard, aside from the patio we put in, is still pretty wild, but it’s good for pollinators, so even if it looks like a disaster, it’s doing necessary work.

Our house deficiency list is a lot shorter than it was. We finished the kitchen ceiling and put in lighting over the island, which is a huge improvement from the unpainted mess with a light bulb dangling from the middle that was there before.

We have mostly stalled out on the list though as we’ve been focusing on the outside lately, but the leftover bits are nothing major and I am not going to forget about them. If I paint a section of trim every few weeks at least I am making progress.

We had a week off in May and we mostly used it to work on our garage. My dream is to turn it into a studio space and I’ve been saving all my money to make it happen. On our vacation, we replaced the roof! The old roof was in terrible shape but was somehow not leaking; we discovered this was most likely because the shingles that were in really bad shape were over a layer that wasn’t too damaged, over plywood, over cedar shingles…

We took off the top two layers of shingles and replaced any plywood that was rotten and then installed the new roof, plus two skylights! It was a very satisfying project and turned out surprisingly well considering we had never done any roofing and were just learning by reading the instructions on our products and watching Youtube videos.

May be an image of tree and outdoors — New roof, old everything else.

During our week off, we also did some “fun” stuff. (I put that in quotation marks because the fun stuff pales in comparison to the satisfaction of getting that roof done by the end of the week.)

We went out for our first breakfast at Angelina’s since the pandemic started. We had tried picking up take-out from there once, but breakfast food just doesn’t travel well and it’s not the same as sitting in and enjoying a coffee and a good hot meal.

We also went downtown to the Van Gogh Experience. I learned some things I didn’t know, and it was something different to do after over a year of not going places, but I didn’t think the exhibit itself was all that spectacular. Riding the Skytrain and walking around downtown Vancouver after such a long time was probably more interesting than the actual show.

We’ve met up with a few long lost friends on our patio over the last couple of months and with summer coming and both of us close to being fully vaccinated, it seems like an increase in social interaction is within reach. I don’t miss big parties but I do look forward to being able to get together with small groups again.

54: Community

In the last year and a bit, I’ve mostly been sticking close to home. I’ve probably gone into Vancouver (which is about 25 minutes away) less than 10 times since the pandemic started.

Without having any events to go to, and not being allowed to meet up with groups of people, there have rarely been occasions when I had any reason to travel much farther than over the border of New West into Burnaby or Coquitlam.

And you know what? It’s been pretty great. I feel like I’ve gotten to know a lot more about my community and it is wonderful.

I know I’ve mentioned our local “Share” group a time or two (that’s New West’s version of a Buy Nothing group), which never fails to fill me with joy. My favourite aspect of the group is the satisfying environmentally-friendly benefits of redistributing things that people don’t want to the people that do want/ need them, without any new items being purchased. It’s almost a zero footprint transaction. (A lot of the pick-ups involve a short drive, so not quite zero.)

Just last night I gave away a can of grey paint that I wasn’t going to use and arranged to pick up a pizza cutter from someone else because we’ve started making pizza at home and it turns out, as much as I like to avoid collecting kitchen gadgets that only have one specific purpose, it would actually be pretty handy to have a proper pizza cutter.

For the last few months I have been going on weekly walks with a friend that lives nearby. Within about a half hour radius of our homes, we can walk to a ravine, two different rivers, numerous parks and (my favourite) through neighbourhoods made up of a wide variety of old houses. Especially now that it’s spring, I also love looking at people’s gardens and yards for ideas. Just like the houses, there’s a wide variety of interesting ideas to check out.

Another occasional aspect of the walks is picking up delicious treats from local entrepreneurs. We have a professional pastry chef up the hill that sells fancy donuts on the weekends, as well as a backyard farmer and caterer that has recently started making hot pretzels. (All pre-ordered and scheduled pick-ups for COVID safety.) This kind of defeats the health benefit of walking, but you could also look at it as offsetting the calories of the treats, so that’s how we’re framing it.

