Sunday we watched some of the Olympics, mostly the skating competitions, and some of the skiing ones too. I was glad I wasn’t working on Valentine’s Day, for once. We got to relax and just enjoy the day, which was a wonderful treat. We went for coffee and ice cream later, and had a nice little walk.I thought it was just perfect.

I think working retail On Valentine’s Day has made me bitter towards the day. People get so greedy and fussy and they’re SO unbelievably rude I feel like being bitchy back, but of course you can’t. You just have to suck it up while they get in your face about the things you haven’t got because they came too late, and gee, we sold out, big surprise. They always think you’re holding out on them, that you’ve got a lot more product hiding under the counter and they think you’re secretly laughing at them. People think Valentine’s Day is a test they have to pass, and everyone fusses that “he doesn’t love me enough because he didn’t give me a big enough gesture,” or ” is it too soon to say I love you?” I can’t stand the crap people buy for each other; in a desperate attempt to “prove their love” they fling cheap ugly toys and uncomfortable lingerie, too much chocolate and expensive wilting flowers at their loved ones. It isn’t thoughtful, it isn’t romantic; and the gestures are meaningless when you start sticking a price tag onto the things you buy to show how much your love is worth. Sometimes I wonder if my customers ever asked their lovers what kind of flowers they really like, what colour is their favourite, what would be romantic to them? Valentine’s Day heaps on the stress, and I have seen so many people the day after St Valentine’s Day in tears or bitterly disappointed because “he just didn’t get it RIGHT, you know” and “how could he not know meeeeeeee?” I think, is that all you are doing? Holding up a metre stick to measure how successful your relationship is? Do you guys actually talk to each other? Do you know your lover at all or are you just thinking this is where you SHOULD be, and if you’re not there, why not? Do you reserve all your romance and sense of fun for one day only in the year and ignore your lover for the rest of the time? And you wonder why you’re breaking down and getting frustrated. Get real.

My Valentine’s Day was great: I didn’t have to deal with egomaniacs or fat greedy women or thin belligerent women or angry venomous men or any of the other myriad of people who hate everything and take it out on the girl behind the counter. I spent the day with my lover and it was a lot of fun, and very stress-free.

Been a pretty good weekend. We had Kate’s sister and friend come into town on Sunday. I picked them up from the ferry, and then the adventure began. The plan was to go to the Merridale Cidery. Apparently it was an hour outside of Victoria. So I programmed the address into my GPS and was surprised to see it was only 20km from the ferries. Excellent! we will get there nice and early. Except the GPS wanted us to drive through the ocean. No as much as I would like to have an amphibious car, I don’t have the means to drive through the ocean. Okay fair enough. My GPS could just be screwy. Sometimes that happens with software. So Sharon pulls out her GPS. And the same thing happened again.

Well this is no good. We will just have to head back into town and go from there. We managed to make it back to Victoria, despite the two GPS systems yelling different directions at us in an attempt to prove superiority over the other (we listened to neither at this point). At this point they both start agreeing again, and we start out to the cidery once again. Just to have them send us into off-road/private road routes. Most likely at this point the just wanted to watch the humans dance to their tune. Again we make it back to the highway and drive a bit further, and the system sends us on this long circuitous route. But finally we are there.

So we went in, had our tasting, bought some cider and decided it was time for lunch. It was raining so we sat in the car, and started listening to some music. And apparently we listened to it for a little too long; we killed the battery.

So off to find jumper cables I go. Of course no one has any, and I finally cave and call a tow truck. Right after, Rhian asks some people who just pulled up if they had any jumper cables. Nope. of course not. What the did have however, was muscle power. I drive a standard, and there is this neat trick called a push start. So we push my car down a hill, and thank the gods, it worked.

Of course we still hadn’t learned with the GPS, and we try to follow it back home. Only for it to send us to to the same closed roads. At this point we figure they might as well be speaking Norwegian as the directions from the device were utterly useless. So we sett it to Norwegian, We figured it was actually more helpful this way, as at least we now know how to say “Turn Left”

~Dusk

Rolling around in the doldrums of summer here, a lazy unwinding late July day. The heat is so very different here than on the prairies; it carries water and salt from the sea. My thirsty skin craves moisture, so I find this type of heat a balm. I don’t need to slather on so much hand cream here, as I did in the prairies, where a dry cracked wind always seemed to find me in any morsel of shade.

Of course, riding my bike a thin layer of sweat coats my skin, and I get to work sticky and red and hot, and I long to plunge into the icy sea in the inner harbour, rather than work. I can hear the American ferries boom when they trawl into the docks, and it makes me shiver with travel lust.

That sound always makes me remember taking the ferries from the mainland to the island, when I was a child, and usually I’d have a new book to read, or a comic, or sticky hard candy to glut my sweet tooth on. The outer deck used to be too cold for me, but I’d sit by the window and watch the sea and the sky and the thickly clotted islands pass. The decks where the cars were kept were always so quiet, and I never realized until recently that they are not closed in. The windows have no glass, and the railings are crusted and sticky with salt, and cold from the sea spray. Eventually, I would try to brave the icy windy outer decks, because one parent or the other would be leaning over the railings, hair blowing madly, watching some minuscule speck on the horizon with a pair of huge black binoculars. They’d go “Look! There, do you see?” and hand me the binos, and I’d look dutifully, but I was never sure what I was meant to be seeing, so I’d just make some appropriate murmur and hand them back.

