Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
A photo of our wacky friend Andy:
Andy never fails to make me smile, and you couldn’t ask for a goofier picture if your in need of a laugh. 🙂 Up early because I won’t be home at midnight! (see post below)
Want to Join Wordless Wednesday’s? Sign up here:
Links to Other Wordless Wednesday Participants:
(please only list your name if you have a recent Wordless Wednesday post)
I’ve been a TOTAL bitch today. No smiles, no laughter. Nope, just a bitch. If you met me in person you’d know this is very much the opposite of my personality. Yes I can be grouchy and bitchy at times, but never all day. Why am is so bitchy? well, because …
I am not looking forward to going to the sleep clinic tonight. Nope, not at all.
I mean, I really don’t have problems sleeping. It’s the pain that I’m in that keeps me from trying to go to bed, or if I’m feeling ok, I simply just don’t want to go to sleep. If I’m not having pain I want to enjoy the feeling, so why would I sleep? Would you?
I’m actually going for the sleep study because I have problems sleeping after working a night shift. However, I haven’t worked a night shift since early December, and I’m not going back to work due to my illness until near the end of July if my illness has calmed down.
So why am I going now? Because my doctor wants me to. Even the sleep study doctor didn’t understand the request, although he did want to put me in a study for insomnia due to pain. Uh, that was the marijuana pill study, and I haven’t heard from the researchers running that study so I’m assuming I didn’t qualify, or perhaps they are waiting for me to complete the sleep study before contacting me. Who knows.
My poor husband. I’ve been miserable today. Very bitchy, grouchy, you name it. I just don’t want to go to the study, and I’m sure that because I don’t want to go and since I’ve let it ruin my whole day, I probably won’t sleep.
I am going to try to sleep. It would be pointless not to, plus, what else am I going to do there? They already told me they won’t let me leave even if I can’t sleep.
When I escape from the clinic tomorrow morning I’ll come home and tell you all about how they tortured me. Ok? I think I might bring my camera too. No, not to take pictures of the clinic (I might though), but to take some pictures in the morning while I’m downtown. I’ll probably be so happy to escape that I’ll walk to the nearest subway station, which is a 10 or 15 minute walk from where I’ll be. If I see any good sights to take some photo’s of, I’ll be sure to whip my camera out and capture them. As with any big city, the downtown area can be interesting in the early morning.
I’m going to post my Wordless Wednesday photo early. Perhaps by 7:30 pm E.S.T. as I’ll need to leave for the clinic by 8 p.m. Come back and find out what I posted. I’m trying to decide if I should post something that reflects my current mood or not.
My husband and I went out shopping when he came home from work yesterday afternoon. Actually it was more like evening – he needed a rest when he arrived home and spent a couple of hours in the backyard talking to all of our neighbors. The nickname I have for him certainly suits him – Sir Talkalot. We didn’t hit the road until about 5:30 p.m..
Off we went. First to a hardware store to pick up some more items for all of our on going renovation projects. I really don’t know if we’ll ever have this house finished. Some days it doesn’t feel like it. Then we went to the grocery store so that I could pick up all the ingredients that I needed for my grilled veggie recipe. Chris then decided that we needed to get some beer, and while we were going there way anyway, I decided that I wanted to get some wine to use to marinade the chicken with that I was planning to have with our BBQ that night.
When we pulled into the Beer Store (in most of Canada we have Government run beer and Liquor stores) we noticed a man standing near the entrance playing the guitar and singing. He was obviously playing for money. He wasn’t a street person, but he was someone that looked like he’d had a hard life, and was either pulling himself back onto his feet, or who was at great risk of losing everything.
Since my husband is an accomplished guitarist we’ve both developed a good ear for music and for other musicians talent, and it was obvious that this man knew what he was doing. He was playing quite well.
