Must Be Mid-to-Late September Because . . .

. . . While life’s perhaps not as busy as it was before I retired — or, at least, the Busy isn’t Obligatory Busy-ness — last week I was molto impegnata, molto occupata (Very Busy! using two Italian synonyms for Busy . .  I hope 😉

Per esempio. . . (I know you don’t need me to translate this, but just in case, it means “For example.”

Sunday: Daughter and granddaughter accepted our impromptu invitation to dinner.  Very pleasant, easy evening.  Probably shouldn’t count as “Busy,” but I’m learning that even the best social events exert a cost, however small, on us Introverts.

Monday: 25 km bike ride with Paul through the flatlands where three rivers, a creek, and a slough hang out. Lunch afterwards at a pub overlooking one of the rivers. Once again, I fully acknowledge that this is a very enviable kind of Busy. Nonetheless. . .  Oh, and then later that day I had a 90-minute Zoom meeting — Italian Book Club. Such a satisfying session in so many ways, but speaking and hearing about Italian literature — in Italian! — is at least as tiring as marking papers used to be. With the superb difference that after 90 minutes I was done — whereas that marking was interminable. Also, if I wake up too tired the next day, I can just take the day off!

Tuesday:  I did! I pretty much just took this day off! That is, I read,  I wrote a blogpost, I knit, I started a new embroidery project, did yoga, went for a long walk, but nothing extra, nothing more than what I wanted to do.

Wednesday:  Had a friend over for l’heure de l’apéro (she’s Swiss and a polyglot; some of our sipping and nibbling was en français). So good to catch up after those months of restrictions followed by weeks and weeks of heading in different directions. Oh, and Wednesday was also my bread-making day. . .

Thursday: Booked a flight. Will tell you about it later. Much consultation and consternation before the commitment. Some panic after. Considerable mental/emotional energy expended. And subsequently burning calories by crossing my fingers. . . .

Friday: Another visit here, this time with a friend I had previously only met online in Zoom classes.  I’ve written here about the challenge of making friends in the city, at this stage of life, and particularly with the massive interruption of Covid-19, so you will know how happy I was to enjoy a few hours of conversation IRL (In Real Life! Flesh and Blood, in carne ed ossa, en chair et en os, YEP! I was pretty happy!). We talked about Italian classes and travel and “life so far” and knitting (my new friend is embarking on a Tsutsu bear adventure, and after that she has a small menagerie of beings just waiting for their bodies to be knit).

Saturday: Another in carne ed ossa meeting, this time with the teacher and fellow students of my Italian class. After 18 months of evening Zoom classes, I’ve switched into a new group that meets on Saturday mornings — in an actual classroom at the Italian Cultural Centre. Not only does this time better suit my diurnal rhythm (between 7 and 9:30 p.m. I’m better at Netflix than at learning Italian!), but being able to sit across and alongside a table from fellow students (all double vaccinated and careful about keeping our distance) is, for me, more conducive to a comfortable, relaxed conversation than the strained-neck, raised-shoulders posture I seem to assume in front of a Zoom screen. The downside is that I can’t read masked lips, so my hearing is further compromised; I miss the fellow students I’ve spent so many Thursday evenings with; and the group I’ve switched into has been together for a long time, and many of the students are more advanced. Then again, adjusting to this hearing challenge should boost my listening and oral comprehension skills — and having more advanced students to learn with is great motivation.  I’m already looking forward to next Saturday!

Still, enjoyable as that new class was, I indulged in an afternoon nap after I got home; those 2 1/2 hours of concentration were part exhilarating, part exhausting. (Oh, who am I kidding?! I “indulge” in an afternoon nap almost every day of the week! Side-effect of waking before 6 am.)  Good thing I did, because guess who came for dinner? And a sleepover at Nana and Granddad’s? Only a Six and an Eight-but-almost-Nine.  .  .  Between their arrival just before dinner on Saturday and their departure just after lunch on

Sunday:  we talked about new friends, new school, new art classes and creations, video games (Mine Craft, Among Us — Nana’s trying to acquire basic Cultural Literacy). We watched Albert Lamorisse’s short classic film The Red Balloon together (a 1956 film that is still captivating young viewers — and this much older one, who has viewed it numerous times — 65 years after its making). . . .and they prevailed upon me to read myself hoarse, through two volumes of Barbara Park’s Junie B. Jones’ series, which I’d borrowed from the library Saturday afternoon hoping they’d incite the same belly laughs as when the oldest granddaughter (now almost 13) and I read them together a few years ago. . . I can’t explain the magic, but a few times all three of us were laughing ’til we cried.  Powerful endorphins there.  Enough to launch me into

Monday: Which is today, a Federal Election day here in Canada, so that voting and writing this blogpost were the priorities of the day.  And honestly, it’s a post that assembled itself out of a week’s Random Abundance, and I’m not at all sure I’ve achieved any kind of Coherence yet (See the quotation from Kim Stafford, under the Instagram photos to the right: “Coherence is born of random abundance.”)  But the other posts I have in mind felt overly ambitious today.  September so often wants to rush headlong toward December, frankly, and today I wanted to drag my heels just a bit.

Next post, though. . . next post I’ll take you for a walk to see some new murals in my neighbourhood.

Might even try to throw in a few Outfit Selfies — you know, What I Wore While I walked 😉 — before it’s all umbrellas and hoods and boots and coats (we’ve had rain and wind and thunder and lightning, so Fall is definitely happening). . . .

Some murals make for sunny antidotes, though. . .

Feel free to guess what word the letter “U” contributes to in this cheery citrus-coloured mural. . .

Should you be interested in comparing this September post with others from my pre-retirement years, here’s one from ten years ago, another from 2012; and one from 2014. They all feature What I Wore, and honestly, I see that time has wrought some changes (Duh!). . . they also stir up nostalgia for my island life and even for my working life (that beginning-of-term adrenaline, the potential of a new syllabus).

Okay, that’s it. I’m off. Hope you found some Coherence in my Random.

xo,

f