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Early last week I realized that I am not – and maybe never have been – wild about my birthday. Anyone whose natal anniversary comes this close to a new school year can probably relate. I didn’t dislike school; it was just hard to fit in, and once my bones crashed the party, being a teenager got significantly harder. We also moved around a lot, so I was often the new kid in class ... but this post isn’t about school. It’s about accepting a truth formed over sixty-two years and only acknowledged in my sixty-third.

I have patchwork memories of birthdays past. Some were good, a few were great, and many were anticipated with more anxiety than excitement. A couple were so crushing that I recall them in more precise detail than I do the most-excellent ones outnumbering them. When contemplating the inevitable occasion a week ago, I felt like my birthday has historically been more stress than celebration, and I wanted to forget the whole thing forevermore.

Then the modem at home crapped out and I had to work at the office for five days straight. I was already compromised by a week of bad technology karma, so losing the wifi was a grandiose WTF? Thinking of my birthday on top of that just made me crabbier. And I mean crabbier.

I can’t tell if it’s a blessing or a curse that the people I work with are amused by my moods. They certainly aren’t daunted, although they are quick to respect when I answer “How are you, Ru?” with a warning to approach with caution. Last Monday I ranted freely about my wifi woes, to which none of them were genuinely sympathetic, as apparently a whole week of my on-site presence is a perceived win (should have been my first hint).

When I arrived at the office on Tuesday, a bunch of balloons was tangled in the tree outside my window. Our office is next door to a hotel and three different, um, drinking establishments, so, obviously the balloons had somehow got loose from their original owner the previous night ... but for them to end up outside my window when I’m flanked by glass on either side seemed like a pre-birthday sign from the Universe. I definitely felt the love, which was rather humbling considering my attitude.

Throughout the week, my peeps made frequent reference to my approaching happy day, which I was actually dreading though it would have been mean to say so. And on the last workday before my birthday, I walked into a fully decorated office, down to the tiny party hats made for each of my critters. My morning chai was bought for me, our executive director brought me flowers, everyone on the headquarters roster had signed a birthday card, and once our office manager arrived (coming in specially on a vacation day), she brought a black forest cake and led the team in a round of “Happy Birthday to Ru”. We partied and laughed and hugged and got a little work done ahead of my birthday long weekend.

How could anyone stay miserable in the face of so much love? Not me, that’s for sure. And on the home front, the technician from Rogering Shaw got us back online with a new modem to replace the dud they’d sent us a week earlier (but that’s another post). By the end of the week, my treed balloons were wimpy and shrivelled ... and so was I.

My attitude had to change after all that. And it did. I’d been so fraught with anxiety and, yes, feeling unworthy, that I almost denied myself the joy of being loved by people I love. They might not be family, yet they mean as much to me as any blood relation – and I mean as much to them. Today (the 2^nd), I’ve been inundated with texts and emails, and Ter has been her usual over-the-top generous self. I’d say I’m luckier than I deserve, but that might send the wrong message to a Universe that exists to give back what I put out.

As I wrote in my note to the HQ folks who signed my card, thanks to them, I’ve decided my birthday is okay after all. The only ones I’ll dislike now are the ones that make me older.

Happy birthday, Ru. You are so very loved.

The Importance of Tea XIII

 “Days Gone Chai”

You may or may not remember that in June of 2015, after extensive research at a number of outlets, I had determined that my favourite chai tea was steeped at a coffee place. Blenz had not only bettered franchise outlets like Starbucks and David’s, but had surpassed local tea giants Silk Road and Murchie’s for the best chai in town (in my opinion). Since that summer, David’s Tea has introduced their Organic Chai, which knocked their Saigon Chai out of the park but wasn’t able—despite a multitude of online orders in the past year—to surpass the Blenz blend as my No. 1 favourite. On my weekly day at the office, I am guaranteed to visit my regular pre-COVID haunt for a mid-morning cuppa, where the barista now adds the 3 raw sugars and substantial splash of cream I used to add myself.

In the halcyon days of 2019, when I occasionally ordered an Earl Grey with lavender syrup, owner/manager Jonathan would razz me whenever I ordered a chai. “With lavender?” he’d ask, dimpling impishly while I scowled at his impudence.

Things changed, of course. In a pandemic world where nothing is fun anymore, the Sussex shop managed to stay open through lockdowns and restrictions. Some staff had to be let go, and while the core crew remained, Jonathan took the afternoon shift. I chai in the morning, so I didn’t see him for ages.

My working from home also meant no more daily Mumbai chai. I don’t know how I coped to begin with, though the bulk of my online David’s organic orders occurred in those first few months. As the siege wore on, I realized I’d have to get a home supply of Mumbai, so I brought an empty tea tin to my next in-the-office day and asked for a hundred grams. That wasn’t quite enough to sustain me, apparently, as I brought in a second tin the following week, rotating through by refilling an empty when its twin reached the halfway mark.

Fast forward to March 2021. I am now coming to the office twice a week and some of the old gang have returned to Blenz—happy reunions on both sides of the counter. I stop in with my office buddy for coffee one rare afternoon and who do I see working the steamer but Jonathan! He’s wearing a mask, but I know he’s smirking when he asks if I’ve ordered a(nother) Mumbai chai. He adds that he orders twice as much of it since I’ve started buying it by the tin.

