250118 five coyotes wertzle ..."for all other inquiries press 47."
A few days ago, Rocky disappeared, and then showed up at the field half an hour later. Since then, I have been watching him most carefully. This morning I was watching, and he went behind a car and ... was gone. I called, and whistled. No Rocky. A while later I drove to the field and walked up the middle, looking for movement. Nothing. His disappearance always sends me into a panic, because I am afraid he is dead, run over, stolen, trapped, and I won't find him! Then, he is there at my side. Where did he come from? He will be the death of me!
I have now bought a GPS dog tag, which costs a lot, and then there is the cost of the app. But I hope that it will pay off, if he even gets lost one time. He is old and I worry about him going off to die, or being out and about and then dying, and I wouldn't know what, nor where. These gadgets are fallible. If someone wants to steal the dog, or the GPS tag, you are out of luck.
Five coyotes. I took Rocky to the field - he will do his business only in the field - nine at night, and don't five coyotes come trotting up the field. They came towards us as I herded Rocky into the car. Brazen, or curious. Why shouldn't they be brazen? It is a foreshadow of the future, when the city is abandoned after the apocalypse and the wilds have returned. The next night these same five were howling an amazing chorus in the field to the north. A couple of nights later, I was equipped with my new high power flashlight and watched as the five banditoes showed up and Rocky met them nose to nose, literally, but nothing bad happened. He came when I called and one of them followed us down the field.
Here is one of two who were going home in the morning. So casual.
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Persimmon, the fuyu kind, is one of my favorite fruits. It is only available a few weeks of the year, unlike most other produce. It is never sour, has no wertzle, and it is ripe when firm, so there is no waiting for nor missing, the ripe moment. There are no seeds to be found; they must be microscopic, so the only thing you remove is the crown of leaves.
Wertzle, (a word I have coined), is what I call a quality of some fruits, that is a sourness that I experience in excess of plain sour. It makes my face scrinch up and I cannot bear to eat the fruit. Others will say the grapes are sweet but they are not, to me. Cooking gets rid of the wertzle, I find, and then even if the fruit is sour it doesn't bother me. Elf is perhaps the only other person who experiences wertzle: she says, "Fruit's nasty!" Bananas, melons, pears, and persimmons are the only fruits that don't have wertzle. Blueberries and raspberries have very little. Others, such as strawberries and grapes will be fine if they are really ripe.
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A friend had his EMAIL hacked! I have not heard of this before. I received scam emails from his email address, and knew they were fake, and although he said he had been hacked, I did not suspect an EMAIL hack until I received a scam request for money. So, now I must suspect emails, and, since I know that AI can imitate voices, I am not even sure, when I talk to this friend, if he is really him! It seems we have returned to person-to-person interaction for the real thing. How long before they can hack a fingerprint passcode, or facial recognition. Nothing is safe from the digital world.
2025: Is it a thing about the beginning of a century that one sees plague, war, the rise of the extreme right, and the destruction of the economy? Here we are in the 2000s, with covid, (Spanish Flu), Trump and Putin (Hitler and other faschists) and the cost of living skyrocketing (the depression), If we look at the 1300s, we see the plague hitting at mid-century, although we see the famine and drought happens in the twenties and thirties, similar to the dust-bowl depression of the 20th century.
It is very strange to be at the one-quarter mark of the century. I am afraid that my brain is in low-power mode and I don't feel as if I have really grasped this time-jump. I want to say, "let's hope for a better year!", but I can't quite get up the optimism or the sense of reality necessary.
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I sometimes walk by the Mimico creek: there is a long path that runs from Islington to Martingrove. It is where the coyotes hang out when they are not roaming the hydro fields. It is peaceful and wild, soothes the city jitters.
Someone lovingly decorated this little tree! Community, what a joyful thing. When people put lights and decorations on their homes it is a sharing of community.
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"We are currently experience it longer than usual wait times." - has any switchboard (to use an anachronism) ever NOT been having a busier than usual day, in your experience? And why have they not hired more phone people? Your call is obviously NOT important to them.
I spent 25 minutes this morning trying to arrange a mammogram. (Never did get it done.) I called places, went on-line to several different websites, and everywhere I went they needed information that I was trying to FIND! Is it just me, or that I am old, and of "very little brain" (left), that I find acquiring services of any type a frustrating, sometimes infuriating, exercise? A machine answers the phone, and also is the "chat" on websites. Sometimes, pressing 0 on a phone call, will take you past the long introduction to features and numbers to press that the robot gives you: ",,,for all other inquiries, press 47." Often there is no human available! I ask you! My brother used to say that the telephone was still the best invention, (and incidentally. the yellow pages: the original www) and that in moving to email, text, and websites, was actually a step backwards.
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Tamar's family is cooking along, quite literally: Nick does the daily meals, Tamar does wonderful weekend breakfasts, and Indre has taken to making cookies. Robin concocts fancy drinks and makes mug cakes in the microwave. Christmas was pretty nice; the kids had lego kits that kept them busy most of the time, and there are several new family games to enjoy. The Tamar family plays games regularly. My family of origin did too; I think it is a good form of bonding, and develops social skills. At Christmas we used to sit around the dining room table, my four brothers, my father, perhaps a close friend or two, and play poker, penny-ante, all of us smoking. We played the night of my mother's and then my father's funerals. It is a being-together, not talking about feelings, just sharing the company of loved ones.
An angry wind, though pale and grey, shakes the naked branches overhead and the late never-yellow sun breaks through the clouds. I am old, pale, grey, and angry. Tamar says that Harry Potter is about regret. Perhaps I should re-read the series. Regret seems to be what the seventies of one's life are about.
Best wishes to you. Keep well.
Mumma Yaga
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