Surprise!

Posted on 21 November 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Please silence your cellphone.

I’m sitting in a hospital waiting area, waiting quietly (nicely exhibiting location-appropriate behaviour) for a friend to emerge from a routine test requiring mild sedation after which they cannot drive for 24 hours. I’m scanning the walls looking for interesting bits. My results so far? Not much, truthfully, but at least this sign gives me something to do.

It’s a reasonable request — not that that matters, really. Their house, their rules, yeah? Demonstrating my technological savvy, in about a dozen quick steps I silence all things that beep or ring or buzz or chime on my cellphone. But do I stop there? I do not: I scan on. Maybe there is more required of me, as a quiet and bored waiter. A girl can dream.

This is a No-Scents Zone.
Avoid wearing or using scented products.

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Blecch. (It’s a technical term.)

Posted on 15 November 2025 by Isabel Gibson

As Martin Luther is reported to have said . . .

Here I stand,
I can do no other.

Actually, Luther spoke at the Diet of Worms (And where was the corporate-communications team when that name was being chosen?) in German and Latin, not English, so technically he said . . .

Hier stehe Ich,
Ich kann nicht anders.

Hic sto,
non possum aliter.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Flora | Tagged | 8 Comments

Twice Blest

Posted on 09 November 2025 by Isabel Gibson

At the going down of the sun
and in the morning,
we will remember them.
– Act of Remembrance

It’s a lovely sentiment. Do we make good on it?

I know that I don’t. I can go weeks, even months, without thinking of the war dead. Why not? A few reasons maybe:

  • I have no war losses in my family history (at least as far as I know, which is sort of the point) so I have no personal driver of remembrance.
  • I never served in the military so I have no occupational or institutional driver of remembrance.
  • I was never taught, and have never encountered, any Canadian practice of daily observance so I have no traditional driver of remembrance.

Is the lack of daily remembrance a bad thing? Maybe. Is it hypocritical to make a pledge of twice-daily remembrance every year and then to ignore it? Probably. Is there something I can do about that? Absolutely.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly, New Perspectives, Through History | Tagged , | 12 Comments

By the Ratios

Posted on 31 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

4 – Hours to notice an apparently out-of-place car parked in our neighbourhood.
72 – Hours to feel confident that it truly is out of place.
2 – Hours to connect with relevant neighbours to confirm the car’s out-of-placeness.
1 – Hour for designated neighbour to report the car to the Police, to communicate their answer to other neighbours (Yeah, it was a car-of-interest in an investigation but not any longer. Call Bylaw.), and to call Bylaw.
24 – Hours for Bylaw to ticket the car, necessary before towing.
1 – Hour for second neighbour to contact Bylaw again after noticing the first ticket.
4 – Hours for someone to remove the car.

Four plus two plus two plus one plus 4 plus one plus four, carry the 1, and yes, it’s official: A car that took less than an hour to abandon took more than 100 elapsed hours to remove.

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Posted in Thinking Broadly | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Parking-lot Planting

Posted on 30 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Vellum? Onion? Succulent? Fabric? Leather?

My Texture Identifier™ whirrs inconclusively for a few minutes before figuratively shrugging. It can’t quite peg what this leaf feels like: Different, anyway. Not, in fact, like a leaf at all, especially in the fall when I expect leaves to be stiff, crinkled, dry. To crackle when stepped upon, for goodness sake, not to lie there quietly, all silent stealthiness.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Flora | Tagged , | 12 Comments

More Fall Colours

Posted on 25 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

It’s been on-and-off rain showers all day. When I think about on-and-off paired with rain showers, I feel it’s likely redundant, so I check and yes, sort of. Mind you, the first thing on the search page that comes up when I just search for rain shower is, you know, a rain shower, nicely defined for us by Cambridge:

a type of shower (= a device you stand under to wash yourself) that releases small drops of water
coming from directly above you

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora | Tagged | 16 Comments

Free at Last, Lord?

Posted on 18 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Gluten-free
Seafood-free
Garlic-and-onion-free
Lactose-free but not necessarily dairy-free
Meat-free (vegetarian but not necessarily vegan)

I think this is the exhaustive list of food issues in a group with whom I am trying to have a potluck dinner. The vegetarian thing is a choice even though, understandably, it’s non-negotiable for the holder of that choice; all the rest are flat-out imposed-by-biology constraints, and one (the seafood) is an actual life-or-sudden-death allergy, which no one would ever choose.

I was doing fine (well, not fine exactly but OK) thinking about vegetarian and gluten-free main dishes until someone casually threw in “Oh by the way, I can’t eat garlic or onions.”

No garlic? No onions? In my house, that’s called dessert. And someone who does fabulous desserts had already spoken for that slot.

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Posted in Laughing Frequently, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 8 Comments

One Last Gasp. Maybe. I Promise Nothing.

Posted on 18 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the blog, someone posts more fall leaves from the bog.

I’m as surprised as you are. I’d thought that the last post would be, you know, the last post of fall leaves for this year. But a short walk last week at Mer Bleue turned up new images. Mer Bleue is a peat bog that is about 7,700 years old (I think they check the peat’s teeth or growth rings or something like that to determine its age) and about 20 minutes from our house by car.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Flora, Photos of Landscapes, Through the Calendar | Tagged | 14 Comments

Scotties Face (Reflection)

Posted on 12 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

In previous years I’d have called this a Kleenex® face, but now we can’t buy Kleenex® in Canada (®? ™? ©?). So it’s a Scotties® face, I guess.

As often happens, it’s a face I saw out of the corner of my eye; as almost never happens, it was the lips that I saw first instead of the eyes. My brain then filled in the rest, starting with the triangular eye socket on the upper right.

Posted in Photos of Faces | Tagged , | 13 Comments