It’s A Pile of Thoughts!

Last Updated on: 30th June 2021, 09:45 pm

This is a pretty sad state of affairs. I’ve been meaning to write some random stuff down, and started compiling a list about two weeks ago…and I’m finally starting to write it. I have so many things written down that I thought I’d better split it into dog and non-dog posts. So let’s start with the non-dog stuff, because believe it or not, it’s a shorter list!

I don’t know what I’m going to do when this kid I call the huppy gets bigger. What will he be then, the artist formerly known as Huppy? Huppy was fun for a while, but part of me says it’s outliving its usefulness as a name for the little guy. But neighbour’s baby just takes too long, and he won’t be the baby forever. I know his mom isn’t down with the little guy’s name going up on the blog, and I can’t say I blame her. Any thoughts on a new good name?

But I wanted to talk about the adorable little guy for a while because he’s just so cute. He’s really changing, and you can see his little personality coming out. He giggles a lot, and people say he gives the biggest smiles. He’s starting to make little ba ba ga ga goo noises now, and he still won’t let me catch them on tape! What a rascal! But he loves to grab stuff, wave it around…and put it in his mouth. He has two teeth now, and the mouth is everything’s new destination. You can almost hear him say “Mmm…key strings. Mmm…phone cords. What? I can’t chew on that? Booo. Mmm…hands. They can be my own hands, or someone else’s hands, it really doesn’t matter. They’re finger-lickin’ good!” The other day, he just grabbed my hand, brought it close to his mouth, then stuck out his tongue and licked it and licked it and licked it again. Are ya a dog? I didn’t know my fingers tasted so mmm mmm good.

He’s getting very good with his little hands. He has figured out how to open and close the face on my braille watch. He loves it so much that he gets mad when his mommy’s own watch doesn’t open.

But he knows what his little hands can and can’t do. One time, he grabbed my hand and placed it very definitely on his seatbelt buckle in his stroller seat. I could have sworn he wanted me to take it off. Sorry bud, I can’t follow that order, little man.

We took him to the Santa Claus parade. We wondered how he’d handle all the noise and activity. He seemed to love it. The only sad thing was he slept through Santa! He was awake for lots of other things, but it was all too much by the time the man in red made his appearance. Ah well, he’s only five months old. He has an excuse.

Every time I look at him, I can’t believe how different he is from when he was a newborn, just a little under 7 pounds. Since I was the youngest in my family, I never got to watch a baby grow up this closely. All the baby cousins I ever saw, I’d see at family gatherings months apart. So one time, I’d see a brand new baby, and the next time I saw that kid, they’d be seven months old. That’s just not the same as watching this little guy daily.

You know back the other week when I broke the internet label? In picking through that label, I noticed that when you’re going backwards through the blog, that’s an even weirder experience than moving through the blog in fast-forward as I’ve had to do when labeling and titling posts. It’s weird to see Trixie be there, and then fade out of view, or see references to someone passing away, and then them being alive again. I’m weird. I think too much about the circumstances surrounding a post even when just doing geekery with the post.

Back a while ago, Steve talked about being skunked at Uno. Now, that’s happened to me, and at the worst time. Somebody was trying to figure out how to play, so asked me to record a round where I won. Well…I lost every single round in that whole game. I think certain five-month-old babies have been talking to my Uno game, telling it to thwart my attempts at a good recording.

God, living in this city is going to turn into great barrels of fun over the next few years. Why? Well, the city received heaps and clumps of government dough to do construction projects. That means that at one point or another, some part of this town will be covered with barriers, removed sidewalks, and other assorted goo.

Right now, one of the sections that’s ripped to hell is the section near the corner they’re thinking about turning into a roundabout. This has meant that the Trixter and I haven’t been able to do as many long walks as we used to do because it’s just not safe. One of the last times I walked down there, I had to give Trix a giant hug because she saved me. We were truck truck truckin’ along, and she came to a dead halt. I noticed construction crap, but thought we just had to pass through a narrow place. I told her to try, but she wouldn’t move a little doggy paw. Then I glanced around and noticed white lines! Oh my god, we were at the corner, and I had no idea because the curb was gone! I crossed that street along with someone, ran into the store I wanted to visit, and swore I would not be back here until the construction was done.

Then I had to go to the library, a place right at the corner that was all screwed up before, which is the reason I’m even posting about boring old construction. I called the library, said I was blind and needing to come down there, and asked them where the construction was in relation to the library. To be more specific, I asked if I was walking down Woolwich Street from Speedvale Avenue, would I be able to safely walk to the library. The woman said “Oh yeah, you should be fine.” And I believed her. Oh my my, what famous last words.