“No,” I reply, “but since you mention it, I’ve been thinking I need a whole bag of the loose stuff for home. What do you think?”

He shrugs. “An order came in this morning. I’m loaded.”

“Great!” I declare. “How much do you want for 500 grams?”

He’s so good to me. We settle on a price (reduced) and he throws in a box of compostable tea bags. My office buddy is mildly stunned by the whole transaction, but Ter isn’t fazed at all when I proudly produce the bag from my tote at the end of the day.

I’m halfway convinced they put crack in the mix, but ... oh well!

No Shoes, No Service?

Know what I like best about working from home? No shoes! Socks are optional depending on the weather, but they hardly count as restrictive footwear and besides, I had begun running around in sock feet at the office before COVID sent us into isolation.

It’s been a few weeks now and I’m getting into a groove. The bears are accustomed to me being here all day every day, so much that I wonder if I should make them all take the Oath of Employment, or at least of Confidentiality. Not that they (or I, for that matter) are privy to classified information, but what they sometimes hear could get me fired for being at odds with the party line. All government employees are at risk of biting the hand that feeds them at some point in their lives, and when you’re thirty years in ...

I digress.

Working from home is a notion I’d resisted for the longest time. I want to keep my worlds separate, and turning my bed/writing room into an office was a threat to that dividing line.

Turns out it’s not that bad. My office junk fits in a file box that gets hidden in the closet overnight and on weekends, and the government laptop, though hooked up to my personal rig’s keyboard, monitor and mouse during the week, is unplugged every Friday at quitting time and sits neatly atop my writing box, which is promptly restored to working order until Sunday evening. I have access to a kitchen shared with one person instead of seventy others – and that one person kindly does my lunch dishes in real time opposed to me doing them with the dinner dishes that evening. I take my morning tea with her instead of Treena, and have purloined a supply of loose Mumbai chai so I’m not missing my favourite despite missing the Blenz crew and my office buddies. I do communicate with folks on work matters, and visit the office once or twice a week to pick up supplies and go for a “real” Mumbai chai, often as a latte with extra foam, but overall ... working from home is working.

I do, however, insist on dressing as if for the office. Hair, bling, pretty tops and black jeans. It helps to hold that dividing line between the worlds, bare feet notwithstanding. Taking a walk after work also helps in shifting to “home” mode (I wear shoes then, or course). Do I want to WAH indefinitely, though? Not really. Part-time sure, but I am a social creature ... and some bears are getting too curious for their own good ...

Social Distance

the bears practicing social distance
(scale in inches: 1 to 12)

At a staff conference last fall, my colleagues and I were put through an exercise about personal space and everyone’s unique comfort zone. Most folks prefer about a six-inch buffer, which, during a conversation with another, works out to about a foot of space between parties.

Except for me.

Part of the exercise was to pair up and have one person walk toward the other. When the walker got too close for comfort, the standee was to put up a hand and say, “Stop.” I got about a foot from my partner before her hand went up (that hand went up a lot faster when I pretended to be angry—but that was a different exercise).

When it was my turn to put up a hand, my partner ended up literally nose to nose with me. She was probably more uncomfortable than I was, and I confess my ease with her proximity was likely due to me knowing her rather than her being a stranger, but I honestly wasn’t that surprised by my non-reaction.

I generally don’t mind people in my space. In my face, yes, but in my space? Not so much. I respect the space of others, but I’m not bothered sitting beside someone on the bus or standing next to someone at a crosswalk. So the practice of social distancing during the COVID outbreak is proving somewhat challenging for me. I thought nothing of sharing an elevator with a guy from the third floor at the office last week – we stood shoulder to shoulder and laughed about my security card’s superpower of accessing more floors than my own, and only after he had deplaned did I realize we had stood less than twelve inches, let alone six feet, from each other.

It’s a curious time for society, all right. I thought we were isolated from each other before COVID-19! And yet, as I remarked to a neighbour not long after this all started, it’s amazing how social humans really are after we’re told we can’t be social anymore.

Problem Solving

The late Wayne Dyer had an affirmation on his desk. Paraphrasing, it went something like this:

“Good morning! This is God speaking. Today, I am working on solving all your problems, and I don’t need your help. Have a spectacular day!”

It was a cue for him to live the moment and trust in a loving, friendly and generous Universe to work on the larger issues. When his action was required, he would be told.

“Surrender to Source,” advises the daily calendar in our kitchen. Yeah, right. Only “surrender” doesn’t mean “give up”. It means “get out of the way.” Meddling in the Universe’s process creates resistance, hinders the flow, and frustrates me into the bargain.

Problem is, I spend eight hours a day solving problems. Math problems, Sharepoint problems, policy problems, formatting problems, problems, problems, problems. It’s what I get paid to do. It often drives me crazy, but it’s my job. I’m also a Virgo, analytical to a fault and naturally inclined to solving puzzles. So how, after a day of solving other people’s problems, do I stop trying to solve my own? How do I let go of the wheel and trust all will be well without me figuring out some way to make it so?