On my own street, some kids applied for and received a Community Grant to make butterfly gardens around the neighbourhood. I got a cute flyer in my mailbox last week with information about how to be involved. We had already been planning to remove the grass on our boulevard and replace it with a lawn alternative mix of wildflowers, so we’re hoping that counts as part of the group project. Just waiting for our seeds to arrive!

Last weekend we installed a patio in our backyard made of reclaimed bricks that used to be our neighbour’s chimney. It’s not quite finished yet, but I’m really looking forward to being able to invite people over for backyard visits.

Side note: We started digging out the area for the patio last fall and as a place to move some of the soil, we built a couple of large planter boxes out of 100-year-old wood that we’d saved from our basement reno.

We put them in the side yard and noticed last week that they had some crazy mushrooms growing in them. Michel guessed that they were morels, which are “prized by gourmet cooks” (Wikipedia), but we didn’t know for sure.

We’ve only just started eating regular grocery store mushrooms in the last little while, so we weren’t ready to try anything weird and fancy, but it turns out one of our neighbours is a mycophile and he came over with his special mesh bags and harvested the good ones.

In exchange, he gave us a bag of coffee that he’d roasted himself and I am looking very forward to trying it this weekend. I feel like I’m just surrounded by interesting people lately – has it always been this way and I’ve just started to notice?

But back to the backyard: Aside from the patio, I think I’m going to have big plans for the rest of the space, I just don’t know what they are yet.

For the last few weeks I have been doing an intro course on Permaculture and it is so fascinating. Definitely something I want to look into further. At this point, I really only have the most basic idea of what permaculture even is, but it really appeals to me in a bunch of different ways.

If you’ve never heard of permaculture, the definition on Wikipedia says:

Permaculture is an approach to land management and philosophy that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole systems thinking. It uses these principles in fields such as regenerative agriculture, rewilding, and community resilience.

Some of the key things that interest me about it are that it can be done on a small scale (such as in a backyard) and still work as a system, and that it relies on design principles. I love relying on design principles!

More about this later, I’m sure.

53: Best Books of 2021 (Part 1)

I usually post a ‘best books of the year’ post in December, and while my sense of time has been pretty off lately, I do realize it’s only April. I’m posting this anyway, because I’ve already read some really good stuff this year, and hopefully will read a lot more, so by the end of the year it will be too much for just one post.

Plus, I like to share the good ones while they’re still kind of current in my mind. If anyone reads one of these books on my recommendation, I’d love to hear what you think! (And yes, listening to the audiobook counts.)

As usual, these are the books that I gave 5 star ratings to in my Goodreads account:

Glass Houses by Louise Penny

I actually read this in 2020, but it was after I’d already written my best books of the year post. I’ve read 15 of the 16 the books in the Chief Inspector Gamache series now, and it seems like I end up with about one a year that stands out above the others. Most of the rest are still pretty good, and there are a few less inspired ones, but I like this series as a go-to ‘easy read’ when I just want something to entertain me.

If you’ve never read any of these books, you might as well start from the first one. They can each be read alone, but there are ongoing storylines that continue from one book to the next, as well.

They take place in a small town in Quebec, and there are lots of murders, but also lots of descriptions of delicious baked goods. The other ongoing theme seems to be extreme weather, but I guess that’s more of a thing back east than it is here, so it just makes sense.

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

If you like gay teen rom-coms then this is the book for you. It has everything: awkward email exchanges, moody best friends and even a high school musical. The title is pretty dumb, in my opinion, but it was a very enjoyable and engaging story with likeable characters and I was sad when I finished it – until I found out that it was made into a movie (called Love, Simon) a couple of years ago and that there are at least 2 or 3 more books about these same characters, so I still have lots to look forward to.