I was zippin’ along, enjoying the warmth of the day and this kind of a walk that we haven’t been able to do. I crossed a street about 3 blocks back from the library, and noticed a lot of construction-related noise. I also noticed a distinct lack of pedestrians. This concerned me, since people are always around down here. But I hoped that the noise was just carrying, and it was further up. I was chuckin’ along when…pooof! There was no longer a sidewalk. I have never been a religious person, but it was at this point that I was willing to start praying to any god that would listen to let me get through this construction site unscathed. I was especially worried about my dog, since she would be less visible than I. Just then, a big construction dude came along and guided me through the mess, which included walking through a closed intersection. When I was clear of it, he said I was about 50 feet from the library.

Do you realize what that means? It means if that woman had looked out her window, she could have given me a real answer. There is no way, if I was walking from that direction, I could have missed the construction. One of the intersections between here and there was closed for god’s sake! And it wasn’t like she even asked me what side of the street I was walking on.

When I got to the library, my heart was just pounding. I got what I came for, and told them my predicament. I could not walk home because that would mean walking back through the construction, and I was not about to tempt fate twice in one day. A nice staff member walked me towards the buses, something for which I’ll be eternally grateful, so I could get home by bus because the corner there was still ripped up.

So the moral of the story is, if someone asks you to look out the window and tell them if it’s safe to get to you from a certain direction, please try and give an accurate answer. If you don’t know, just say you don’t know. It’s safer that way. I will then search for someone who does. I thought that someone who works in that part of town would be able to give me a good picture of where the construction was. That, I have learned, was a wrong assumption. I would have consulted the city’s website, but it talks to you as if you’re a driver, not a pedestrian, so it doesn’t tell you what sidewalks are ripped up. That’s why I asked the employees at the library.

My only other thought is maybe I wasn’t clear in the way I asked the question. I said I was walking, I said I was blind, and I said which direction I was coming from. Is there anything else I should have thrown in there? Or was that all too much information and they zoned out before I was done? Ug. I need to perfect my ways of getting info out of people, since this whole city is soon to become a big construction zone. I don’t need a round 2 of the library.

What day is it? November 22. Yup. And what have I bought for anyone for Christmas? Sweet dick all! This is not good, this is not good, this is not good. Last year, I was just about done by now. That is not going to be the case this year.

It sucks. I have 0 ideas of what to get anyone. Last year, the possibilities rained down on me from all directions. This year, the well is dry. I hope some ideas start coming soon, otherwise I’m all outa luck.

Part of the reason I went to the Santa Claus parade last Sunday was to hopefully get me into the spirit of things, which I hoped would prime the Christmas gift idea pump. It didn’t seem to work too well. It did give me something to add to this thought splatter. The person who rings the bells in the church nearby decided to get creative and make the bells play christmas tunes during the parade. I don’t know which church it was, since there are a lot of churches downtown. I thought that was awesome…until he started screwing up! Then the bells sounded like they were being played by a small child who is practicing piano. I think the worst screwup was the flat notes in “O Christmas Tree.” Ouch. When bells go flat, they hurt hurt hurt. But maybe I don’t understand the complexity of making bells do unusual tunes. Maybe that’s crazy hard. Making the bells play christmas music was an awesome idea. Just next time…um…can you practice a little first?

Then again, how does one practice on bells? Every time you play them, they kinda broadcast to the world. Can anyone tell me what it’s like to play big church bells? Are they anything like a piano? Could you practice on a piano and that would help with the playing of the bells? Ah, since I’m having to put all this thought into it, maybe I should cut the poor fella some slack. It was a cute idea.

I noticed something over the last little while about the limitations of my phone’s t9 dictionary. It doesn’t have a lot of food-related words in it. I wrote a small grocery list on the notes area of my phone, and good lord, every other word, I had to add. Then, later on, I was writing down point form notes to jog my memory about something, and the phone could spell misconception! What? The phone knows how to spell misconception, but not croutons? That’s just weird.

Dear mother nature: I know that earlier this fall, I called you a miserly old witch. I take back those words. How wrong I was. You just decided to be differently generous. This beautiful weather can keep on comin’. I know, I have to face the snow and all that stuff, but every nice day we get is a gift, and I chastize myself if I don’t use it fully. It’s like the dreams I kept having in early spring where I would dream that I would wake up and find the ground covered in snow. I would realize it was December and that I had taken this whole spring and summer for granted, and the snow was back, and I would stand in the snow, crying. Then I’d wake up and laugh at myself because the winter was far off. Now I think about those dreams if I don’t milk these days for all they’re worth. If I had any sense, I’d run around like an insane person and get all my christmas shopping done before the snow hits…oh yeah, I need to know what I’m buying first.

And that’s about it for now. Hope you enjoyed my mass of silliness.

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