Author Archives: ij

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The Changing Face of Masks

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“Oh damn,” I mumbled to myself when I realized the tap feature hadn’t worked on my debit card. I fumbled with it and inserted it into the card reader instead. The keypad was barely visible through the foggy lenses of my glasses perched on top of my mask. I took a half-blind guess at my PIN and got away with it.

“Moothoo sath a foints garp?” asked the masked checkout clerk.

“Pardon me?” I never realized how much I depend on lip reading.

“DO YOU HAVE A POINTS CARD?”

“Oh! Oh! Yes, yes.” I fumbled through my purse for my wallet again and held up the card for her to scan.

“Bleep!”

With my groceries haphazardly tossed into bags (Note to self: don’t pack the lettuce on the bottom next time), it was with great relief that I realized my ordeal was nearly over.

All I had to do now was to safely wind my way through the people milling around the other checkout counters, and then I would be out the door and free. Free, free!

Grocery shopping is certainly not the casual, relatively mindless task it used to be. In the past, I automatically knew where everything was and would whip around the aisles with Super Woman confidence. Now, I stress out at every turn. Am I going the right way down the aisle? How am I going to backtrack to get that thing I forgot? Is that lady actually touching ALL of the watermelons? And when I leave the store, you can bet I’ve missed something. Every time.

Safely back in the car, when I can finally remove the mask, it’s such a relief.

Let’s face it, none of us really like the mask. And for me, not only do I have the eyeglass frames around the back of my ears, but I also have hearing aids. There’s a lot of competition for space back there. So when I stretch the elastic of my mask behind my ears, they flop forward like Dumbo. Only not as cute.

In spite of all of that, I made the decision a couple of months ago that I was just going to have to get used to it. I started wearing the mask any time I was indoors somewhere other than my home, because I figured that some day soon it was going to be mandatory in a lot of places anyway. I have one mask that I keep in my car, and one I keep in my purse, so I’m always prepared.

Only a few short months ago, I thought it was odd to see someone in a store with a mask on. “Paranoid!” I’d say to myself with a chuckle. Now I’m more concerned about those who DON’T wear masks. “Cov-idiots!” I grumble, hopefully not too loud.

Masks used to be something you wore at Halloween. Now I’m more spooked if I forget mine. And since masks became mandatory on public transit, I have appointed myself as a member of the Mask Police Force. I will glare at any passenger sitting on a bus without a mask. Anyone who can actually see me through the window, I mean.

In fact, today as I was out on my walk, a transit bus slowly passed by me and I had the opportunity to stare inside of it. There were only two passengers that I could see. The first one was definitely wearing a mask. The second one I had more trouble seeing, so I squinted and peered as much as I could, and then SMACK! I walked into a street sign.

I didn’t make that up.

I had to take a minute and calm myself down. There’s nothing worse than a self-righteous, foggy-lensed, Dumbo-eared mask cop.

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Swingin’ In The Rain

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It was raining a couple of Fridays ago when my friends and I met at Cordova Bay Golf Course.

“Should we do it?” one friend asked.

“Maybe not.”

“I think we should.”

“Okay.”

“But I don’t know.”

It went on like that for about 20 minutes before we finally came to our conclusion.

“Let’s do it!”

A little rain isn’t bad. It’s when the clouds open up and dump everything they have on you that it gets miserable. Some golfers come prepared with those massive umbrellas that attach to their carts and cover pretty much everything.

Not me.

The best I can do is a rain jacket with a hood. It works well enough. My shoes aren’t water proof though. So that usually means a soaker. But I can live with a little of that. In fact, I can put up with a lot when it comes to playing golf. I just love being out there. And that’s especially true this year.

Lately for me, golf has been as close to normal as life can be. When you’re out on the fairway, it’s just you and your friends (at a healthy distance, of course) and that long stretch of green stuff in front of you. Occasionally, there’ll be a deer and its fawn or a couple of eagles (the kind with feathers…little golf joke there) and a rabbit or two. Cordova Bay Golf, where we play, is a certified Audubon Sanctuary, along with a number of other golf courses in our province.

Oh, and then there’s the part about trying to get that little white ball into a hole far, far away. We’ll get back to that.

In the last few years, a lot of local golf courses have been shutting down as interest in golf has been dwindling.

