My Urban Chateau

My interest in chateaus tests my limitations, and tests my dreams. When I critically examine my desire to escape to Europe, I know it isn’t going to happen because I really don’t want it to happen. I love the image of faded elegance, the romance of the isolation and secrets found in attics and crevices. I love the idea of escape to the country, return to the village and baking bread in an unheated, unfitted kitchen.

I can bake my bread and eat it too.

My chateau is a 1950s bungalow. We heat with wood as long as we can in the season, and quite often I cook in candlelight, with mellow music casting a dreamy spell from my Google Mini. My sofa is circa 1930s, faded and worn, loved by cats, covered strategically by throw blankets. My furniture is old. Found in antique shops for a bargain, some made by my husband, others handed down a couple of generations.

I even have an old rocking chair that came over on the ship from England in the mid to late 19th century. I need to repair the caned back, I will. I believe that is my one link to the Old Country.

We live in our Cedar Cottage at the edge of a moderately sized city. We are neither too far West, in case of earthquakes, too far East in case of hurricanes, or too far North in case of long winters and bears. We feel fairly comfortable here with our vegetable gardens and wild flower gardens. The bees and foxes and squirrels keep us company.

When my husband asks me where I would go, I answer Portugal or Spain, or here or there. But really I don’t want to leave here to go there, I simply want to embrace myself with some essence of faded glory. I want to make rich stews on my stove with herbs from my garden. I want to curl up before a fire and realize that countless generations have been staring into the fire, just as I do.

My chateau would fit into the salon of a real chateau! But it is a work in progress. A much easier space to manage, and no grade 2 listings involved. I will continue to rescue the worn, the lovely in a time where the new trumps the old and the old ends up in the landfill. My tired sofa came close this autumn, until I gave my head a shake. The new sofa \I was considering was inferior. The foam, the filling, the fabric the structure.

I am learning to embrace the worn, the faded. The gas range that came with the house, which has the broiler on the bottom. The fridge which is too big, but was repaired by my husband with a computer fan. I am surrounded by the worn and the lined. The mirror is kind in soft light, but the screen while Facetiming my daughter is a little cruel.

The sofa and I are both elegant older beings. We have good bones. There are a few more good years left to us.

Pondering Preppers

A few years ago, before the pandemic, I started watching Prepper type YouTube videos. I was looking for ideas on how to preserve food, make natural cleaners and self-sufficiency in general. What I tumbled upon was a buzzing community of people who were very busy preparing for when ‘shit hits the fan’. It took me down the rabbit hole of food storage, water storage, and how you can protect yourself and your family, living out of urban settings in the woods, keeping a bug-out bag with you at all times and always be a grey-man when you are moving in the masses, so people never look to you as a threat, or a leader.

This kept my mind busy for a few months, as I pondered how we could weather a disaster, and I had to accept that it simply could not work, for us. Having a seven foot picture window and a working fireplace, we would be prime targets, I gave up on ever being a prepper, although I still ponder moving away from the city.

The world is changing. I can see that communal living, generational living, is something that could become commonplace again, even as I yearn to move to my fictional forest. We’re not there quite yet.

We visited our friends in Muskoka over the weekend. They have a nearly off-grid home and 80 acres of forest. It’s a gorgeous property, on a dead-end road with very few neighbours. Geoff was saying they are thinking of getting a working gun, for protection. He says that the neighbours all have guns and that they could guard the road in the event of disaster. [We, of course would be homeless by then, evicted for our fireplace – best scenario]. I stared at Geoff, who grew up in inner city Toronto like myself, and was struck by how afraid we have all become.

Having already imagined how a disaster would play out for us, I imagine the great city exodus north to these isolated communities. To these 80 acre lots. I almost prefer to go out in the beginning rather than the bitter end.

In all the beauty surrounding us this weekend, our friends are now thinking about how to protect that vastness.

