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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...
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Trying out new recipes to impress the children with.
For example, my classic clam chowder, now even better that I've discovered a better bacon - costs more, get less, but what a difference it makes...the daughter will love this!!!!!
Only she isn't around this week. But I need to try out a few new recipes, and I've noticed the Shank Steak at Kootenay Co-op at reasonable (>$10) prices, and I set my heart on making an Oso Buco.
It works out, after a fashion, the sauce - beef stock, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic, basil, rosemary, thyme - is delicious. Five Star. I'm pleased. The steak, however, turns out a little tough and stringy, not the fall-off-of-the-bone-melt-in-your-mouth kinda steak that I hoped for. I need to figure this out so next week I'll try again.
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Other news, J***** - the other server, the only other server, is sick. She apparently hit a deer with her car and took the week off to recover. This would be a bad thing, only she does this every week. The week before she had a sad horse and couldn't come in to work. The week before that her dog got lost and then showed up a day later sick and she had to take off a day off. The week before that she had to take her mother to the hospital...
She schedules herself for 5 shifts and is lucky to work 3 and while I like her well enough, like working with her, it's starting to become like I'm liking an imaginary character in a book that doesn't exist, that I've never met, like loving Jesus for all the imagined benefits an imaginary saviour confers, or loving a Santa Clause that has never once brought you a single gift...
***
At work, they're starting to get the hints. J***** doesn't want to work, certainly not as much as she's been working. I'm on her page, only I need a vehicle. And I'd go about it a bit differently. These last minute emergencies, as predictable as the sun rising, well, they're getting a little bit much.
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We tried out a new server, 2 shifts, lunches, never met her, she's already gone. Yesterday, my double, I trained two. Both younger, pleasant, not incompetent. I'm hopeful.
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Monday, 36 degrees. Too fucking hot. To do anything, and there's much to be done. Sit in the flat and melt into my chair. I've been feeding the crows, putting out peanuts where I smoke, the crows show up in my absence and recover them. There's one, that when he/she (??) spots me flies down and will hop up to recover, a little bolder than the rest.
Monday morning I'm greeted with the full mob, I've only brought 4 peanuts and there are 8 crows greeting me when I get up. I've officially been made provider...you can google 8 crows to get their AI nonsense on the topic. "Counting Crows" I don't recall got up to 8...
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Walking down to get some liquor because what else can you do in 36 degree heat, I've eaten, as much as I can, passing the antique shop where they've put my antique WWI gun sight in the window for a mere $200. I paid over $600 over 30 years ago in London. I should buy it... The law of greater fools, and I've spent my life proving it...
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And, yesterday, JR's Mother In Law shows up from Cranbrook, nice enough, but I'm no longer master of my own apartment, she's the guest and I'm officially on the living room floor yet again. Hopefully only for a couple of days, she's here to visit her mother, in the hospital, and I'm hoping this doesn't go on forever but god-damn today's a day off and I can't even hang about the flat, doesn't matter, I need to go and buy some more peanuts anyways...
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This morning, 2 fillings at the dentist.
Short, 30 minutes, the smell of drilled and pulverized bone and enamel...
Home, an hour and a half before work and there will be no nap. And so I make myself a cup of coffee, only, my lip, mouth is frozen and I'm unable to make a seal after every sip and so it just sort of "blorts" back out upon my shirt...
These fucking dentists, they're bankrupting me, that's twice in one month, a used jeep payment, and I'm overdue for the used jeep...
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It took about another 2 weeks and the 3rd little chilli pepper pot sprouted. 5 pots still empty.
I have 3. The first one, thriving now almost a month, god-damned if it isn't almost 2 cm tall. The other two, well, go figure.
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The evening light, hot, it's what's growing them. Until the weather is a little more consistently hot I'll have to keep them in the window, maybe move them to the patio for the morning light, then back indoors for the evening light. This is crazy, but only for a week or two, then I can move them to the roof where they'll get full sun all the live long day. Which apparently they need, because right now I'm not hopeful I'm going to be harvesting any peppers off of these.
***
The inspection, I suspect I passed, spent the week lightly cleaning, everything was good except for the insane wall of art supplies.
I need no more art supplies. I need to get to work and start lessening my load. Which I will do, only I didn't want to start and make a mess before the inspection. Inspection done, now time to get to work. Time to get all these little bits and pieces of mixed media off of my chest and into some surreal little gallery of the absurd...
***
28 degrees today and the evening sun cooks my apartment. Right now, a silver-slipper of a moon rising above Elephant Mountain. The streets are lively, buskers out, the itinerant homeless have all arrived and set up shop in Nelson for the summer, the dodgy crack-addled gazes of a 1000 years, shifty people ploughing backpacks and peeking through windows, picking through cars, the "undesirable" elements all come to town for the summer.