As we sat in the car we both looked down at the little storage compartment in the car, where a glass finger slide has sat for oh, approximately one year. My husband bought it and quickly discovered that it was too slim for his thick fingers, and that he wasn’t going to be able to use it for playing slide guitar. It was placed in the car with it’s receipt to be returned, but of course, never was taken back to the store. My husband has a habit of buying things and not returning them. When we are renovating he often buys one or two extra of whatever item we are working with at the time, just in case we need it or in case he makes a bad cut in a piece of wood for example. Unfortunately at least 2/3 of these items never get back to the store that we purchased them from because he either misplaces the receipt or just doesn’t do it. Luckily we’ll find a use for many of the extra items at some point. I hope!
At least we found a use for the too small slide! We got out of the car and approached the street musician. While he played my husband held up the glass slide, and sort of put it near the mans fingers as he played. The man had no idea what Chris was doing. Chris was actually measuring the thickness of the mans fingers to see if he could use the slide, but the man thought Chris was just showing it to him.
Chris and I talked with the man for a few minutes and he accepted the slide. His brother was nearby and he was also a guitar player, who happened to have experience playing slide guitar. Eventually Chris went into the beer store and I walked a little ways down the street to the liquor store where I bought not one bottle of wine, but three! No, I’m not a lush. Really.
My husband was supposed to meet me in the liquor store but he never made it. I arrived back at the entrance of the beer store to find him with his foot propped up on the newly purchased case of beer playing the mans guitar. We both felt good about having given away the too small slide. The street performer appreciated the gift, and who knows perhaps he’ll be able to expand his repertoire and earn a little bit more money by using his gift.
We aren’t always generous with street people but I think we stop and give them change more often than many people do. In fact, as I came out of the liquor store with my three bottles of wine, did I say that two of them were large bottles?, there was a man selling ” street news” outside the store, so I stopped and gave him one of our Canadian clunky $2 coins (twoonies we call them).
Actually, when I stop and think about it we’ve given away a lot of money this week. My brother was in town visiting from Vancouver, and we spent last Monday evening downtown with him, his wife and my sister. We must have given change to at least 4 people that evening. Oh and my sister-in-law gave an odd gift to our waiter. His back was very sore, you could see how much pain he was in as he served us or stooped to pick something off the floor. We called him over and we asked him if he wanted something for his pain. I happened to have my pain pills with me, but they are very strong and I likely wouldn’t have felt comfortable giving out such a strong medicine to a stranger, however she had some Tylenol #3’s on her and gave him two. By the time we were leaving the restaurant the waiter was feeling much better.
We had a couple more trips downtown and to the airport this week, and as we drove under the highway underpass, and through the downtown streets we occasionally encountered street people or ‘Squeegee people’ (ones who try to wash your car windows) when we were stopped at lights. I think we gave change to most of the ones that made it to our car window before the lights changed.
I’m glad we don’t go right downtown too often or else we’d really be broke. My husband would give money to everyone with a cup that he encountered if I let him! I’m a little more cautious, and or selective about who I give money to. I find that once you start, the other people see what you are doing and flock around you if you are in an area that has a lot of street people. Kind of like pigeons when you think about it. When I give out change I try to pick people that look like they really need it.
Another random act of kindness that we occasionally perform is giving out parking passes. If our parking tickets or passes still have time left on them when we are about to leave, and we see someone parking in a lot, or on the street, we’ll often walk up to the driver and give them our pass. Most people are so surprised when we do this. A half an hour or more of free parking? Thanks stranger!
Have you done any random acts of kindness lately? Given away an unusual item to a stranger who might need it? Carried someones groceries to the car? Anything that put a smile on another persons face just because it was so unexpected?
How do you feel about street people? Do you occasionally give change to ones that you pass regularly or who look needy?
When Chris and I finally reached home yesterday evening we enjoyed a nice meal of Shiraz marinated grilled chicken breasts, grilled veggies in a Dijon vinaigrette, rice and salad. Mmmm it was so good. Our last random act of kindness was that we shared it with our boarder. Ok, we have to feed him, that’s part of the deal, but it sounded good when I wrote it.
|
|
Photo Theme. Join the BL0GROLL. Visit participants. |
My husband, Chris looking out into the openness of Lake Ontario from Toronto’s Beach Area.
