Trawna The Good

I’m going to Toronto this weekend.  I haven’t been since November, before my surgery.  I love Toronto.  I think I’m supposed to hate it, but I don’t.  I love that you can get a really good falafel pretty much anywhere.  There’s used CD stores all over the place, and yarn shops.  Romni Wools is in Toronto.  Tortilla Flats for chimichangas and ridiculous drinks like Killer Koolaid.   Royal Falafel.  Lettuce Knit.  Global Cheese.  Kensington Market.  The ROM.  The World’s Biggest Bookstore.  Ikea, my love, have you missed me?

I lived in Toronto for eight years, from 1982 – 1990, university and beyond.  I moved there from Bracebridge where I grew up.  We used to go to Toronto on the train, catching it outside the Albion Hotel at five o’clock in the morning (thanks Kim for the reminder) in the freezing cold, because there was no train station.  Pulling into Union Station, big bustling stinky Union Station just at rush hour.  Then, to the Eaton Centre, and a tour up and down Yonge Street.  Orange Julius (which we didn’t have in Bracebridge).  They’d put a raw egg in for you in those days, it was the best.  Morningstar for beautiful clothing.  Ragnarokr leather goods.  All the Hungarian restaurants on Bloor Street.  Tiger’s Coconut Grove in the market.  The Bamboo Club.  Larry’s Hideway.  Frieda and I sang at Larry’s Hideaway, before it burned down, whadda dump, but an endearing, filthy, lovely, dangerous dump.  Mars Restaurant on College Street, is it still there?  I don’t know.

When I first moved to Peterborough, I worked for a lawyer who shall remain nameless because I have nothing nice to say about him.  It wasn’t Alan, Alan was great to work for, it was the one before that.  He fancied himself the Atticus Finch of Peterborough, regardless of the fact that he had neither wisdom nor Cary Grant’s looks.  Bit of a fool.  He told me I didn’t know how to deal with “Peterborough folk”, coming from the big bad city.  I reminded him that I was born and raised in a town 1/4 of the size, and perhaps they didn’t know how to deal with a hick like me.

I AM a hick.  The subway still amazes me.  I am constantly looking up when surrounded by tall buildings.  I trust pretty much everyone.  I smile at people, I say good morning to people.   I don’t care, I think that’s how it should be.

I am going to Toronto this weekend, to visit  my older son Connor.  He is in Toronto, and it is a good place.  Except for Rob Ford.  Why’d y’all go and elect that jackass?

I’m Never Getting Out of Bed Again

It’s been a quiet weekend here in Lake Woebegon.  Went out to dinner with Don and Leesa and Leesa’s sister Karen at Teddy’s in Oshawa.  Happy Anniversary to Don and Leesa, 18 years of married bliss (okay, maybe not ALL bliss, but they make it work okay, which is more than I was able to do!).  I spent a solid week anticipating coconut cream pie.  They have the most wonderful coconut cream pie, creamy, gorgeous and thick as a brick.  As we were perusing our menus, I heard one waitress say to another “we’re out of coconut cream”.  Without thinking, I yelled “WHAT?”  Confirmed.  No pie.  Apparently you have to get there early on a Saturday to get pie.

Although we had a lovely dinner, the Shadow of Pielessness has been hanging over me ever since.  The tastiest piece of pie is the one you didn’t get to eat.  God bless her little heart, Leesa says she’s going to make me one for tea time on Wednesday night.  Is there any cholesterol in pie?  Didn’t think so…

 Dave loaned me his laptop after my surgery.  It was my lifeline to the outside world for several weeks, and kept me from utter loneliness, boredom and despair.  I started this blog on that laptop!  I often blog on the laptop now, sitting up all cozy in bed with my trusty editor Muffy at my side.

All along, though, I knew I’d have to give it back (seeing as it doesn’t belong to me).  I got to keep it a few extra weeks while Dave was out of the country, but this was the weekend it was to go home.

AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT?

Dave gave me a beautiful little notebook computer.   He set it all up for me, got me connected to the wireless and now I’m never getting out of bed again.

Best Day Ever

When I was small, my dad used to be the principal at Milford Bay Senior Public School.  My mum didn’t work in those days, and dad needed the car to get out to Milford Bay, so any time we needed anything, we walked downtown.

The best day ever was a rainy day.  Probably 1967 or 68, I guess, I was about 4 or 5.  I had a new red raincoat, fitted to the waist with a full skirt, and a matching sou’wester hat. We picked up my brother from school, and stopped at Merv’s Meat Market on the way home. I knew that I was Merv’s favourite kid, because he always gave me a wiener to take with me.  On that rainy day, I ran ahead of my mother and brother, and marched up Hunt’s Hill wildly waving my baton-wiener to keep my imaginary marching band in line.  Glorious, frabjously joyful day!  I’ve never forgotten it.

There were other awesome things downtown.  The stuffed Humpty Dumpty at Campbell’s Yard Goods.  The toy store on the corner by the Patterson Hotel.  Elliott’s 5 and 10.  And no kid from Bracebridge or from anywhere else on the planet has ever had a better donut than those deep-fried, super-frosted bad boys from Waite’s Bakery.  *sigh*  I know I’ve never had a better donut to this day.

Hawn’s Jewellers, the Thatcher Studio, Dot’s Tot to Teen, Garwood’s.  Irma’s Greasy Spoon.  Maureen’s Ladies’ Wear.  Help me here, please comment if you remember any more of the long-gone downtown of that era.  The only place I can think of that’s still the same is the New Haven, but the Seto family doesn’t own it anymore.

In highschool, I used to get all my favourite freaky clothes from the basement of Economy Fair.  Cora worked upstairs, after Bamford’s closed. And we used to go to Angie’s Delicatessen after school for wedge fries.  Or to the Top Hat for a barbeque burger.  I worked at the Garden Cafe for a few summers, and also at the old public library, before it got its facelift.

Of course as we grew up, a lot of those places closed.  Things change, you can’t go home again, that’s for sure.  Colleen told me that Merv Speck gave pretty much every kid in town free wieners.  But on that day, marching up the hill in the rain, I was everything special and sparkly and entitled all rolled up into one little happy raincoat.

Best Day Ever.

And Who Might You Be?

I was listening to Definitely Not the Opera on the radio on my way home from beautiful downtown Lindsay today, and their topic was the phenomenon of a word being on the tip of the tongue.  This happens to me more frequently than to most people, I think.  Something in my brain just doesn’t connect.  I think sometimes I have knob and tube up there.

Once we were going out to a family dinner, and my sister-in-law called and asked me if I would bring my folding chairs.  Happy to oblige, I sent Thing One down to the basement to get them.  That is, I tried to send him down, but I couldn’t remember the word for those four-legged things we sit on.  The word “chair”, for some reason, just wasn’t in my head any more.

Now, I can understand not remembering words like “dirigible” or “contemptuous”, but CHAIR?  Pretty basic.  It’s a handy, everyday word.  Even the Amish make chairs.  They’re kind of a staple.

Names are even worse, especially actors.  Faces, I can recognize.  Names, not at all.

All of this disappearing information invariably comes to me at one of two times.  In the middle of the night, I might scream “Russell Johnson played the Professor on Gilligan’s Island!”.  That’s probably why I sleep alone most of the time…

Or on the can.  Often the only thing that will release those tricky tip o’ the tongues is a seat on the throne.

And it’s only getting worse with age.  I worry that one day I will develop dementia of some kind, and forget even the people I know and love, and that faces, as well as names, will start to disappear from memory.  I hope those people will remind me, in a way that restores that connection.  Even so, we don’t know people when we’re first born, and we are loved just the same, so hopefully that will continue up until death.