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It's been all week dreading the "Night Market" during which we run as quick as we can and never catch up, every waiter's nightmare. There's no staffing for this. I spend a couple of days trying to employ the unemployed around my building, dishwashers, hosts, busgirls, but nobody's biting...everyone in their swimsuits heading down to the beach with their floaty toys and pool noodles and inflatable rings...
Something about people that are always broke, complaining about a lack of funds, and then when the work comes in they all scatter to the beach...it's the Kootenay Way.
I'm cursing my life, down a pint of medication before work and struggle through, it buys me a measured indifference I couldn't do without. Saturday, a double, predictably quiet, slow, interminable, and I'm getting the DT's, a bowl of sriracha & chilli oil soup is having entirely predictable on my digestion, which has become entirely unpredictable.
***
Saturday, day done, I've tasked the neighbour with cooking dinner, bought a couple of cave-man sized steaks and potatoes and carrots, she does fine. And then retire to watch "House", Season 2, House's "All In" where he plays cards against Cuddy via Wilson was amusing and again in "House VS God". The character development gets better and I enjoy the banter between House/Cameron/Wilson but - the episodes, the plots, well, they seldom or never vary; last season it was the seizures to illustrate the situation getting serious, this season it's the flatlining and paddles...
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The COPD club, they meet outside at the electrical box in the parking lot for the hotel. The building actually built a shelter for the smokers, but nobody likes to use it. Nowhere to sit.
They're all the same age, my age, but to look at them you get a widely varying picture of biological ages. 2 of them, barely able to walk, coughing up lungs. The other, my upstairs neighbour.
It's the water cooler of community housing.
Upstairs neighbour is on the outs with her boyfriend, she can't support him, he's not pulling his weight, he's bought groceries but he gets them at Dollarama, buys the cheap Neopolitan Ice Cream, she's had enough. He has to get a job.
This is rich, given it's been 30 years since she worked, on disability but she's never offered to explain just how or why...
And running into him, now inspired to get work, hilariously he's been working on the truck at the thrift shop, he's got to have a talk with her, they get along well enough, only - well, she's a handful and wants it all...
Since he's been out of the picture she's made me a "Friendship Bracelet", the kind with all sorts of various beads, colourful, the beads, plastic, wood, glass, some rocks, like what you might exchange at a Taylor Swift concert...
If the pink shirts didn't make me suspicious looking enough the bracelet will cement things.
I pop by to check in on the Other Neighbour, she's been on the down low, broke and in one of her self-pitying humours, her place slowly drifting into a messy oblivion, coffee table littered with empty canned cocktails and mini-liquors, she's stopped asking to borrow money as she has no way to repay it and so I just e-transfer her some cash, community housing means your pay cheque is community as well, which I don't mind in trifling sums but I have bills as well...
She let herself in this morning only to demand that I carry her table, outside on the landing for 2 weeks now, downstairs to donate to the thrift shop. Management must have sent her an email. I could see all this being "the helpful neighbour" growing old real quick...
***
The restaurant, busy ever night except (oddly enough) on Friday and Saturday. Last night, passing through, a refugee from Shambala, the streets are filled with these lost souls, loving the vibe, sleeping in the alleys and doorways, this one, clearly not yet come to his senses, dancing, looking at the menu, dancing some more, I’m too busy for this. I leave him alone, attend the paying customers, it’s a hectic night. When finally I get around to asking him if he’d like to order he tells me the …. looks good, and I ask - just to confirm - if he’s able to pay. He digs through his bag, and after a few minutes shows me a couple of rocks. Just rocks, not crystals, not polished, just river-worn rocks that somehow caught his fancy. Now he must know his audience, because I’m intrigued, but too busy for this at the moment, in the afternoon we could have talked but now I’m hopping, not the time, and so I send him packing and he takes it in good nature…
***
And, out for coffee, the town has a new superhero, the "Unicyclist", tall and made taller by the Unicycle, in full on leather biker gear, reflective motorcycle helmet with full visor, speeding down Ward on his electric unicycle, he makes it look easy, all you have to do is keep your balance...he'd make a great community safety officer, speeding around and administering Naloxone to all the sleeping beauties...
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Neighbour on my floor pops in yesterday morning, lets herself in, she'd had a bad dream and wanted to consult my dream dictionaries. She's kinda-the-Kramer, seldom knocking, merely letting herself in to grab some coffee, sugar, art supplies, whatever she needs, and I haven't the heart to start locking the door.