The problem isn’t the problem. My attitude toward the problem is the problem. In fact, the problem may not even be a problem, it’s just that I perceive it as a problem. And, because I am already (constantly) in problem-solving mode, I feel responsible to, well, solve it.

But some problems are simply too big for me to solve. There are too many moving parts, or the solution will involve more people, or more information may be required before I can act. It may not even be my problem; it might only look like it because it belongs to someone I love.

I must develop an attitude similar to that of the work folks who trust me to have the answers. I must trust my loving, friendly and generous Universe to have all the answers, and to pass them along in the proper time (rather than when I think it’s time). I know life unfolds according to a plan that doesn’t always align with mine, but if I can “let go and let God”, as Dr Wayne liked to say, all will be well. I don’t need to get a grip. I need to relax my grip while the Universe does its thing without me interfering.

All is well now.

Problem solved.

Saved By Zero

I wrapped up the last task of the fiscal year end crazies on Friday. While it’s still high anxiety for the real finance folks at the office, at last it’s over for me.

Thank the gods.

The first three months of the calendar year are the worst three months of the government fiscal. I return to work after Christmas holidays and am thrust headlong into hell. It’s fast, it’s furious, and this year it nearly killed me.

Maybe it’s the non-stop number-crunching. Left Brain is in full control and she is a tyrant. Creativity takes a beating. I can’t write more than a terse email, let alone a philosophical blog post. And laughing is not an option unless it rings with hysteria.

Granted, the past twelve months as a whole were out to destroy me. Not only was my personal life in turmoil, my work life was equally volatile. When I am stressed, I lose myself. I become inflexible. I am resentful and impatient with others. I have spontaneous crying jags. I develop seasonal alcoholic disorder. I crash at nine p.m. though sleep eludes me well into the wee hours, and when I do sleep, my dreams are nightmarish.

I stop being me. I don’t know who I become, but I don’t like her very much. I’m just relieved when she goes away. She started packing at the end of last week, once the last invoices were paid and the quarter reconciled. After the forecast and the final tally zeroed out, I felt Ru come out of hiding.

There’s yet a ton of cleanup in the aftermath, and I don’t just mean at the office. I must also sift through the wreckage and pull out what worked for me when all else worked against me. Amidst the storming were moments worth preserving: gold stars for remembering to breathe, to recalibrate, to take care of myself wherever possible. I also acknowledge the support I had during the worst of it, from Ter, from my wee sister, my friends, and my brilliant colleagues at work. Work, work, work. Yup, Q4 is the absolute worst time of the annual cycle—

—and now that it’s over, I look back and wonder why I was so fraught. Nobody died. Nobody was at risk. Everything got done, and if it didn’t, oh, well.

Will it happen again in 2020? Probably … but I have nine months to sharpen my coping skills!

Kettle Me This

Green tea is steeped at a lower heat than black tea, and since I drink a lot of green, my next kettle will have a variable temperature feature. There’s one at work , and if you want an endurance test for small appliances, a staff of eighty-plus will surely provide it. The office kettle is boiling—or close to it—from seven-thirty a.m. to five p.m. every weekday, and I don’t remember when it arrived. It’s also worth noting that no “off the rack” kettle is designed for that sort of heavy duty use. We’ve burned through a few in my time (one day I’ll tell you about the nifty “disco” model that last three days before it went back to the store), and this one has been operating for years.

So when our home kettle threatened to blow up some weeks ago, I told Ter I’d prefer one with a variable temperature feature. Naturally, I couldn’t remember the brand of the office version, but of the few options available on the Canadian Tire website, the Oster model looked almost exactly the same. And it was on sale—at 50% off the regular price! Score!

Oh, but then I noticed the online reviews. Only one post recommended the kettle as worth the effort; a handful of others complained bitterly about leaks and shorts and generally poor performance. Curses.

I researched a few other options, but no real luck. Either the price was ridiculous compared to “212 degrees only” kettles, or the reviews warned against investing in any of them. I conceded to the thriftier option: if we had to buy a replacement, I’d settle for a remake of our Black and Decker, which has been stellar from the first go. In fact, I think it might be as old as the office kettle, if not similarly overworked.

No matter. Our kettle wasn’t crapping out; we only thought it was. Having dodged the leaky base/crappy performance Oster bullet, I returned to work the following Monday and started my morning routine: fill up the kettle, set it to 170 degrees and switch it on to heat while I empty the drainer and zoom to my office for my mug and a scoop of Japanese sencha.

Guess what? The superstar much abused overused and years old office kettle is an Oster with an variable temperature feature.

*sigh*

The Year of Being Human

Twelve months ago, Ter and I stood in our kitchen and proclaimed 2018 “the Year of Transition and Change”. She was on the cusp of committing to retire from the public service, my job had settled down after a major shift in program staff, my wee sis and I were planning to visit our brother on Prince Edward Island. There was some concern over a nodule in Mum’s forearm, but the experts were confident—as was she—that it would amount to naught. In all, the new year seemed full of promise and adventure, and we were ready to tackle all the good things we envisioned.

