Sunday, I forgot to mention, was the closing day of Pride and the daughter and I on the way to the Co-op found ourselves in the midst of it. This town punches above it's weight in rainbows, although the abundance of Southern Plates suggest a large number came up from more conservative climes to a place where they wouldn't be so harshly judged.
And that evening, my neighbour to the right, a rather plain picture of country domesticity, has outdone herself and dressed up as a Pony Girl, the full regalia, galloping with her girlfriend off to the club, giddy up! I would never have guessed, but it becomes her.
Yesterday, reading my book, 38 degrees, record breaking temperatures, the sky slowly filling with smoke, a sullen bronze, errands to be done in the morning, before 10 or 11 when it becomes unbearable to go out, and maybe again a stroll after 8 when the sun is down and a cool wind. The day off is largely thwarted by a bored upstairs neighbour, the power outage pooched her TV, her boyfriend is off in Sicamous and she’s lost her phone, drunk at 9:00 AM and left it on the power box outside where the CPD club gathers, picked up and later returned by a couple of itinerant meth-heads, now she's popping in and threatening my day off, making rather suggestive overtures that perhaps if I'm as bored as she is...
I'm not. I have a book. She doesn't take no very well, but I congratulate her on her boyfriend and remind her of how well they get along and she gets it.
Now, a hot and hazy day, the rain of hazelnuts and acorns at the intersections and parking lots, the crows waiting for traffic to crack them, and going for coffee to find no line-up, the town now belongs once again to the locals, time to get on with a few other projects and start cleaning up the paper machete shredding, bust out the paints, the mixed media, this was a long year without wheels and I don't want next year to be the same...