Corner of Bourbon & Division

I've been keeping my bicycle in the back shed for the past ten days or so (nearly two weeks now), and hitting the street via the lane that runs behind the house. Last night was no exception. I installed my pannier, affixed my helmet, turned on my flashing lights, and headed out into the lane. I passed by what looked like a spiky potted plant to my right, when to my surprise the potted plant hissed at me and swished around in a nonexistent breeze.

I didn't fall off my bicycle, but did a double-take nonetheless, stopping a few feet away. By then, my astounding reasoning faculties had figured out that it was an animal and not a potted plant, and probably a skunk by the colouring. What I had seen was the white on the skunk's tail (highlighted by the white light on the front of my bicycle), held straight up in the air, giving the illusion (to me) of foliage. The skunk, underwhelmed by my interruption of its routine, huffed at me and stamped its front feet, but by then I was too far away for it to do any real damage. After a moment it turned and went on its way, and I did the same, feeling better about my whole evening. I don't know what it is about seeing wildlife, but it makes me unreasonably happy.

I don't know if it's the same skunk I encountered a couple of months ago, but it was a fun little chance encounter nonetheless. A close call, too. I'm just glad I didn't end up going to work reeking of skunk spray.

I went shopping at Loblaws yesterday.

1- Food is becoming stupidly expensive. I categorically refuse to spend $6.00 on American broccoli. Broccoli is not worth $6.00. I am going to go to my local fruit & veggies store and see if theirs is cheaper (and hopefully locally-grown!).

I am looking at the food I eat lately, in terms of how far it's had to travel to get to me, and it makes the mind boggle. Does anyone out there know of a good book which can tell me what kind of fruits (apart from apples) are grown locally? What the hell did people do before oranges and lemons were consistently available in cold climates?

Anyway.

2- I brought my two eco-bags with me, and am pleased to report that all my shopping fit in them, apart from potatoes, cat litter and cat food, for which I didn't use bags at all. Normally that would have taken at least six or seven plastic bags (and if I'd put the big stuff in bags too, it'd be more like twenty bags!).

More on this later. I am working out a plan in my head to get my grocery shopping done entirely without the use of a gasoline-dependent machine. However, I'm not there yet.

3- People are, fundamentally, pretty okay. I was trying to get the cat litter off a high shelf, and since it was almost all gone, the containers were wedged way at the back of the shelf. I am not short (5'7" which is the national average for women my age), but my fingers didn't *quite* reach that far. So I asked a woman taller than I if she could bring down a container for me, and she complied, although she looked a bit bemused. It was nice. :)

4- I bought a pot roast. They were on sale for something like $1.99 a pound. Tomorrow I shall stick it in my slow-cooker, or something like that, and have a lovely meal. Several lovely meals, more like.

Now I am off to bed. I've been getting to sleep far too late, these days.

The good thing about being up early-ish on a Saturday morning with nowhere to go until early afternoon is that I get to spend a quiet morning with my cats, who were beginning to feel quite neglected, I think. I spend so much time at work and at my other activities that I'm home really only in the evenings now, and since they don't sleep with me anymore since I moved here, they don't get much cuddle time with me.

So this morning I sat in an armchair and let them drape themselves over me while listening to The Beatles Anthology Vol. I, and we spent a very nice hour or so just cuddling. Right now I have three cats snoozing on the table next to me as I type, purring and contented. I wish sometimes that my life was just that easy: perfect happiness just because someone spent an hour petting me. :)

Poor George seems to have turned into Pukey McPukesalot. I'm going to keep an eye on him for a few days to see if he really can't keep anything down, or if it's just something fleeting.

Gretzky seems to be getting along a bit, too. She's having trouble jumping up to high places like the table or counters without assistance, and she climbs onto the windowsill using her back claws and makes the most horrible fingernails-on-chalkboard sound when she does. I've put the recycling box there to help her up, but she seems to forget what it's for occasionally.

I had a fun conversation with a stranger in the metro on Thursday. After I recovered from the trauma of reading "The Sparrow" I went back to the book I'd been reading before: "She" by H. Rider Haggard. He's the one who wrote "King Solomon's Mines" and the Allan Quarterman books. So I'm getting out of the metro at Guy-Concordia station, nose buried in this book, when a voice startles me out of my concentration.

"Ah! Rider Haggard! She-who-must-be-obeyed!"

I looked up to see what I can only describe as a geek boy dressed in a startling canary-yellow t-shirt. He was a bit scruffy around the edges and reading a fantasy novel whose title I didn't quite catch because he was waving his book around a little too emphatically.

"Indeed." I replied.

He went on to attempt a clumsy flirtation by quoting a doggerel about Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, who apparently were friends. It fell a little flat because he couldn't remember most of it. However, he redeemed himself by adding that Kipling was the only Nobel prize winner for literature who'd had his work adapted into a Disney movie.

"It's hard to imagine Hemmingway being made into a Disney movie," I conceded.

He grinned at me and gestured expansively. "Disney's 'The Old Man and the Sea' —ON ICE!" he cried.

There were helpless giggles for a while. Then we were outside and heading in opposite directions. We shook hands, he told me his name was Danny, and I told him my name, and we went our separate ways, both pleased at the random encounter, I think.


Books are a universal language. You just have to find the right dialect. :)