Perhaps we should have been more specific. Perhaps we should have proclaimed 2018 as a year of positive transition and change.

Ter’s intention to cruise into retirement went south when she was called to be shop steward in an ugly harassment case. I lost my office and was moved into a shared space when branch staff expanded beyond the eighth floor’s capacity. Though Mum’s radiation treatment appeared to be a success in February, after a couple of months of normal, she fell ill and died four weeks after Ter’s last day at work. Wee sis and I cancelled our trip to PEI—she had injured her back while helping Dad care for Mum, and quite frankly, the shock was so overwhelming that we reeled through the summer and well into the fall. That’s when our landlord let us know she was thinking to sell the suite. Ter tweaked a muscle in her neck at Thanksgiving and was laid up into November. The Tiguan went into the shop for an expensive overnight service—twice. The postal dispute threatened Christmas delivery of cards and parcels ... and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something in the continuous monsoon of WTF? we endured throughout 2018, but that’s the gist of our Year of Transition and Change.

Keeping the faith was pretty darned challenging during the past twelve months. It’s easy to believe in a loving friendly and generous Universe when all is going smoothly. The tricky part is seeing the light in darkness. The majority of 2018 was, for me, a battle against a pervading sense of loss. Every night, I struggled to maintain my belief in being loved by a higher power, to trust that things happen for a reason, when they are meant to happen, and to know the rest of my life will not be spent gaping into a black hole. The gauge on my power of positivity has hovered perilously close to empty at times. I have cried more in the past months than I have in past years. I have raged at the heavens and thrown up my hands. I have stormed and begged and dug deep to get through the past turbulent, tumultuous, unexpectedly tragic fifty-two weeks.

And yet I have seen miracles. Small ones, to be sure, but miracles nonetheless. I will always remember the preternatural brilliance of the day after my mother died; how sharply defined and brilliantly hued the world appeared through the Ocean Room window. I will cherish forever the kindness and support I was shown by my friends and co-workers, people who rarely see me vulnerable yet rose to the occasion when I could not help myself. Christmas presents appeared from nowhere at the last minute, as did emails from loved ones after long silences. And others, too numerous to name. Feeling my mother’s presence in the room. Ter’s parking karma. Being able to pay cash for Tiggy’s repairs. Having a beautiful place to call home. Laughing with my office roomie, then going for tea with her because we like each other enough to be more than workmates. Hugging my little sister. The list goes on.

Though I almost lost it more than once, I managed to keep my grip on the thread that binds me to divinity. I still believe in something greater than myself, that all-encompassing presence that some call God. In truth, I’m no longer sure what to call it. I just know it’s there, that I am part of it and it is part of me—and of everyone else who is, who was, and who will be. For me, 2018 was all about the human experience and it truly sucked ... but I survived. I’m not through it yet, of course. The calendar doesn’t control time, it merely marks it. By all counts, I am only halfway through the process of reconciling myself to the tectonic changes that occurred in the past twelve months, so the drama ain’t over yet. I am relieved to say, however, that the light is more evident now than it was even three months ago.

It occurred to me on Christmas Eve, the most magical night of the year, that miracles are like stars strewn across a midnight sky:

The longer you spend staring up at them, the more begin to appear, and soon the entire night is bright with light.

Isn’t that wonderful?

Happy New Year.

With love,

Wordplay

Boy Sister does double duty as my wee sister’s elf. She’s not a particularly harsh master, which means he can get a bit uppity. One day at the Wall, he acted up to the point when she finally demanded to know what was wrong with him. He shrugged and tried to look innocent.

“He’s just being obstreperous,” I said.

“What does ‘obstreperous’ mean?” she asked.

“Difficult,” I said.

She gave me a Why didn’t you just say that? look. Aloud, she muttered, “Writers.”

“Sorry ’bout that, kid.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I just prefer words with four letters or less. It’s quicker.”

Not to mention more effective.

But it got me thinking. I tend to throw big words into a conversation, mostly to keep it interesting rather than show off, and a recent metaphor likening employee service seniority to divorced parents switching out the kids at Christmas got big laughs at a staff meeting. “I vote for ‘the divorced parents’ model,” one of my more comical colleagues remarked to me the next day. (I’m lucky she thinks I’m hilarious, as she gives me good reviews when new people join the office.)

I don’t restrict myself to conversations in company, either. The title of a favourite CD gave me something to think about while I was waking up one morning. It’s called “Nightbound” (an instrumental collection by David Lindsay now in heavy rotation), and while the train tracks on the cover photo suggest a traveller heading toward night, it occurred to me that the word “nightbound” could also mean one being tied to – or bound by – the night. Or shade or shadow or the Dark Side, or any of the other synonyms for “not day”.

Which gives me an idea for a story ...

I know, I know ... Writers.

Traditions 2.0

Before Christmas, one of our local radio curmudgeons did a bit about the importance of tradition. During the holidays in particular, we treasure the rituals that make us feel safe and secure in a world getting nuttier with every headline. Many of our rituals come with us from childhood, and new ones develop as we establish our own homes and families. For me, it’s alcohol and TV shows. I don’t drink so much at any other time of year, and it’s not Christmas until we’ve watched Charlie Brown.