And then the virus showed up. Many businesses have been adversely affected, of course. Gyms and dance studios and indoor sports businesses are struggling, or shutting for good in some cases. What caught my eye while we were playing a few weeks back, though, was a group of kids on the 2nd hole. Two of them were probably teenagers, the other two were younger. They were loud and goofy, and they probably didn’t know much golf etiquette, but I was delighted to see them. Because for any sport or activity to continue, it needs young blood.

As it turns out, golf and tennis have both had a resurgence in the last few months because they are outdoor activities that don’t really require any physical contact. Not only that, but courses have put a few protocols in place so you don’t have to touch anything that anyone else has touched. Like the flags in the holes or the rakes in the sand traps. For those of you who don’t know anything about golf, sand traps, also called bunkers, are those pools of sand, usually strategically placed at or near the green where the hole is. Balls have a way of landing in bunkers often. And they’re not easy to hit out of.

These days, you don’t have to rake up after yourself if your ball ends up in a bunker and you make a mess in the sand. Which is great. You see, normally, I have to rake often.

It’s much more difficult to book a tee time lately, and we often have to book two weeks in advance to get the time slot we want. I’ve also noticed the tennis courts a few blocks away from where I live are always busy. Every day of the week.

Our great fortune is that these two activities can be enjoyed year round because of our mild weather here on the west coast. Well, if it weren’t for that darned rain.

And so we slopped up to the first hole and took turns teeing off. The rain started coming down just a little harder, so I pulled up my hood as I walked over to the tee.

I set the ball up. Drip, drip, drip. All was silent except for the sound of the rain spattering on my jacket. I took a deep breath, swung the club back, and gave the ball a good whack. It disappeared behind a mound in the trees somewhere. Oh well.

As we walked up the fairway, the water started seeping into my shoes and sprinkling on my eyeglasses.

I smiled. Isn’t life great?

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A Very (COVID) Birthday

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When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my mother threw me a surprise birthday party. Well, the “surprise” part didn’t happen. My neighbourhood friend Kenny sort of gave it away early on. We were playing at his house a few days before and he couldn’t help saying “I’m so excited! I can hardly wait! Oops!” covering his mouth and giggling. I knew something was up.

On the day of the party, my mother sent me across the street to play in the park, while she secretly decorated the back yard. When she called me home, she put a blindfold on me and took my hand to lead me outside to the yard. It was very still and quiet, until I heard a giggle. Yep, it was Kenny. He just couldn’t keep quiet.

My blindfold came off to reveal all of my neighbourhood friends gathered to celebrate my birthday. It was a wonderful day.

Birthdays are a far more complicated event for parents these days. Theme parties, dress up parties, movie parties, adventure parties…you name it, there’s a way to make a kid’s party out of it. It’s exhausting to think about.

But this year…

Yes, this year, it’s a whole different story. Suddenly you can’t just book a party room at the movie theater, or arrange for a pool party at the rec centre for your kids. Even something as simple as my little surprise party in the back yard is better left for another time.

There have been some pretty inventive alternatives, though. Decorating the front yard in birthday balloons and paraphernalia, for instance, so that people can honk and wave happy birthday. Or sending your child an “animal gram” in the form of a video created for them with their favourite animal.

A birthday parade is a big hit this year, with friends and family decorating their cars and driving around in a fancy show. There are even virtual scavenger hunts and, in some special cases, the local fire department will drive one of their big trucks by the house and turn on the siren as a birthday wish.

My oldest adult daughter’s birthday was not ordinary this year, but not because of COVID. It took place back in mid-February, before there was any thought about Armageddon. We were in Hawaii, where she had never been, to celebrate a special year of accomplishments for her. We even went to a Luau the night of her birthday to celebrate. All was well in the world, and it turned out that she had the most normal birthday out of all of us.

Because by the next birthday in our household, my husband’s in early May, we were full fledged into the pandemic. I wasn’t ready to go into the mall to buy a card yet, even though the mall had opened by then. I ended up creating a book of photos from a big trip we took a couple of years ago, and making the card myself, the one pictured here, after researching some ideas online. We ordered in some food, had a little cake with candles, and did our best to make it normal.

This past week, my other daughter and I had our birthdays a few days apart. We’re in a different kind of birthday routine now, adjusting to a new way of doing things. In fact, it’s my birthday as I’m writing this. I’ve spent most of the day doing what I love to do, writing and painting, so it doesn’t take much to find my happy place. But right now there’s some whispering in the kitchen, and a match is being lit.

Something’s going on.

I swear, I can hear Kenny giggling…