Walking off the Week

This was one of those weeks. A roller coaster. Emotionally and mentally draining. Frustrating, with moments of rewarding accomplishments…little accomplishments, but still accomplishments. I need to celebrate the little things I manage to complete and the boxes I can tick off, irrespective of how insignificant they are. Because I feel like I have a mountain to climb and I can’t even manage to get over the scree at the bottom.

It’s Friday.

I don’t know how that happened.

Wasn’t Monday just yesterday? Wasn’t it just yesterday I almost lost my mind in a meeting?

Nope…that was four days ago.

I feel like I’m on a treadmill some days. Some weeks. Actually, let’s be honest, the last three months have felt like a treadmill.

So a fabulous panacea is to go for a good, long, two hour, 9km, walk around some of the paths and trails that weave through the patchwork of parks, streams, creeks, and rivers that carve up the North Shore.

Today it rained cats and dogs. But, at the end of the work day, the skies parted slightly and let some blue sky show through; a little bit of sun even graced us. So we took advantage of it and went to try and shake off the physical stiffness of sitting most of the day in front of a box, and the mental stiffness of a week of the same.

When we passed through the Village I was amused by the sandwich board outside of the butcher…which had a sign taped to it that said “No sandwiches”. I found the irony entertaining 🙂

We walked down to below Pemberton Heights and down a street where someone I know, who works for the same Department, but in a different agency, lives. he used to be married to one of my lab mates at UBC in another lifetime; I do the math and realize it’s been almost 30 years since we met at one of our lab functions. Another lifetime indeed. As we passed his house I could see him silhouetted against the window…I stood on the sidewalk and waved, and waved….I was going to start jumping up and down, and then opted out of looking like a lunatic … he was too focused on his computer so we walked on. A few blocks away I stopped and sent him a text asking “Why are you still working?” He was sending an email to someone else I work with, who I as on a work call with earlier in the day on a topic that had come up in our virtual meeting, then he was calling it quits. He was disappointed that he’d not seen us.

This work from home thing is blurring all of our lines. When home becomes work, most of us work far longer hours and home is no longer a haven. It’s hard when there isn’t a dedicated, formal office that you can close the door on and walk away from. The computer is there, in the corner that was never meant to house a workstation. It’s hard to turn off mentally.

But getting out helps.

One of the problems (?) with living on the North Shore is that we live in on an incline. Nothing is flat for more than a block or two. Everything is up and down, and if you go down, which we did…you eventually have a long and steep hoof back up. Many of the trails that lead up and down are too steep for anything but stairs, and some of those staircases are long…very long. A little slice of forest runs up from just off Marine Drive up into Pemberton Heights and at the top is a tiny little park called Ashdon Park. The staircase on that one is one of the longest and steepest that I know of around here, and someone was thoughtful enough to place a couple of benches for humans to collapse onto, and a bowl, tethered to a rhododendron, for their four-legged companions to quench their thirst at. A hose lies coiled up and connected to a tap so the bowl can be refreshed as needed.

Also tucked around the base of the busHes and trees are many of these little COVID rocks that so many people are painting and setting out to brings smiles to walkers. Kirk found one with a fish…so I had no choice but snap a shot 🙂

Yet another thing I love about living on the North Shore is the wit that is evident in the sign designers in the District.

The North Shore is bisected by the Trans Canada Highway, which we live above. There are several major arteries that one can use to cross at pedestrian crossings, but they are noisy and one might be taking one’s life in one’s hands if a motorist isn’t paying attention, which isn’t infrequent. There are also a couple of other ways to get from above to below, or vice-versa, that are close to home.

One is the tunnel I posted the other day, and another is a pedestrian/cyclist overpass that spirals up, spans across, and then spirals down again. Crossing today, at 6pm on a Friday, was a clear sign that we are still not in a normal world. Normally the traffic would be heavy, particularly if an accident (a common occurrence) happened on or near the Ironworkers Memorial bridge. But today the traffic was light and the cars few in number. It’s just odd.

And, back close to home, as the rain started to fall again, I noted that there is almost always something in bloom around the neighbourhood…no matter what time of year. But this time of year the selection of beautiful things to look at makes it challenging to find a favourite.

I do like pink dogwoods….thay are a painted version of the common native dogwood and, in the right spot, a showstopper of a tree.

A sign that next week will be better? I hope so.

The last email I sent before we went for a walk was to someone at one of the sites I support in a remote community up north, a place I miss these days, and was supposed to have been there last week, but…yeah…that.

Anyway, he ended the email with the words “Always look on the bright side of life”.

I responded by closing my reply with:

Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best

I can’t recall if he knows that I am a Monty Python fan or not but, if he didn’t before, he does now.

Happy Weekend.