Even at the office, we have seasonal traditions. On the day the fireplace went up, one of my colleagues paused when she saw it, broke into a grin, and announced, “It’s official! Christmas is here!”

It seems Ter and I have ton of them. The house gets decorated first. I get the cards done and gone by mid-month. The big tree goes up on the first Saturday in December (or the last one in November). We watch Jim Carrey’s Grinch on that night, and every other holiday movie/TV show we have between then and the 23^rd, when A Christmas Story kicks of the holiday hat trick that includes Alistair Sim on the 24^th and Jimmy Stewart on the 25^th. We stock the kitchen with Imperial cheese and garlic sausage, mincemeat tarts and eggnog (and my annual bottle of Prosecco). We visit my folks, friends, and a sibling or two ahead of Christmas Day, not to mention getting presents bought and wrapped for distribution at those visits. Our holiday CDs go on heavy rotation in the house and in the car.

You get the picture.

Well, this year something happened. A bunch of things, actually, that interfered with our nicely organized, pre-scheduled, comfortably familiar holiday hoopla. Some switchups were deliberate, like Ter deciding to bake fruitcake for the first time in a few years, but others were, er, forced upon us. We were too bushed after wrestling with the tree to watch Jim Carrey, so the Grinch got put off for a week. My parents were unavailable when we hoped to visit them, and we were unavailable when my older sister invited us to tea. (Happily, those visits happened after the 25^th, though it felt weird having to reschedule them.) We got hung up on some other oddball things that escape me now, but despite some of our traditions being waylaid by circumstance, other things happened to make holiday magic.

It snowed on Christmas Eve. It started within seconds of my return from dropping Treena home after her ritual holiday visit, and it didn’t stop until the street was thick with frosting and our view of Oak Bay had disappeared. Ter put on the cheeseball Christmas tunes channel, and we sat in a candlelit Ocean Room with wine and popcorn, watching the snow and revelling in the unexpected hygge.

We spent the next morning in the same room, opening our presents in the glow of the penguin tree when our habit is to spend Christmas morning with the big tree. Neighbour noise caused that one, but it worked out in the end. In fact, all the adjustments worked. The OR is my favourite room in the house; why not open our presents there? Visiting parents and siblings after Christmas Day was more relaxed than if we’d crammed it in ahead of the 25th. I survived without my jar of clotted cream and discovered the joy of vanilla and cinnamon Bailey’s. Limited rotation of Christmas music didn’t kill us, though it’s too bad we missed running Blackadder’s Christmas Carol and Nation Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

Maybe new traditions were born of the pre-empted old ones; I won’t know until next Christmas. I do know however, that despite the hiccups and with the gift of snow on Christmas Eve, ours in 2017 turned out to be quite festive. Traditions are important, indeed they are, but when conditions are right—though they may seem wrong at the time—traditions can also be improved!

The Year of the Pause

Though I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I do begin each year with a blank office bulletin board, and every year that board has a theme. 2017 was about the moon and stars. I sprinkled the paper with celestial quotes from Shakespeare to Einstein to Neil Degrasse-Tyson and drew pictures in higher chakra colours to lend a calming “night sky” atmosphere to my increasingly crazy workdays.

It didn’t always work, but it was always gratifying to see my colleagues smile so maybe it worked better than I think.

As January 1 approached, I began contemplating my theme for 2018. On Christmas Day, rather than annoy myself by surfing F***book, I was prompted to pay a rare visit to the Paper Teapot and catch up on far too many of Nicole’s poems. In calmer times, I dropped into the Pot quite often; altered priorities of late have put the screws to that, to my detriment. Nic’s poetry is both beautiful and practical, as it encourages my creativity and my interpretive skills—an artistic two-for-one that I confess has been taken for granted in light of more pressing (yet ultimately less important) issues.

I digress.

As I scrolled through her unread posts, my admiration—and, yes, envy—was reawakened. Her turn of phrase, her magical metaphors and airbrushed imagery held me in thrall until I could no longer stand it: I had to email her and gush about the handful of gems she managed to wring from spare moments around her epic year-long writing project.

One poem in particular pounced: a flame so pure in its perfection that it sparked the theme for my 2018 bulletin board and may even have prompted my first NY resolution in decades. It’s called “This Pause” and here’s what it inspired:

·         In the midst of chaos, hit the pause button.

·         Stop the carousel and take a conscious breath.

·         Hear the space between the notes.

·         See beauty in unexpected places (like the mirror).

·         Don’t buy into drama.

·         Foster your connection to the things that really count and release the rest.

Some days will be tougher than others. My resolve is an exercise in mindfulness, but it will be worth it when I remember to pause.

Thank you, Beanie.

Happy New Year!

With love,

If It Ain’t Baroque ...

Whenever I see the title of JS Bach’s “Air on the G String”, all I can think is how chilly it must feel.

If the radio is set to a baroque station, I know that Ter has been ironing. This cracks me up because ... actually, I’m not sure why it’s so funny, but her choice of laundry music does make me smile.

