Tag: humour

Monday

The rain will remove the snow.

Rain today and we needed it. Work was a missed mash of issues. Most got the better of me. Lisa has a small white board where I get dressed that says, ‘Make good choices’. She knows I don’t always, but I’m getting better from my younger days where it didn’t take much for me to fly off the handle.

The birds enjoyed the rain, they chirped and sang and were grateful for the worms that came to the surface, making eating easy.

You could almost watch the grass grow. I fear a hot dry summer. We have been lucky the last couple of years. The tourists are coming, no longer slowed by Covid, and each will have a pack of matches and a few fireworks, not content with turning off the lights and watching the much more magnificent Milky Way.

Anger still bubbles in me. Deep down. Watching the destruction. The waste, pollution and noise. Nothing changes fast, I remind myself. It takes time they say. In the meantime I try to make good choices.

Morning Walk

Lisa shows the kids what to look for.

A very nice walk this morning with Kelsie, Cooper and Scarlett. Lisa and I are lucky to have them along. Willow and Lola ran through the creek and fetched rocks and sticks. Lisa and Scarlett brought back pussy willows.

Scarlett decides to cross the creek on her bum. A good choice when unsure.

Horns

My father used to say, ‘Horns make poor soup.’ It was a way of saying, while hunting, to choose an animal, not by the size of the antlers, but how it will taste when it is on the table.

Willow thinks the horns taste just fine thank you!

Water water everywhere

Who pissed in my sink?

This is what District of Invermere (DOI) water looks like. I still drink it because I am told it is tested and fine for consumption, plus, I’ve seen Willow drink out of murky mud puddles on the side of a slough and she has always been fine.

Infrastructure and utilities has never been a strong suit of the DOI. Historically to present, Mayor and Council, primarily made up of real estate agents and businesspeople, have been known to act more as a chamber of commerce, who’s primary goal is to attract tourists and figure out ways to fit more boats on Lake Windermere, all the while, and without fail, feathering their own nests. Welcome to a tourist town.

Not that this is anything new or specific to this town. It’s the way things work most everywhere. The best a person can hope for is what is good for a politician; local, provincial or federal, is also good for the majority. In Canada, most of the time it is. If it happens, the politician gets rich in the meantime, we should be happy they didn’t resolve to display further greed and incompetence to make more people worse off.

If one was to complain about the water quality to the officials of DOI, which I would never do (why present concern to deaf ears?), the answer would be, ‘get a home water purification system if you are concerned’.

We are lucky to have an abundance of clear fresh water in the Columbia Valley, it just doesn’t flow through the pipes below the District of Invermere. 

Mid April News

Put some of the seedlings in bigger pots. They looked half dead and pissed off after I was finished, not much for starting plants inside.

***

Twitter labeled CBC “government funded media”. Which made me laugh. Of course they are. Most of their funding comes from the government. It doesn’t necessarily make the CBC bad. True the broadcaster endorses the Liberal Party agenda. But so what? I take heed when Chrystia Freeland tells us to buckle down and Justin Trudeau says everything is going swimmingly. There isn’t a news agency out there that is reporting without an agenda. That’s the way it is now. If you are seeking the truth, listen to a lot of news. The bullshit will come through. Of course it will be fucking exhausting and will leave you crosseyed, bewildered and, more than likely, worse off. I’ll take CBC any day, sometimes you have to settle for the least of the worst.

***

I think Orwell has me right. While the shit hits the fan. I am looking forward to tomorrow. I have a bunch of work to do. The work is going to make me happy, appliances fixed and running tickety boo. Grass mown. Looking good, for this time of year.

Pray

Wind and rain signalling winter is officially over and spring is here. I feel colder in this weather than I do when it is minus thirty.

It will green things up. Some of the kids at work are wearing shorts while I still have on my long underwear.

Lisa asked today, do I wish we prayed. It is a good question.

Bird Song

Was up there hell and gone, cashing in on birdsong and edgy dogs. Looking for snags, firewood, fallen or standing, rocks that look like letters or shapes, like hearts, to bring home, and have someone say, I see it.

Willow sat on lookout, the young dog was more comfortable close. She is going to be a good one. Willow is good in the bush and bad everywhere else. She’ll bark at a crow at home through the window, but stay still for a Black Bear, in the bush, waiting for the right time to put it up a tree.

Together we are too much trouble for man or beast to take us on.

Easter

There is plenty of reason for the way things work out. For instance, we’re told, a person works hard and they prosper. However, the biggest reason that things work out is random. The universe is chaos. It doesn’t consider us or our feelings. It isn’t Jesus or Santa Claus or cares if we have been naughty or nice. If it was most people would live forever and a few would pay for the shit they caused.

Bad things happen to good people. Bad people prosper. Not always, like I said, it’s random.

My brother smoked and drank from the time he was 12. Instead of liver or lung cancer he died of a rare blood disease. He thought it was funny. It also killed his fear of dying. So many doing everything right and dying. He was lucky.

We’re all lucky in the end.

The stars keep time. They swarm over the mountains. Turn south and back. It takes more than a lifetime to know them, to become an expert.

That’s Jimmy

Jimmy knocked himself out today. He struggled with a post of angle iron in the frozen ground. Finally it broke off and hit him in the head. He hit the ground, his radio on squelch. That’s Jimmy. If he does something he makes sure everyone notices.

Of course, once he came to, he wanted to keep working. He is small of stature, but strong as an army. That’s Jimmy.

Early April

A couple inches of wet snow overnight. It will be gone in a hurry. It seems winter is trying to hang on.

Lisa and I went for a short walk behind the mountain. We were hoping to see a few Meadowlarks. Lisa said she heard their distinct call the other day. We did see Chickadees, Siskins and Robins. Not many got close enough for a picture.

Back in the valley bottom I walked the road, but still no luck, instead I shot a few old fence-lines.

All and all a overcast black and white day. It was good to get out even if briefly.