Limping Along

We had our Canadian Thanksgiving last weekend, with much less hoopla than our American neighbours will have at the end of November. Ours was about gathering, and we did not have traditional turkey and pumpkin pie, but pulled pork Carnitas and apple pie, and a salad. Some roasted vegies as well. I am having difficulty maneuvering relationships with my adult children. There is a lot of angst happening, a lot of big feelings coming my way, and it is difficult to find that peace and tranquility I crave at this place in my life.

Coming out of the isolation of multiple lockdowns has made me quite rocky with my relationships. I don’t have the instinctual flow of gatherings, that I used to have. I feel as though doing my best is falling short, but I am not willing to up my effort to take on more than I wish.

And that is where I am at. Carefully doling out my time and energy while needing a lot of personal and couple time with my spouse. I think that balance will forever be my nemesis. If I looked back on all my blogs and journals over the last twenty years, balance would be the word most used.

This weekend we are heading north to visit friends who live in the forest. It will be the first time we have had an overnight visit with friends in at least four years. I am already thinking about what I will take to make my overnight stay easier. A light. A book. My pillow. Past visits have had some of us over-indulging in alcohol… I will be well supplied with fizzy water and herbal tea, from home.

Today is dark and overcast. The yellow trees and red creeper vine are popping with colour against the grey sky. Such a gorgeous autumn we are having.

I am not your captive

This entry could possibly end up being a rant.

Four years ago I lost my full time job, due to circumstances which matter not at all here, but I was plunged from office administration into part time retail work, very close to home. At this time I work at an upscale grocery store, a 9 minute walk from my home.

I’ve worked there for three years and the job is mostly tolerable. A very few older men think that because you are forced to serve them, it is my job, that they can be absolute pigs, especially to the younger women. I have zero tolerance for the ‘dirty old men’ we used to laugh about 40 years ago. There is no place for them in this world now, but a few still wander around, lewd and creepy.

This post isn’t about them. It’s about being in service, and boundaries that some people will not respect.

A customer, an older man, sigh, came to self checkout where I was working and checked out his item then said to me, Are you the lady/woman/whatever I was speaking to before? About the things that are going on in the world? And I said no, it was not me. Then he started in about the Canadian news versus the news in the USA. He was preparing to engage me in a discussion on why the US news is better, what is wrong with our news, and so on. I was trapped, a captive audience.

I interrupted him and said to save his breath, I am an ostrich. He paused, confused, and repeated : Ostrich? you mean you keep your head in the sand? I answered, Yup. He tried to engage me further with questions about my children, and I busied myself with another customer, and he said to me that I deserve what I get.

So, I am not actually an ostrich. I watch Canadian news, American news, World news, but I am not required to share my personal views with anyone in my workplace, co-workers or customers.

Just because I cannot walk away from you, doesn’t mean I have to listen to you, or engage.

Shall I Begin Again?

I have been pondering my absent blogging world, after a three year silence. I wonder if I have words worth an audience, or whether my words should stay tucked away in my bullet journals and be recycled every year, as I have been doing.

I wouldn’t want family members to read of my middle aged angst when I die, or when I lose control over my privacy.

Since the pandemic I have been writing letters and making cards for my dear friend Randy, who I have known since I was seventeen and working my first full time job, at an art supply store in Toronto, before college. Randy was twenty-three and adopted me as a sidekick. He introduced me to falafels and I introduced him to eggnog. We have written through all the lockdowns, and I even made it to Toronto to see him last November.

I will go again soon.

So Randy has been my journal. He holds the timeline of my close-to-home day to day ramblings and worries and simple joys.

But I feel the need to express more than what I write to Randy.

I have also used Instagram as a journal. I can trail back over the years and I see our hikes, our gardens, our camps, our few gatherings and even the photos of clothes on the line give me joy. Satisfaction. See me, I am still here. I am still alive, maybe even vital.

Another old friend said that she was envious of my life, when she looked at my photos. Her life has been very taxing in recent years with parents dying, her husband is at the latter stages of MS. He is planning medical suicide this autumn. There were whispers maybe even in September.

I am thankful he has that choice.

We traveled north to see them in early August, and had a good visit. My friend is not sure if she will be disappointed if he changes his mind, because she is tired. Tired of living with MS. She is worried that she will die first – that her heart will burst, and what then will happen to him?