This is how seriously I perceive the music of my favourite century. Despite my fondness for the 1600s, it seems I don’t much care for the tuneage of the time. I don’t mind it, of course, but I won’t play it myself unless I’m writing a piece relevant to the period. Strangely enough, the soundtrack for “Versailles” isn’t reflective of the century, either. It smacks more of present day Ibiza than baroque Europe (though I’d probably get the CD anyway, even if it was crammed with Bach, Handel and a Hallelujah Host of Others).

Baroque music makes for good ambient noise, however. One of my cultured co-workers (she plays both classical guitar and Celtic harp—the talent pool at work is proof that there’s no money to be made in the arts) has a radio in her cubicle. Wedged between offices as she is, and placed on a high traffic corner, she finds it easier to concentrate on her job if Seattle’s National Public Radio is playing in the background. On a crazy day in any workweek, I’ll speed from my office, where the playlist ranges from classic Motown to cool jazz to 70s rock, and be rushing to the copy room when the lilting strains of a baroque violin will stop me in my tracks. Sometimes, I’ll even drop into my co-worker’s guest chair. When she looks inquiringly at me, I’ll say, “Just taking a civility break.”

Such music may be that which was claimed to soothe the savage breast. It certainly calms me in the midst of a hectic workday. It inspires images of perfectly aligned gardens, fashionable ladies and stylish gentlemen, all well-mannered and treating each other so cordially that it’s almost offensive. Better times and better men, yes?

Heck, no. The French Revolution might not have happened had the aristocracy been as elegant and ordered as the music of the day. Perhaps it’s merely an example of paradox sprung from a composer’s will to hide the truth of society at the time. Art these days is a more accurate reflection of where we’re at—a film parade of serial killers, political extremists, spies, renegades in fast cars, and superheroes sworn to save us from annihilating ourselves; music from angry children grown into angry adults, and underage girls shaking their collective booty as if a show of skin is empowering. Culture these days isn’t terribly cultured at all. Between the honesty in present day art and the hypocrisy in baroque composition, that civility break looks pretty darned good.

Shadow the Sun

Everyone was talking about it. The news constantly updated us on where to go, what time to be there, and what degree of eye protection was required to view last week’s solar eclipse. It was such a significant event that I almost took the day off to watch it from the beach across the street. I would have done it, too, had Monday been Ter’s scheduled day off. As she’s been an integral part of the HQ wildfire response all summer, taking an errant vacation day wasn’t likely to be approved, so off we went to our respective workplaces, me trying to convince myself that it wasn’t such a big deal, it was only an eclipse, for Pete’s sake, the world was not going to stop just to watch a shadow fall over the sun.

Only it kinda sorta did.

Happily, the timing for totality in Victoria coincided with mid-morning coffee. If I couldn’t experience the event with Ter, I decided, the next best person was my wee sister. The library courtyard where she takes her breaks (and where we have coffee on Thursdays) faces east. The sun would be in full view when it all went dark.

Only it didn’t all go dark. At around nine-thirty, the sky went a little weird, like the planetarium light before the show starts. Half an hour later, I headed to the library, where wee sis was indeed parked in place on the wall. The light hadn’t changed much. In fact, the sun seemed as bright and furious as ever—to the naked eye, anyway. People had gathered in groups for the momentous occasion, equipped with NASA-approved dark glasses, projectors made of cereal boxes, or the infamous paper with a hole poked in the middle (I’ve never understood how that works). Wee sis and I were unarmed. I had my phone to track the timing, but she only had her coffee. She seemed less excited about the event than I was, though she smiled when I said I wanted to share it with someone I love. I wasn’t so driven to see the eclipse itself; I wanted to feel it. You know, to feel the wonder of dwindling daylight on a mid-summer morning, and to experience a rare and extraordinary event in the company of my fellow humans.

Canada was outside the so-called “band of totality”; in Victoria, the sun was only ninety percent obscured by the moon. As peak time neared, wee sis shaded her eyes and risked a peripheral glance in the general direction of the sun. “It doesn’t look any darker to me,” she said.

I concurred. Despite knowing we wouldn’t get a total eclipse, I’d hoped for something more dramatic in the light department, like a ninety percent drop from what’s normal for the time. I, too, chanced a glance at the sun, but all I glimpsed was the usual glare. “It’s gotten cold, though,” said the friend who had joined us.

She was right. A definite chill had descended though the light remained the same. In fact, the temperature plunged in those few minutes. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t anticipated a chill. That was—literally and figuratively—cool!

Back at the office, folks were a little disappointed that complete darkness hadn’t dropped on the day. A couple of my co-workers were discussing it when I stopped in the kitchen to make tea. After listening to a minute of them puzzling over why it didn’t go darker outside, I suddenly said, “It’s a good metaphor, though, don’t you think?”

They looked even more puzzled. “How do you mean?” one of them asked.

“Well, the moon blocked out ninety percent of the sun, yet the light was as bright as if it had only blocked ten percent. So, metaphorically, one bright spirit will shed more light than nine cast in shadow. ‘How far that little candle throws its beam’, you know?”