Links to Other Photo Scavenger Hunt Participants:
please only list your name if you have a recent Photo Scavenger Hunt post
We’ve had a South Korean student staying with us for over a month now, and while I realized there were a number of differences between our North American habits and his Korean culture I didn’t think it was too much of a problem. However, Thursday evening I discovered just how vast the cultural gap really is.
I was in the washroom and I happened to look down at the garbage can and to my horror I saw used streaked toilet paper sitting in it. What the heck? So I walked back downstairs and met up with my husband in the kitchen. “Go upstairs and look in the garbage and tell me if that’s what I think it is, would you?”
Chris looked at me strangely, and I said ” I think it’s used T.P., go look.” So off he went to check the garbage can. From upstairs I heard him say ” Oh my god it is!” and “Oh, that’s gross!” Meanwhile the boarder is in his room right next door to the washroom, and while I’m sure he must have heard Chris I have no idea if he clued into what Chris was talking about at the time.
Chris came back down stairs into the living room where I was waiting for him and he said with a most horrified look on his face “that’s just crazy!”. I tried to reassure him that it was probably something cultural. Gross to us, but probably not crazy. We decided to speak with him after dinner about it. Well, we actually decided that I would conveniently leave the room so that Chris could talk to him man to man, which would probably be less embarrassing for our boarder.
Since our boarder moved in over a month ago I must admit that I have been seeing neatly folded, but thick bundles of T.P. or what I thought might be a lot of Kleenex in the waste basket. I wondered about it, but then he got a cold about two weeks ago and I guess I figured it was from him blowing his nose (with a lot of t.p.?). I guess I was wrong, huh?
My husband had a very short talk with our tenant while I was out of the room. I don’t know exactly what was said but when I asked Chris how he reacted he said that he’d apologized and stated that, that is what he did at home. So it was cultural after all. I did a Google search. Here’s a strange one for you “Korean puts used toilet paper in garbage instead of toilet” to see what I might find, and the search did confirm my borders habit.
This might explain why I’ve been seeing ants in the washroom upstairs.
We’ve only had ants in the house once since we moved in and they were in the kitchen. They were coming in from the enclosed back porch where we kept the recycling. We solved this problem by keeping the recycling outside during the warmer months when ants and other bugs are active. So I was surprised to see ants in the house again this year, and upstairs of all places.
Our boarder carries a knapsack with him when he goes to school. He also smokes. So I thought maybe he might be bringing his knapsack outside with him, and placing it on the ground, when he took smoke breaks at school and accidentally bring home some extra passengers in the form of ants as a result. However they are getting in, I now know what’s been attracting them to the bathroom. Time to set some ant traps out.
We’ve been trying to get to know our boarder and spend some time with him each evening when we sit down to dinner and occasionally watch T.V. together afterwards. We’ve asked him if the food we are serving tasted good or if there is something else he might prefer. He always states that the food is good and that he likes it, but I’m not sure if he’s just being polite or if he’s being truthful. I know my cooking is excellent pretty good, but the food we eat in North America is quite different than what he ate in South Korea. The only thing that we’ve discovered that he doesn’t really care for is asparagus.
We have also tried to ask him about what life is like in South Korea, and while we get little snippets of information here and there we haven’t heard enough to discover how different it is from life in Canada.
If there are any people from, or, who are originally from South Korea who can give me some more information on Korean culture and it’s differences from North American culture I’d appreciate it.
When we asked him about this months rent, on Tuesday, he didn’t seem to know what we were talking about. His English is getting to be fairly good so I’m sure it wasn’t a language barrier that was causing his confusion. He almost seemed to act like he didn’t think he had to pay rent yet, or again. Perhaps he called the agency that put us together the next day and did discover that he needs to pay rent each month, because we finally got the rent on Thursday evening.
The toilet paper stuff really threw us. Do we have any more surprises in store? Please tell me if I do because I’d like to either deal with them before they become an issue or before I get another nasty surprise. I now know that putting used T.P. in the waste basket is something that is commonly done in South Korea, but it was a bit of a culture shock to discover it in my own bathroom! Yuck.