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Ran into friend yesterday, L*****, known her almost 40 years, an early girlfriend from Edmonton. I'm due to have dinner with her that evening, but here she is grabbing weed...
She's in tears. Moving back to Saskatchewan to look after her ailing parents, after 15 years in Nelson she just can't make it work. She has a great place, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, high ceilings, 2 floors, reasonable rent ... an enviable situation, only...
She hasn't worked for a year. And in the year she's been putting out resumes, setting the bar high, looking for those 100K+ jobs, and finally she realized she wasn't getting them, it wasn't going to happen, and so she bit the bullet, swallowed her pride, and decided to return.
The town, in the middle of Saskatchewan, nowhere really, hours to Saskatoon, more hours to Edmonton, I've been through, know the name although I can't picture it, probably a gas pump, general store, and buggerdly fuck else...
Seas of waving grass...
Over dinner I try and cheer her up. Brainstorm business ideas, like a mini-golf, or "The World's Biggest..." although what hasn't been done yet. I reassure her the dating scene out there is fabulous, (although, clearly, I'm no expert on this but that's a different post), the name of the town rings a bell and I Google - sure enough, one of the boundaries of a famous meteor fall, probably a few others that aren't recorded, plus in the coulee's you could find dinosaurs and every farmer I've ever met out there had a whoop-ass collection of arrowheads and if she wouldn't mind checking the thrift shops for watches...
She's favouring beekeeping.
I'm pretty good at finding the silver lining in things but I gotta admit, I'd be devastated as well...
I feel her pain.
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And Monday I've set myself the task of repotting the chilis and moving them outside. I wake early, walk around town, looking at free piles for 12" pots. No luck. Hit the hardware store on Baker, nada, then down to Wal-Mart, nothing, over to Wholesale Club, nothing, then over to the Farm Supply Store and compromise with 10" tubs. Better than what they're in. And buy a big bag of dirt and wrestle it all home and repot the chilis, move them outside, there's a spot at the end of the landing where they'll get double the light.
Untangling the roots, getting them into the bigger pots, a couple will suffer for a few days but they'll thank me later. And I them, the infamous Carolina Reapers...
Now I'm faced with a few small empty pots and I'm off on the same tour, once again, to find herbs to fill them.
The herb garden I've set up has been punctually raided by the neighbours, and I could use a few more basil and rosemary and thyme plants.
To the Kootenay Co-op, Ellisons, the killing-field that is the remnants of Wal-Mart's seasonal display; "50%" off a dead tomato plant isn't a deal no matter how you look at it, and over to Wholesale Club where it's the same again. Nobody has watered a thing since mid-June. So now a bunch of love-lorn empty pots...
On the way home, a garage sale in the alley, more plant pots, and having bought them new I recognize the bargain, pick them up, if I can't fill them this year I will next.
And then it's noon, way too hot to be out and about, and I'm home, thrilled with a productive day, and checking my phone I've already walked 15 KM this morning. The rest of the day off...
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And Sunday, after another scorcher, and I wait until the sun's gone down to walk up the Gelato shop.
It's the best shop in town, maybe 25 flavours, the kind that's rolled out on a frozen marble slab, absolutely delicious. I have a single, $8.00, reasonable, and I regret it. I should have had a double. A triple even. Do they do triples?
But tonight, getting close, there's a throng of people in the courtyard, a lineup, maybe 20 people deep, inside the shop.
People have caught on. For Ice Cream in town there's DQ - the other end of town, and there's the candy store on Baker - generic ice cream scooped from a tub, and there's another place around the corner, still open, same, generic ice cream from a tub.
I go to the place around the corner, it's empty, and I wonder if the 2 girls working know about the place around the corner? I mean, it's possible they don't if they're always here. And I can't be disappointed, I knew what I was getting, the price is the same but the quality, well, it doesn't even come close to comparing.
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A few days ago, an OD in front of Chahko Miko Mall. He/She didn't survive. No word on who it is, they seldom get obituaries, merely another one gone, an unnamed statistic for the papers, and you look at the homeless, for the usual faces, there are so many that have migrated here in the last couple of months, and you wonder who it was...
It should be mandatory that they get the same dignity we accord our own relations, that the newspaper publish a photo and obituary, to the best of their ability. A statistic has no face, but it is made up of hundreds and now thousands...
***
Then Cali, yesterday. On Facebook, when I finish work, there's a flurry of posts, a family looking for their daughter, left Procter to drive into Nelson for an appointment, never arrived. Pictures, I know here, 17? 18? years old? We worked together about 3 years ago. That restaurant was a curse. Pictures of her with her "N" sticker and her car. I taught her all about pedophiles and warned her away from every one of my colleagues. She took it in good humour.
The posts, people are volunteering to look for her, walking the highway where they think she went missing.
It ends badly, I'm not sure, but reading between the lines she crossed the highway and hit the water.
The posts, back and forth, people, the community, out looking for her, she was lovely and never an unkind word could be said about her. That's a rare thing. I share the post with the folks I knew that worked with her.
Chris, he was a first responder when they found the car. It's what you sign up for, first responder, volunteer firefighter, but I don't think anything prepares you for that, and he has trauma of his own.
So the days become tinted with sadness, and the parents are grieving a beautiful daughter, and so many are speechless, read the comments, the condolences, she was a bright light, visited me in the sushi restaurant, ran into her in the library, she'd always stop and talk, have a laugh, she'd honk and wave if she passed you - and now ??
Small town living. In the city, people disappear and you forget them, so many people, so many new people, new faces, and those who've slouched off to underground burrows are unremarked.
Down Baker tonight to find my medication, the streets, patios, bars, they're full. It's summer, life goes on as usual, but -
Well, you know.
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News in, that the "Big Beautiful Bill" has just passed.
They've asked for it, and so unto them they were given...
Now, I'm pretty sure Jesse Welles is working up a song by that title even as we speak, so - at least something to look forward to...