Stewing Ashes

Forgive me Blogger, it's been three months since my last notation.

Long or short, it happened just as it is. Three months of softball games and tournaments, three months of typing up emails and filling out job applications, three months of waiting and watching. Sickness, health, and wealth and stealth. News and no news. Top in Canada with the bottom of the barrel.

And after all that time, now it looks like everything else is about to happen in just one short week...

I like the Toronto Airshow, Labour Day weekend every year. The Hornet never fails to impress me, get my blood running -- zipping overhead as if it owned gravity. I'm a big fan of engineering at it's finest.

Re-tiring

It must be an odd feeling to be facing your last day of work... ever.

I mean, you're done, that's it, your part is over. You've worked your whole life to retire one day and all you have to do is walk out of that door and walk away from the work-life you've know for the past... 40 or so years.

It can't be that easy... Suddenly there is no definitive length of time to measure this new segment of your life -- no date to mark on your calendar, no party to mark your next achievement. You're on your own.

You can do pretty much whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want.

Is that too much freedom?? Sounds kinda tiring to me, to be honest.

Nice... Shoes?

I was walking back from the grocery store today, a bag in each hand, purse slung over one shoulder, black shoes hot in the sun. There's the usual traffic and construction going on along St. Clair Avenue, dogs walking in the parks, people strolling along in the sunshine for lunch, streetcars rumbling past every so often.

The lights at Spadina had just turned red. I slowed down a bit and suddenly, faintly, I heard somebody whistling nearby. But... it was one of those catcall whistles. Of course that wasn't directed at me.

Looking up, I saw a man in the second storey window of the corner house that's currently under construction inside. And he's looking directly down at me.

And he whistles again, slowly, now making eye contact.

I couldn't help laughing -- he was wearing a painter's mask to hide his face.

Anyway, he turned around and went back to his work and the streetlights changed and I continued walking home.

Quit It

Don't yell at me for not having a job... I'm working on it, all right?

Cutbacks At Work

I find it ironically amusing that, on my last day of work of my first real job, the coffee cup I bought this morning from Country Style says "freedom" on the side.

Freedom.

Freedom from what, from work? From usefulness? From salary??

So here is one of those new chapters in life that has another elusive title. Gosh, what the heck will I do next if I'm not testing smoke alarms?? Go back to school? Find a job that's within, like, a hundred kilometres of where I live? Move to a different city? Move to another country??! Travel? Change fields??

Crazy to imagine, exciting to anticipate, scary to follow through... Yay freedom!