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

I read 6 other books in between this one and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, and this still ended up being my next 5 star read. This book comes after the first one, and while a few of the characters do overlap, it’s not a sequel. As much as I enjoyed following Simon’s story, I found this one a lot more relatable. The main character is Molly, who is an awkward (straight) teen with anxiety. She’s had 26 crushes but no boyfriends and now she’s feeling left behind by her twin sister who has just entered into her first real relationship.

Again, the characters are enjoyable and entertaining and I was immediately invested in their lives. I did have to look up some slang that I wasn’t familiar with, but that’s because I’m a 40-something reading about 17-year-olds.

Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

I decided I wanted to read this book purely based on the title, and it exceeded my expectations. It’s written by a social psychologist and it is a really interesting look at the way society has taught us that our worth or value is based on how productive and good at things we are.

It has so much information, and it covers a lot of different aspects of this problem, including the actual need for downtime and idleness in order to function well and be at our best, creatively and mentally.

I am barely scraping the surface of this book, but I think everyone should read it. Also, it is filled with personal stories and examples from people the author knows, so it’s not just dry psychological mumbo jumbo, it is very readable and enjoyable, plus eye-opening and inspiring. Put your library copy on hold today!

Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Pérez

Here is another non-fiction one that everyone should read, most especially the people that would look at it and think they don’t need to read it. This one is also eye-opening, but more than that, it’s infuriating. Sometimes you need to read stuff that doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy though, because you want to be an informed member of society.

This book looks at all different areas of life, from the obvious stuff like workplace policies and career paths, to things I’d never thought about, like snow-clearing routes and safety gear, and provides research-based information on how biases have been built into every aspect of society by treating women as ‘the other’ and men as the default, even though women make up half (or more) of the people on the planet.

Again, this one has a ton of information, but it’s laid out in an easy to get through format and is well-written and even humourous. You may have to put it down at some points, not because it’s dry but because you need to calm yourself and meditate for a few minutes so you don’t accidentally run outside to start burning things down.

52: March Madness

This week marks the one year anniversary of living in a pandemic, for me. It probably varies slightly for everyone, but this was the week last year that I packed up my computer to work from home, and then was almost immediately laid off for almost 6 months.

Right from the beginning it was being said that this could last a year or more, but it was hard to imagine at the time. Even now it doesn’t really feel like how a whole year of something should, but I’ve noticed as we’re starting to see an end in sight that a lot of people are talking about the positive changes the pandemic has brought and what things they hope will not go back to ‘normal’.

It reminds me of this quote (and image) that I saved years ago because it spoke so clearly to me about how messed up our priorities had become:

Coincidentally, this week also happens to be the 4 year anniversary of when I read the book Early Retirement Extreme and realized there were actual steps I could take that would help me to completely escape from this situation much sooner than I had thought possible. More importantly, there were changes I could immediately make to start improving my work-life balance.

(As a side note, this book is not the one I would recommend as the best way to get people motivated to live their best life. I’ve read a ton of others since that would probably be better stepping stones, but this was the extreme viewpoint that gave me the push I needed.)

I remember telling my boss and my manager at the time that I was planning to be financially independent in 5 years. My boss replied “Well, they say it’s good to speak your goals out loud.” Obviously she was just humouring me and, as it’s already been 4 years now, I can see my timeline wasn’t quite accurate, but I am definitely in a much better place now than I was then.

I left that job within a year so I could ditch the commute and change to a 4-day work week and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The other biggest improvement since then has been the shift to working from home, which brings us back to the pandemic.

I am pretty sure that flexibility about where you work from is here to stay for most of the people that have been able to do it for the last year, and I think that is a great thing. As an introvert, it has been so beneficial for me to have a quiet atmosphere to get my work done without interruption. My frustration level is way down.

In general though, it seems like people have had the downtime they needed to discern what things are actually important to them, based on which parts of regular life they really miss and which parts they’re happy to leave behind. It will be different for everyone, obviously, but that in itself is kind of the point – we don’t all have to do all the things.

