I was furtively waiting for spring to arrive this year. Even though we had a freakishly mild winter by Toronto standards, the memory of our neighborhood draped in the lush leafy green of the warm season taunted me. So we had three days of blistering heat in early May, and then slipped back into London in November, where it was day after day of bone chilling dampness.
Now the creaking wheels of the seasons have rolled on. Trees are in bloom. The lilac in the backyard is heady with fragrant buds; making large cut bouquets a neccissity in the house. The pool is open... but not heated quite yet. The lawn needs cutting twice a week already.
But something seems wrong, as if left behind as the seasons changed. Some friends family seem tortured by long term problems. Cold and wet unfinished business like our sluggish spring.
Is Everybody a Hapless Neurotic?
Gosh how taxing it is. There is a lyric from a Morrissey song... 'it takes guts to be gentle and kind' How resonant.
I don't want to get all Zen here, but the ying/yang balance approach is truly ringing clear for me these days. At work we have a corrosive atmosphere that seems to be ready for a positive disruptive event. I feel like a cannon ready to fire. Nothing like pent up yang energy.
New York, New York! Gosh how I am looking forward to being in Manhattan. It has been too long... and you have suffered so in the interim. Time to revisit old haunts, see dear friends, talk business and smell urine on subway platforms. After a decade living in midtown... I am craving the sense of being back at home.
May equals spring. Right?
Today I saw my freaking breath when I stepped outside first thing in the morning. It has been unseasonably cold and damp for weeks, with just a freakish few days of smothering heat to tempt us into believing the season might have really changed. But noooo.
My grandmother fell and broke her one good hip, the other one having been broken in the mid-90s. Then she had a stroke, the day after the operation to repair the hip. And then we don't know for sure. She can't eat. She doesn't recognize anybody. And then she does. The doctors are not terribly driven to aggressively treat a 92 year old. Communication with any prefessional caregiver is brief and vague. She spent a lot of time helping to raise me---I feel so far away, anxious and helpless.
Can you quite believe that I am going to be a guest lecturer at the University of Toronto? If so, then might you be able to help craft my presentation...
We have been experimenting with a dramatically reduced carbohydrate diet over the past few days and the results are pretty dramatic. The boyfriend has lost more than a couple of pounds in just a few days, all while enjoying menu items like gobs of homemade bearnaise sauce on rare ny strip steaks and LOTS of salad. There really is something to this carbo thing. When I cut them out my body reacted like a sponge when the water is squeezed out of it...