Jay is finding some faults in the running of On Side, but is still a willing worker. May has worked enough shifts at the Casino to have been given more responsibility and let in on some of the gossip. The girls continue to rest up for the fall; although May has been giving them more and more housework to do and controlling her urges to redo the things that don't quite meet her standards.
What a wonderful ride on the ferry. I owe a lot to mom and dad and Babara and Terry for giving me a reason to take it so often. It now costs $63.15, one way for a senior. Sometimes that seems like a lot, but at this moment, sitting on a bench on the starboard side, in a breeze that is a buffeting wind at the bow, watching the dark green islands sitting in the sea with the sun's light brilliant in front of them and the distant hills dark beyond, iced in a thin line of white clouds beneath a pastel blue sky, I can't count the cost. Neither my words nor my poor old iPhone 4S camera can do it justice. Soon I'll be walking up and down the docks at the Oak Bay Marina as the sun goes down. It's the only marina I know of that is completely unlocked. Anyone can wander around among the boats. The first time I remember doing it was years ago with dad. We were having fun commenting on the names of the boats. One raised his ire. It was 'We're here'. I had just been thinking it was not a bad name for a boat that sailed from port to port when dad scoffed," I'll give you a dollar for the sexual orientation of the owner of that boat". He followed this with a brief chant of, "We're here. We're queer." He'd had enough of pride parades in Victoria. This reminded me of mom's anger over the fact that homosexuals had made her word 'gay' their own. The 'Gay Girls' who played bridge every Thursday were now just 'The Girls' and she wasn't happy about it. By their mid 80s they readily admitted that the world was a strange place to them. My dad never was able to tolerate even the smell of garlic but he did finally and reluctantly recognize that Canada was now full of people who actually ate it. My mother never accepted the fact that you could wear anything you wanted anywhere, even joggers and things that looked like pyjamas in an airport. And these people even hugged their pillow under their arm as they sprawled over the floors and chairs of the waiting room playing with their 'devices' as they awaited their flights. She and dad had dressed in suit, tie and fur coat to go to the evening hockey games in Thunder Bay in the 50s. They had nothing to do with computers and only a tenuous hold on the tv remote. It's just over a year since mom died and returning to Victoria fills me with memories of them, even the things that drove me crazy come back as stories that make me smile, better remembered than lived through.
The South Korean military band at the Vernon Military Tattoo. They were the hit of the show for me and many of the others there. As you can see, they don't fit the stereotype of a military band; they had dancers, acrobats and a weird two man animal, as well as screeching horns that weren't as stirring as bagpipes but were almost as loud and potentially irritating. Koreans are a strange mix of regimentation and whimsy.
May and I picked these apricots from a friend's tree one evening last week. It was fun, but we couldn't eat them all so I made two kinds of jam and ruined the last ones by trying to dry them without a real fruit dryer.
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