I have been posting less on Instagram. One post a month, and that is ok too.

My dear older sister Kathy lost her eldest granddaughter this past May, to cancer, and watching her family maneuver through all these levels of grief and anger and helplessness has been stark. I see her on Friday for a coffee visit. She carries on, they carry on. The little sister is now the only child. Her position altered.

But I am fine, we are pretty well. We keep on going to work, and laughing and finding things to feel passionate about.

Maybe I still have words.

Shame is Useless

This morning I had a dream of a childhood friend, who I haven’t seen since around 2010 or 2011. In 2011 I had surgery for kidney cancer, and somehow in the aftermath of that time of personal trauma, I found that two of my close friends had vanished. I have wondered whether I did or said something online, on a Facebook page while I was on the internet late at night after two many glasses of red wine. Maybe I unfriended, maybe I wrote something, I have no idea.

I was angry for a long time after that. They didn’t know if I had lived or died, whether I was dying. I was hurt. And the silence continued, and still does. I sent Margaret a Yule card one year, back in 2013 or 2014, and didn’t hear anything back.

I reached out to Gail a couple of years ago and after a small recap of life, that too didn’t come to anything.

And I have carried guilt and shame at these losses. I have felt unworthy and I have felt lonely. I have pulled back from other relationships and I have built boundaries that are a little too high for most people to jump.

This morning while writing my daily pages, after this dream of Margaret, I finally thought of forgiving myself. I forgive myself for being a bad friend. I forgive myself for not being a perfect person. I forgive myself for losing these two women in my life, and I will allow my shame and my guilt to fade away.

Cancer showed me that life is so quickly snatched from us, and when you are fighting for your life other stuff is set aside.

Forgiveness. I also forgive them, for sucking as friends. But most of all, I am allowing myself to move on.

Mid life invisibility or I feel ill.

Last September I found myself rather suddenly unemployed. After months of planning, my spouse [who I worked with] had found a new position, at a competitor, and I was promptly dismissed. Not so surprising, although ex-employer behaved poorly, and has been a bit of a prick, with threats of lawsuits and trying to lure husband into reacting, which he has not done.

This post is not about that situation, which we are still basking in the afterglow of freedom from this miserable narcissist, but about being mid life and breaking into a new type of work. After years in administration, I went for a barista position at a popular coffee establishment, and my first ever time working in the food industry.

I am the oldest there by at least 10 years, and find myself this winter, realizing how invisible I am as a middle aged person. I have always felt youthful, and am physically strong and quite fit. I do notice that I don’t multitask at the speed of sound like the younger ones in their 20s, but I don’t think I would ever have moved that quickly.

What I notice is the absence of curiosity towards me. When you meet new people, and find out what they are taking in school, or what they did on the weekend, or talk about partners or children, they are not as interested in finding out about me. Maybe I come across as too private? Not sure.

The last months of winter have worn me down, worry about daughter’s pregnancy, husband having hand surgery, my own annual cancer check in March, plus I have just come down with my third cold since February, after around 3 years not being ill. I am miserable, my house is covered in cat hair and dust, my 16 year old cat is hyper thyroid and beyond annoying. The two adult children living here are not seeing me either, and I wonder if it is something new, or did I create this cocoon eons ago?

Now that spring is here, I have a new manager at work. She is in her 40s, and the ceaseless chatter on the work WhatsApp has quieted to a degree. I have 5 shifts in a row, am I annoyed? Only because I am low energy. The trails are open, and we are eager to get back to our weekend hikes. There is good happening, I just feel worn down, and a little washed out.

Spring came to the trail

I went hiking today, my first into the escarpment in a month. The snow is gone, and the ground almost dry.

Bruce Trail

I have a great need to write, but have had tremendous difficulty sitting to do so.

This year has been challenging, and the final month of hard winter left me sad and feeling old.

It’s good to be out on the paths again. The trees surrounding me help to chase away the blues.

One month ago.

I think this is a good beginning.