The part that I hated and loved the most was when they would announce we were close to our destination and would we make our way back to the vehicles, and we’d all sit in the still warm air and wait until the ferry nudged into port. The anticipation of driving off into a new place, full of summer and sun and swimming and sand was so desired I could never really sit still. I remember a huge grin splitting my face and I was bouncing on the seat one time, as we rumbled from the belly of the ferry into a welcoming sunshine.

I
Melt
onto the parched
patio
I fan fan fan
Me
Wishing to waft away
away
These unbearable
Lazy sighing
Lagging-tongue
Dog Days

Every day, one of my coworkers comes in with a black coffee maker, two containers of sugar and a bottle of milk, and another container of fragrant coffee. And he makes java twice while we’re working-one for when we first get there, and a fresh pot for 2nd break. It’s good coffee, somehow better than I could ever do, even though it’s just ordinary. Sometimes another coworker offers a flavoured coffee to use instead of the normal grounds. Then the scent of vanilla or hazelnut wafts over us as we work.

It’s become a little treat-one small thing to look forward to on shift, and we really miss it when my coworker doesn’t show up. We complain and grumble at the lack of the fresh hot coffee, when he’s not there, more so than the fact that we now also have to do his workload. It’s the java we miss, the caffeine fix, the ritual of finding a mug that fits our hand, or our mood, or using the only blue glass mug, which looks like a photograph all the time and is really such an art piece even though it’s only unadorned, coloured glass.

It makes the shift a little more manageable, a little more fragrant, after all.

The cloak of night, and shroud of the June rain create a magic in the air that begs us to wander. The rest of the world is sitting in a deep slumber. People never could understand the enchantments that begin to show in the midnight hours. A shame really, people need more magic in their lives.

The few who listen to the call are never disappointed. The over saturation of colours make the world seem almost black; the rain cools the skin and heart. The night reaches out its gentle hand and eases the burdens that the harsh daylight places on the shoulders of the people.

The day, in contrast, is busy, restless. It offers little chance to show the bright pinks and purples of the flowers; there is no time to catch the crisp scent of the birch and cedar that hangs in the air. No the magic has to hide in the world of automobiles and technology. Magic has no place there after all.

But as the twilight hours turn to coal black nights, the Fae that hide in the scents and colours start to dance and play, creating a world hidden to all but the select few. The ones who listen to the call indeed see a more livelier world

The hummingbird we saw keeps coming back to my mind. We saw it one of the first few days we got here-it was drinking nectar from one of the many vivid clumps of flowers around the Inner Harbour, and at first I thought it was a bee or a dragonfly, or even another flower bobbing in the breeze. But then it turned towards us, and hovered vertically in the air. It could have been posing for a picture, it was in one spot so long. It had bright black eyes, large for its size, and it was wings were a blur they were moving so fast. It didn’t look like it had any feet either. Its back was bright jewel green-dragon’s green, emerald iridescence. Since we didn’t have a camera, or even a sketchpad, we just looked at it as it watched us, and then it lost interest in us and zipped away for another flower. Made my day.

Cherries are the rubies of summer. We bought a bag today because they’re cheaper in June than in May, and sweeter too.  They always remind me of picnics and bright plastic beach balls and salty driftwood and pebbly shores, and traveling. I was expecting the Safeway to sell BC cherries, seeing as we’re in BC, but no, they sell cherries from Washington. These are not the golden-blush cherries they sell in little bundles as a treat, these are the blood red scarlet cherries where you bite into them and the juice dribbles down your chin.

I find it ironic that in Alberta you can find BC cherries as an early summer staple, but in BC they come from further south. It’s like they export all they grow and save none for themselves-I wonder at the value of doing that. Can you imagine the flavour of cherries locally grown?

The very thought reminds me of when I went to the Farmer’s Market in Old Strathcona and bought a basket of fresh peaches. They were huge-as big as my two palms together, grown at a farm somewhere just outside of Edmonton, and thoroughly delicious.

Like most fruit, cherries put me in a summer mood, and I find myself thinking impossible things again and my mind starts to drift and dream under the hot golden sun.

on break today, there was a young crow that couldn’t fly yet, that wandered behind a garbage bin and got stuck. It parents were making a huge fuss and racket as one of my coworkers went to help, and managed to shoo it out.  And as he’s walking back to us, one of the young crow’s parents comes swooping at my co worker’s head, and only barely pulls up at the last minute. We all thought this crow was going to take a swipe at him.

Turns out there was a pair of young ones, twins possibly, who proceeded to sit docilely on a ledge by the garbage can while their parents watched/scolded from above.

plus, got off work early and the wharf was lively with mimes and music and colour. And living statues.