Her dream, that she and her brother were in a football game, they lost, and then he killed himself, and it has her all out of sorts.
Myself, this is odd, I'd had a dream that night that I was in airports, missing flights, confused as to connections and destinations, and my sister (young, maybe 10 years old) had taken a dive from a platform, suicide, landed on her neck, it broke and a milky-white fluid poured out around her body and I'm shouting for my father...
As well disturbing, and I'm struck that we both should have had such similar dreams (the death of a sibling by suicide.).
But she's too busy to chat, conversation is not something she does anyways and I have to be kind of grateful, she's looking up the symbols in various of the dictionaries, finding competing explanations, trying to sort it out...
***
The neighbour upstairs, taken the past few weeks to hanging out with a boyfriend she met at the Soup Kitchen, he's homeless, lives out of his car, so she spoils him with bubble baths and home cooking and inane TV and they seem pretty happy.
"We laugh so hard together..."
She doesn't work, too many of these people don't, and so every day it's wake up to the Vodka, have a joint, and the party gets started...
They approach me, they've been drinking too much, they want to start a sort-of mutual support group, a Temperance or Tee-Totaler league, there's no doubting I'm occasionally off the rails but these, these people don't help...
I volunteer instead my free liquor removal service, I'll take all the leftover vodka they have on hand, for free, they can get started on this abstinence binge right away...
"Tomorrow" she tells me, but tomorrow comes and goes and there's no half-empty bottle of vodka on my doorstep.
***
Money has started to stick in my bank account. Partly because the restaurant is that little-bit busier, and - more largely, because I've been buying the native cigarettes. They're terrible, but the whole smoking thing is terrible, and the savings is enormous. The savings is my bank account. And I ask if they have a moonshine or liquor distributor, but they don't, they might get, they've got everything else, "E", "Superman" pills, Adderall, Ritalin, Special K, they're just getting started, their prices are great and so maybe soon...
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This summer, of all the summers I've lived here, the most temperate by far. 35 degree days followed by days of rain and cloud, already there's the cool of autumn in the air, the morning, but by the afternoon it's the midday inferno.
The cherry tomatoes are ripening, there will be a good little harvest there, the strawberries are sweet, the basil grows, in the words of the neighbour - "Profusely" and the chilis are starting to give off little flowers where soon I hope to pick my Carolina Reapers.
No luck on the Jeep front, and I'm half thinking of giving up, waiting until next summer, I mean, the options at this point aren't great, and I'm loathe to take on a mountain of debt just when the bank account is showing some signs of improvement...
Chris checks in on me, haven't seen him all summer, he's his biking club now, his lover, but there was an accident on a FSR up near Trout Lake, maybe our FSR, and he wants to check I wasn't the fatality...nope, another couple, "influencers", not in the least interested in prospecting...
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So I go into the Best Western Parking lot to feed the crows. That way I'm off the property and there's no complaints.
The crows, I've had complaints that they've been cawing outside nonstop looking to be fed. I don't give in. This would be training them in behaviours I'd rather not.
And the other day I awoke to one on the railing outside my door. Waiting for me. Funny, I feed them on the other side of the building, but they've found me out. Clever. There's no feeding them here, though, there would be complaints and evictions...
But when I'm outside in the morning, pocket full of Dollarama peanuts, I set up a sort of scrimmage, a football game, flicking the peanuts into the parking lot - they prefer the shelled ones. And even if I can't see them they soon see me and chaos ensues.
First 1, then 2, 3, 5, 8...all hopping along, one swoops in and catches a peanut on the wing, others, shy, fly close and then hops carefully towards it, too shy and he loses it to another, others show up and chase each other away, some - 1 greedy, attempts to take 2, 3 in his beak, but often loses them when challenged by another, pigeons by the dozen now showing up and running interference, a peanut is too big but they can gather up the crumbs from the crows pecking...
Make it a game, try and flick the peanuts where each crow has a reasonable chance of grabbing his own, it's like football and I'm the quarterback, they seem to get it, going wide when they've finished their peanut for another...
This is the morning, before my coffee and maybe again after it's ready and I've checked the news. In the afternoon they're on their own, although I've still been followed, I'm trying to set up the expectation that this is an early morning thing, not an all-day thing, the early-morning football and then they too should be off and about their day...