Admittedly, I got a couple of odd looks, but after they thought about it, they also got my point. It was later said that, for a couple of minutes on August 21, the violence and hatred stopped as everyone looked up at the sky in a shared moment of purest awe. We are all connected. We are all rays of light. Ninety percent of us can falter in the shadows, but so long as the other ten stay strong, the world will not go totally dark.

With love,

Throwing in the Towels

Saturday is laundry day. Each week, we do our clothes. Every two weeks, we wash the bath towels (neither of us is particularly grubby, so we get away with not laundering them weekly). And every four weeks, Ter brings home “the horrible work towels” and fires them through the nuclear cycle to kill the plenitude of germs inevitably housed in the crusty crinkled folds.

Every workplace kitchen has them: the donated tea towels that some folks use to dry their dishes and their hands (or wipe their noses—who really knows?), that are tossed into a bucket under the sink for washing only to reappear, miraculously clean and neatly folded, in their assigned drawer, on Monday morning. I work in an office where a scarce half-dozen towels serve forty-five people. I refuse to use the towels, employing the compostable paper ones instead—I’m not afraid of germs, but I’m not stupid, either. In the dead of winter, when everyone is sneezing and coughing, those kitchen towels become hazardous waste containers.

Ter’s office has two working kitchens. Their towel output can fill a Hefty bag with ease—and does, since she brings one home when she can no longer stand the backlog under the sinks (or can’t find a clean towel to dry her teacup).

This is where I get small: we pay for our laundry, and given the amount of pain she endures at that office every day, over time I have become increasingly resentful of her willingness to wash their damp, sticky, germy, smelly, horrible towels. Nobody else seems to do it; in fact, I know nobody else does it, given the weight (and pong) of the load she carts home every month.

Not so long ago, she brought them home bi-weekly, in a plastic grocery bag. Laundry was my gig at the time, as my bones didn’t mind the stairs and I often happened on a neighbour or two in the back yard. Social critter that I am, I actually enjoyed the task ... except for the “horrible work towels”. At some point, I grew so vocal with my disgruntlement that Ter finally lost it. She would do the horrible work towels separately, to spare me the angst of touching them (she wasn’t too crazy about me including them in our hot water load, either, which indicates how toxic they might actually be). I argued, not only because I felt somewhat guilty at continually beating her up about it, but because—and here I get small again—a separate load would cost us another buck-fifty. I didn’t like doing them, but there was no valid reason why I couldn’t do them. So, on horrible work towel weeks, I would sneak them into the hot water load and take my lumps when she busted me. It wasn’t hard; she usually dropped the grocery bag on top of the hamper when she got home on Friday, so I’d grab it and dump the contents—touching as little as possible, of course—into our load on Saturday.

This practice came to a head one weekend, when I took a bag of kitchen garbage to the dumpster. Ter had been cleaning out the fridge (another weekly chore), so when I saw the plastic grocery bag, its top heavily knotted, by the back stairs, I grabbed it on my way down to the laundry room. I threw it in the dumpster, put the cold wash into the dryer, started the hot cycle in the washer, and went back upstairs. When our laundry was almost done, Ter asked me where the horrible work towels were. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Wherever you usually put them, I guess.”

She frowned. “They were in a bag at the top of the—What?”

I had gasped, and my hands were flying toward my open mouth. She gave me the shark Finn look and repeated:

“What?”

My voice leaked, tiny and trembling, between my fingers. “I thought it was garbage.”

Her eyes widened. “What?”

“I thought it was garbage.” I started to laugh, a little wildly. “I threw the bag in the garbage!”

Her own hand rose but couldn’t stifle her own laughter. “Ru-thie!! You threw the horrible work towels in the garbage?!”

I managed a sheepish smile. “Freudian slip.”

“You think?”

We fell about laughing and replenished some of the stock from our own cupboard, but after that, she refused to let me see the horrible work towels, and sometime after that, she started using the Hefty bag to conceal them.

I haven’t had to wash them since. I’m pretty sure I can’t be trusted.

Heh.

Public Service Week

I’ve never been a fan of scheduled recognition. I prefer to be recognized for my professional efforts as they happen, i.e., more often than during one week per year. However, I appreciate the gesture put forth by the employer to celebrate all public servants during a few days in June. We civil servants continue with daily operations, of course, but sprinkled among budget meetings and Sharepoint headaches are “fun” events like casual Friday and the branch Chili Cookoff.

Though I accept the sentiment behind such events, I don’t usually attend them. Big groups intimidate me even if I know everyone in them. Heck, even if I’m related to everyone in a group larger than six, I’m inclined to decline. So on the day of the Public Service Week potluck some years ago, I stayed at my desk while everyone else went down to the second floor boardroom.

In due course, one of my colleagues returned. “Ruthie, you missed the presentation!”

I thought nothing of it; just shrugged and replied that someone has to mind the phones.

Colleague #2 appeared after a few minutes. “Where were you? You missed the presentation!”

This happened a couple more times. Finally, I asked, “What presentation?” and someone answered, “The years-of-service awards. Your name was called, but you weren’t there.”

Blanch. “I don’t even know how many years of service I have!”