Personally, while I haven’t had any big epiphanies, I have been pleased to discover that the work I’d been doing over past few years (pre-pandemic) was clearly on the right track and that I do have a pretty good idea of what I value and what I don’t.

As much as I’m trying to keep my post-pandemic expectations low, I can’t help but feel like I want to start making plans. In order to not be disappointed by possible setbacks, I just wrote down general things that I want to start doing, whenever it becomes possible to ‘do things’.

Here are the things:

Work on building the local Balboa scene by having regular practice sessions with other dancers who are interested in improving their dancing and growing the community
Attend live jazz and dance events whenever possible and work on engaging with newcomers and making the scene more inclusive and welcoming to everyone
Practice dancing in the lead role to open up my options for dance partners
Host patio parties (This one is just weather and yard work pending because we’re actually allowed to do that now!)

I made that whole list in one day, so obviously I had dancing on my mind at the time, but it’s an ongoing list and there’s still plenty of time to add to it. Making lists is one of my favourite activities, by the way.

Oh, I also bought tickets to a concert in Dublin, Ireland for May 2022, but I’m trying not to get too ahead of myself on that one.

51: February Fun

It’s almost the end of February now and I feel like things are looking up! I’m sure no small part of that is the fact that the days are getting longer and plants are starting to come alive. Even in a normal year it’s kind of exciting.

During the month of February I finished my 30 yoga challenge and haven’t done a second of yoga since then, but I do plan to do some today. I’m 2/3 of the way through my Indigenous Canada course and I’d say we’re about 60% complete on the house deficiency list, not including cleaning up the basement – I don’t count that as a deficiency because we never started working on it in the first place, it just needs to be cleaned out when we’re done with all our renovation supplies.

We had a full weekend of snow a couple of weeks ago, which was fantastic and magical, and we also celebrated the 20^th anniversary of our first date. That is totally crazy to me because 20 years seems like it should feel much longer and more significant, but it kind of feels like yesterday. (Especially right now because my memories of the last year are mostly pretty hazy, just like the (lack of) memories from that first coffee date – for the life of me I can’t remember where we went or what the area even looked like at that time; it was right around New Westminster Skytrain station which is completely different now so there’s nothing left to jog my memory.)

During that snowy anniversary weekend we also streamed a newly released video of a 3.5 hour Pearl Jam concert we attended in Seattle in 2018. Right now it’s the closest we can get to a live concert and while it’s definitely not as good from home, it was still a great way to spend the evening.

Last week I had laser eye surgery, which is kind of a big deal. I’ve worn glasses (or contacts) for about 30 years, so it’s quite amazing to wake up in the middle of the night and be able to just glance over at the clock to see what time it is. I also keep thinking about my future travel bags and how little I’m going to have to bring with me when I go places.

And speaking of that, I’m starting to get a little anxious about how quickly the US is moving with their immunizations compared to Canada right now. My greatest concern is that they’ll get themselves back to normal and Pearl Jam will reschedule their tour before all the travel restrictions between countries are lifted and I won’t be able to go. (Obviously, this concern just reeks of privilege, but it is what it is.)

As a side note, and further evidence of how high on my list of concerns Pearl Jam concerts sit: From the time Michel and I got engaged until it was too close to the wedding to be possible, my greatest wedding-related fear was that Pearl Jam would announce a tour and the dates would conflict with the wedding, forcing me to make a difficult decision about my life priorities. Luckily it didn’t come to that.

But back to feeling optimistic and inspired, I also watched an amazing documentary this month called Fantastic Fungi. It’s all about mushrooms and the role they play in ecology and how they can be used in all kinds of ways that benefit the health of humans and the environment, plus areas of research they’re being studied in for innovative purposes like green building and breaking down plastics. It actually made me feel quite hopeful about the future of the planet. Highly recommend!

