Peaches No Ice

Posted on 10 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

There comes a time in a hospital stay when the patient is invited to choose their food for the next day. If you come into the hospital conscious, you’re good to go immediately.  If you come into the hospital unconscious, you must first become conscious and then show that you can swallow without choking or aspirating solids/liquids into your lungs.

After a few days in the Intensive Care Unit, the Big Guy met these criteria and I was helping to fill in a meal form. Right away there was trouble. For breakfast, did he want apple juice or peaches no ice?   I can’t remember the last time I served canned peaches so maybe I’m out of touch, but it seemed like an odd thing to specify. Yeah, we have peaches, but you can’t have them with ice. Why did they feel the need to temper expectations in that way?

And since they did seem to feel this need, why stop there? Why wasn’t it crackers-no-ice? Meatloaf-no-ice? Chocolate-chip-cookie-no-ice?

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Posted in Language and Communication, Laughing Frequently | Tagged , | 10 Comments

The Terrible, Horrible

Posted on 03 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

This sucks.

As the Big Guy wanders in the mental fog that attends the aftermath of cardiac arrest–If you’re lucky!–this is his phrase-of-the-day.

This sucks.

He can’t articulate the pain, confusion, and anxiety that I imagine he feels, but this phrase captures it nicely, I think.

This sucks.

From his perspective it’s hard to argue the point and yet, for those of us who have not been sedated for two days, *this* does not suck.  The day before yesterday sucked. Yesterday sucked. *Today* is a damned good day because the Big Guy is awake and alert.

As I wander the Ottawa Heart Institute’s parking lot, halls, and adjacent neighbourhood, I find more signs that today is a good day. The truth is, the signs were there before I was of any mind to see them. Waiting for me to find my perspective, maybe.

For the next few weeks, I expect to be busy with this latest turn of the road, and not so busy with this blog. If I’m not here, I’ll be somewhere else. Wherever I am, I hope I can remember that even a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day doesn’t totally suck. And even if it does, maybe tomorrow won’t.

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments

Knowledge is the Power

Posted on 23 April 2025 by Isabel Gibson

If only there were a network of computers
hosting all of mankind’s knowledge.

Oh, wait, there is such a network, now. We even have access to it with convenient handheld devices, an innovation that has permanently ruined the sport of bar bets.

If only those computers didn’t also host
so much nonsense.

Wait, what? You mean that you can’t count on the accuracy of what you find online? Say it isn’t so.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 12 Comments

If It’s Broke, Fix It

Posted on 19 April 2025 by Isabel Gibson

At about the 15-minute mark, the sensible thing would have been to go home and try again later, but by then perverse curiosity was calling the shots.

Can this
get any stupider?

In this case, *this* was us trying to cast a vote in the first hour of the first day of the Advance Poll in our local community centre. You know, before they got busy. As it turned out, a few others in our neighbourhood had the same idea: There were unexpectedly high numbers of Advance voters, especially for one polling station among the 5 or 6 that our centre was serving. Our polling station, as it turned out.

Was *this* a finely tuned system being overwhelmed by too many pesky voters? Not so much. Let’s look at the things that went wrong.

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Posted in Thinking Broadly | Tagged | 12 Comments

Hinge Faces

Posted on 13 April 2025 by Isabel Gibson

If you were at all inclined to think about it, you might think that highway rest stops would have long since settled on the optimal design for metal doors on toilet stalls, considering durability, cost, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance. Likewise and even more so for the hinges on metal bathroom doors, yeah? Who wants to prematurely/frequently replace hinges with moving parts, subject as they are to being mishandled by people who don’t directly pay for their replacement? Moreover, especially in the context of a public toilet, who wants to clean any extraneous edges? The benefits of standardization would seem to be high, and yet it has not happened.

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Posted in Laughing Frequently, Photos of Built Stuff | Tagged | 6 Comments

One Last Time

Posted on 04 April 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Well, one last time for this year, anyway. On Monday, we headed south to Huntington Beach State Park in a mood to appreciate pretty much whatever we got, and the cashier at the entry kiosk got ahead of us, thanking us, as Canadians, for coming south. Who needs cardio? It’s good for the heart both to appreciate and to be appreciated.

In our turn, we appreciated the egrets (great and snowy) scattered across the estuary, lifting off in concert in response to nothing obvious to me and then settling back down, usually at the just-a-white-blob distance. There were only a few near enough for photos.

This guy was lurking verrry slowly at the shore line, before putting his head under water five times very quickly.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Fauna | Tagged , | 8 Comments

A Memory by Any Other Name

Posted on 31 March 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Over the years we’ve spent several months of March in Myrtle Beach, which is when the rhododendrons bloom. Or do they? Although I fully expected to see bushes covered in pink flowers when we arrived a little more than three weeks ago, the bushes below our balcony  were green and stayed stubbornly so.

But a week can make a difference. Even what-a-difference.

How it started (Mar 23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . How it’s going (Mar 30)

 

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, How it Started, Laughing Frequently | Tagged | 8 Comments

Study in Yellow: Part Deux

Posted on 28 March 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Last week we had pollen. This week we have yellow traffic lights in a yellow school bus’s windows. Will we get the three-peat? That is, a continuation of the entirely coincidental and totally meaningless week-over-week examples of things yellow? Will we find a yellow face? On a bird? IN A REFLECTION?

Likely not, but stay tuned.

Posted in Another Thing, Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Built Stuff | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Fool Me Once

Posted on 28 March 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Standing outside the tub, I turn the water on. I adjust the single-lever faucet off dead centre. I wait for hot/cold feedback. I adjust again. I wait again. I realize I will have to wait an unknown period since this is the first time using this shower and its sensitivity to adjustment is likewise unknown.

I finally determine the macro faucet placement to produce hot water, not cold. I adjust the micro placement to produce tolerably hot water, not scalding. I wait for tolerable/scalding feedback. I adjust again. I wait again.

I determine that the feedback delay and/or responsiveness likely exceed my patience, so I will have to settle for close enough. I pull up the shower diverter valve.

Ack!

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Posted in Laughing Frequently, Photos of Built Stuff | Tagged | 12 Comments