Just then the division Director rounded the corner. “There you are! You’d better get downstairs. The ADM is waiting for you.”

Great; just great. The Assistant Deputy Minister, who always happened upon me at the precise moment when I was either saying or doing something utterly moronic, had been stood up because of my aversion to office gatherings.

So, I hustled down to the second floor, where our volunteer staff photographer heralded my arrival with, “Ruthie! You missed the presentation!”

Yeah, yeah yeah, I’m here now, let’s get this over with. Aloud, I apologized to the ADM, who then presented me with my ten-plus-five years of service pins and a letter of gratitude/congratulation. “Fifteen years,” he observed as he handed me the letter. “You started at the same time I did.”

“Really?” I asked, panicked into making small talk with a man who doubtless considered me a bit of a goof. “You mean if I’d tried harder, I could have been you?”

Career-limiting comment, right? Nah. That was two ADMs ago ... and I’m still here!

The Power of Ru

if I have to wear a tin foil hat, this is the one I'm wearing

We lost our deskside garbage collection at work last winter (see “Attitude Adjustment”). I went into the office one morning and my garbage can was gone. So were everyone else’s—except for a single rogue specimen. Our division does a lot of bulk mailing and there is some rubbish that won’t fit in a Starbucks cup, so our office manager cleverly ensured that one can was spared for the file room.

A few weeks later, I noticed that the potato chip bag I had dropped into it was still present, along with some other flotsam accrued during the passage of time. Hm, I thought, somebody should dump that into the kitchen bin. I figured on doing it myself—just not at that instant—but when I went back a couple of hours later, it was already done.

I flagged my administrative colleague. “I thought the janitors weren’t collecting the garbage anymore, but the can in the file room is empty.”

“They’re not,” she replied. “I emptied it a couple of hours ago.”

Fast forward a few weeks into 2017. I’m the owner/operator of the HQ snackin’ station, but occasionally other folks will bring in treats that require more than the two bowls containing my offerings. The third bowl will often sit long after its contents are gone, until someone—usually me—takes it away.

I think it was cinnamon hearts pre-Valentine’s Day. A mysterious benefactor filled a bowl with them, and the level almost immediately began to drop as word spread around the floor. It seems that everyone loves cinnamon hearts; however, just like the final slug from the milk carton, a dozen malformed candies lingered in the bottom of the bowl for over a week before I thought in passing, Hm. Somebody should dump them and put away the bowl. I figured on doing it myself—just not at that instant—but when I went back a couple of hours later, it was already done.

I went to our office manager. “That’s weird,” I said. “I just went to dump the last of the hearts and put away the bowl, but someone beat me to it.”

“That was me,” she said. “I did it a couple of hours ago.”

I stared at her. Then I told her the garbage can story. Then I said, “Whoa, how powerful am I if I can manipulate people on the strength of a single thought?”

She laughed, of course—she laughs at me a lot—but I was semi-serious. I realize that a third, and conscious, attempt should probably be made to confirm any suspicions, but I’m reluctant to go there. I mean, what if?

Behaving Badly

I’m breaking in a new boss. Six weeks in, she’s awesome and she thinks I’m awesome, but the honeymoon hit a bump this week when she called to chide me for failing to review the standards of employee conduct (I didn’t make the deadline and the system ratted me out to her). “So,” she says, “what’s that all about?”

Tongue stuck firmly in cheek, I replied, “I don’t believe in standards of conduct. People should be free to behave like screaming orange toddlers.”

Of course I was kidding. She got the joke, we had a laugh, I clicked “OK” on the standards webpage, and that was that.

Only it wasn’t. Not really. What happened to “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all”? That’s what I was taught, and though I have occasionally strayed from the principle, for the most part, I try to practice kindness, tolerance, and socially acceptable behaviour. This last quality seems to have dropped significantly in standard, but I insist on maintaining the level of manners my parents still expect of me. I also happen to know a good many kind, generous, cooperative, polite and responsible people. The world is full of like folks, in every culture, religion, and race.

I wish they got the same level of attention afforded the ranters and ravers. I support freedom of speech and the right of people to have their own opinions, but we have become so ill as a society that the sickest of us are now media heroes and world leaders. We’re a step away from televising public executions, yet we are conversely outraged at the merest whiff of a perceived insult to a stranger. I’ll leave the examining of that contradiction to Bill Maher, who is better equipped to articulate my dismay ... but I have noticed this:

Paying attention to unacceptable behaviour only encourages it. Ego loves a reaction, so aim a camera or facilitate a panel discussion on its antics, and it will ramp up the output. When I hear my voice getting louder, it’s accompanied by the anxiety of my point being negated. If that happens, egad, I might have to accept another’s view and maybe change my mind. My comfortable reality may be proven false! Worse, my value as an intelligent being may be compromised, so even if I’m wrong (especially if I’m wrong), I’d better outshout my opposition. Volume equals conviction, right? And conviction means I’m right, right?

Riiiiiight.

Let’s make good behaviour fashionable again. Do something kind for someone today. Say something nice, or say nothing at all. Take the sting out of ego’s plot to ruin the world—or at least your little corner of it.

With love,