Today, I might work on some of my house deficiencies, but I might also just sit around and finish reading my book. Appropriately, it’s called Laziness Does Not Exist and it’s teaching me that sitting around and finishing my book is a good use of time, not something to feel guilty about. If that isn’t enough to make you want to read it, I don’t know what is but, in general, it’s super interesting and it will probably make my list of 5 star books this year.

50: New Year

2021! For some reason I can’t get over how futuristic that sounds. So far this year has been pretty similar to most of last year though, so not very exciting. I have been trying to come up with a topic for this post for a couple of weeks and not getting anywhere. I think I’m at the point in this pandemic where I’m just drifting along until something changes.

Since Christmastime, we’ve been working slow and steady on our ‘house deficiency list’. The majority of the list is related to patching, sanding and painting trim. It’s not difficult stuff, but it’s no fun. What is fun though, is seeing rooms actually start to look finished after all this time.

At this point, I can call the front entry and spare bedroom complete. The living room is pretty close; painting windowsills is a real challenge in this house because of Gilly, but they’re getting done in bits and pieces. We’re currently working on trim and a bit of drywall in the bathroom, hallway (that designation is a bit of a stretch since it’s only about 6 feet of space, but that’s what I’m calling it) and our bedroom. Those rooms could be done in a couple of weekends and that just leaves the kitchen. If we stay on track, we should be able to finish everything by the spring, as planned.

At the beginning of January, I started a 30 day yoga challenge. I’ve decided to aim for just weekdays, so it will take me 6 weeks instead of a month, but it’s working well and I’m only one day behind my self-imposed schedule. Having the weekends available as catch up days is helpful.

I started the online Indigenous Canada course at the beginning of the year and am doing one module per week. I just finished Week 5, which was about residential schools and the intergeneration trauma they caused for Indigenous communities. The course really just skims the surface of most of the topics, but it does a good job of providing a sense of the impact of historical events and how they relate to issues of today. There’s a lot to take in.

Speaking of historical events, on January 20^th I watched the Presidential Inauguration for the first time ever. Previously I had never been invested enough in American politics to bother, but I’m really hoping that this is a turning point. Aside from the obvious change from a lunatic to a normal person, I find it hard to get enthusiastic about another old white guy in charge, but I am quite excited about there being a Madam Vice President. I found the ceremony surprisingly emotional, especially considering I don’t even live in the US. I have hope that some positive changes are happening.

Last weekend we did something a bit different: Axe Throwing. My sister had given us a gift certificate for Urban Axe Throwing for Christmas, so we booked the first activity we’ve participated in together in almost a year. I’ve been going to pottery classes, and Michel’s been going mountain biking, but other than that we’ve pretty much been at home. (I might be forgetting something, of course; it’s all becoming a bit of a blur.) Neither of us is likely to take up axe throwing as an ongoing hobby, but it was an interesting way to spend an hour.

As far as COVID-safe activities go, I would say it’s pretty good. The location is a large industrial space with lanes separated by chain link fences. Everyone wears masks and you’re limited to interacting with your own party, aside from a brief overview and demo by the staff.

After axe throwing we used the second part of our gift to go to Earl’s for an early dinner. This was our first time in a restaurant since we were on the island last fall. There was nothing wrong with the meal, but we decided we’re happy to continue getting take-out for the foreseeable future. Eating in a public place is just not the same carefree experience that it used to be, though the staff did seem like they were trying extra hard to be friendly and welcoming.

The final thing we did in January was something that has been on my to-do list for a couple of years: we made wills. We opted to do it ourselves using Willful, which is an online program. (And I now have a referral code. If you want it, let me know!) Once you fill in all the info, you have to print everything out and sign it for it to be valid. This part needs 2 witnesses, so I messaged our neighbours to ask if they would assist and as it turns out, they had made wills earlier in the year and never got around to that part, so they needed witnesses too. Perfect.

It was probably one of the stranger ‘social’ activities of the past year, but we spent an enjoyable hour under a canopy in the backyard, chatting and signing in our masks. Plus I got to check something off my list, which is always satisfying.

Now it’s February and we’re just going to keep doing as we’ve been doing. I have pretty much given up on trying to anticipate when we’ll be able to get back to a more normal social life, but I am looking forward to spring. I have a lot of garden and yard related things I want to get going on, and I am excited to start the process of turning our garage into a studio space. That will likely be a very drawn out project due to lack of funds, but it will give me time to source a lot of used and reclaimed items, which should be fun.

49: 2020 Highlights

Well, 2020 is coming to a close. It was a crazy year, for sure. I was lucky enough to be in a situation where I could remain relatively safe and not have to worry too much about staying afloat, so while it wasn’t perfect, it did have some good parts, and that’s what I’m going to round up today.

Starting in January, when things were normal and we were all going along as usual in our little lives…

Oxbow Cardigan – This is a sweater I knit for myself at the beginning of last year. It was a great pattern because it was interesting enough not to get boring, but simple enough that I didn’t need to concentrate too hard, and then the finished garment turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be. (Only a knitter would understand how rare this is, I think.) I wore it a lot while I stuck around the house this year.

February Dancing – There were a couple of really great weekends in February that each included multiple live jazz dance events. Even at the time, they seemed ridiculously good and kind of special, and now looking back through a lens of global pandemic and zero social dancing, they’ve taken on a much more epic hue.

The first one was the weekend of Balboa Saturday, which I wrote about here. The second was Leap Day weekend, which took place when there was a buzz in the air about a virus and the possibility of things being cancelled, so while we didn’t realize the scale of what was to come, maybe it made us dance a little bit harder, just in case.

Glen Hansard Instagram Live – I’ve written about Glen before, in a post about going to see him in Seattle (don’t even get me started on the hue stuff like that has taken on.) He’s always been a performer that makes you feel like you know him personally, but he took it to a whole new level by doing Instagram Live sessions during the lockdown. I spent a number of hours sitting in front of my laptop watching him sing and talk about song writing and performing and all kinds of other stuff, from his kitchen in Ireland, with thousands of other people all over the world. It was amazing and heart-warming and he almost always brought tears to my eyes at some point.

Gardening – I spent more time working on our yard this past spring and summer than I did over the entire 10 years we’ve lived here up until that point, and it was very enjoyable. It was surprisingly satisfying to see things growing and taking shape, and during a time when I was barely leaving the house, it was nice to have little chats with passing neighbours who were keeping up with my progress. I’m looking forward to getting back out there in the spring.

Frozen Bananas – I used up about 40 bananas I’d been throwing in the freezer for months/years. In my secret heart of hearts I actually thought they’d all end up in the compost after a period of purgatory in the freezer, but they were redeemed and turned into delicious banana bread. Amazing!

Pottery – This was not something I had plans to try this year, but I’m glad I did. Since my first class back in the summer, it has been a fun diversion that I look forward to every week. I’m now on my 4^th set of 6 classes and I think I’m only allowed to do 5 in total before they boot me out, so while I should be watching online tutorials and working hard at improving my technique, I think I will probably just continue to mess around as long as I can. If the bug sticks with me after I’m done with the classes, I am going to look into getting a wheel of my own and renting kiln space when I need it.

Croissants – I found an amazing French bakery that delivers and we had fresh pastries for breakfast on Christmas morning, which were delightful. (I also ordered from them a number of other times, but it was especially cool to get a delivery for Christmas this year.)

Stained Glass – This was something that was on my to-do list for the year and there is no doubt that the pandemic helped me keep on track. I finished the panel for our front door and we installed it today – hours before my self-imposed deadline of the end of the year. I also made a few smaller pieces over the last few months, and I have a couple of ideas for new designs I want to make. I will probably not start anything in the immediate future, but I have my equipment and space set up now, and the glass supply store moved conveniently close to my house, so I’m pretty much good to go whenever the mood hits.

Glass installed with *hours* to spare before the end of the year.

Bye bye 2020!