July 2020

What a day

- by Alyson Shane


This morning when we were in the garden John noticed a bumblebee sitting on a leaf on our raspberry bush. 

We got worried because we've never seen a bee so chill. We accidentally brushed the bush when we walked by and he didn't move or make a sound except a little frantic buzzing that was cute as heck but concerning.

We didn't know what to do so we left him alone, but I took a picture of him and asked my friend Heather through Twitter what I should do because Heather's the smartest person I know when it comes to

bugs or animals or nature, really

and she suggested I leave him a little spoonful of sugar water to see if he needed a little pep back in his step.

So after my morning meeting I went outside and he'd fallen to the ground (!!!!) and was buzzing like crazy on the patio stones we use as a walkway and I started

panicking, y'know?

because he didn't look like he could fly and I was worried that the little dude was a gonner, so I picked a big leaf off the raspberry bush and waited while he took his time slowly climbing on, buzzing with stress the whole time

and he was stressed and I was stressed for him, but I picked up the leaf and moved it to a safe place where the dude who comes to mow our lawn wouldn't step on him or jostle him while he got his strength back. I moved the bee/leaf to the deck and put it on the table so the leaf dipped gently in a little container of sugar water I'd made.

The bee was buzzing and scared and obviously not cool what what was going on, so I backed off and went inside and

well, my day kinda went off the rails from there.

Somehow I managed to pop both tires on my bike on the way to an onboarding meeting with a new client which meant that on top of walking my flat-ass bike home in +30C heat with a backpack with a laptop on my back, I also needed to bum a ride there from Rose (bless her heart) who came and picked me up and

(seriously, bless her heart)

after our meeting drove me to The Exchange with my two popped tires so I could get them fixed at Natural Cycle and,

wouldn't you know it

right after the guy working there told me he could fix them, and I'd sat down on the (socially distanced) patio at Amsterdam Tea Room and the sun was shining and my

jaw, hands, shoulders, heart all started to relax, after I ordered a fancy negroni and breathed a big sigh

my phone rang and it was the guy from Natural Cycle saying that, oh shit, his coworker had just sold the last two tire tubes in my size and he didn't know how long it'd be until they got more. He suggested I call around and see who had anything and warned me that because of the pandemic everyone was low on supplies because

(who'd have guessed)

during a time when people don't want to be in close quarters together everyone wants to be on a bike.

(Which as a cycling advocate I love and and happy for
don't get me wrong, but
this timing really sucks.)

My fancy negroni came and I sipped it as slowly as I could while stress-calling other bike shops around town and trying to play it cool. I cancelled my evening plans and considered the cost of cabbing my tires up past Polo Park and realized

wait, dummy, you have friends

so I did something I almost never do: I called a friend and asked for help.

I was lucky! Tineke (bless her heart) picked me up and not only drove me to the other bike place, but stayed with me and made me laugh and cry from laughing and hugged me and drove me to the liquor mart after so I could buy some wine to decompress with at home after my stressful day and

brightened my day with her sweet heart and soul.

I'm so lucky to have the friends I do.

When I finally got home John helped me put my new tires on my bike and we ordered sushi and cracked the wine I'd bought with Tineke. After we'd finished getting the tires in place and reattaching the chain and adding my new streamers

(yes I'm a 32 year old woman with streamers on her salmon pink bike)

I walked my bike into the front yard to take it around to the shed and remembered

oh, my little bee pal

who of course as long gone.

Buddy was just going through a tough time, but he managed to pick himself up and go back out into the world fuelled by the sugar water and the kindness of others

and
y'know
I get that.


 

It's so hard to turn away sometimes

- by Alyson Shane

As far as news consumption goes I guess you could say I obsess a little bit, but I'm a wonky person who likes to be well-informed and finds politics and rhetoric interesting and important and so I listen to multiple podcasts, like

Up First
What a Day
The New York Times Daily
The NPR Politics Podcast
Pod Save America
Pod Save the World
America Dissected
FiveThirtyEight Politics

just to name a few

and every day I read articles from the New York Times, the CBC, The National Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Los Angeles Times

just to name a few

and as a Canadian who attended a Black Lives Matter protest that was 20,000 people strong and managed to go off peacefully and without a hitch being bombarded by media coverage of how badly things are going in America is

horrifying, to say the least

and this morning on NPR I heard about the 52-year old Navy vet named who showed up and was beaten by police for

literally just standing there
trying to talk to the officers

and that was scary and awful but then I came across a video of what happened on my Twitter feed and I wasn't prepared for what I saw



you don't have to watch the whole interview (though you should) but at least watch the part that starts around 1:00 where a federal officer just WAILS on him for several seconds before they douse HIS FACE in pepper spray

and yes I've read news reports and listened to pundits talk about it but somehow still wasn't prepared to see it play out on camera, and as I scrolled through the Portland news in my feed and watched videos of federal agents in riot gear shoving people and beating them up and barrelling into groups of moms peacefully protesting, tears started rolling down my face and I became a big, blubbering mess

because I'm terrified for the people in Portland and Chicago and Detroit and for

all of America, really

because this is what the slide into fascism looks like.

Being Canadian and watching this go down just south of the border is complicated because, on one hand, thank god that's not happening in my city, in my country, thank god I don't have to put on a helmet and a mask every night and go out and march until the morning light just to get police to stop killing black people

but on the other hand I can't do anything. All I can do is sit in front of my screen and cry and get upset and blog and hope against hope that things turn out ok in America

but I'm not holding my breath.


 

8th day in a row with no cases

- by Alyson Shane


6 active cases, no new cases this month, no evidence of community spread.

Whew.

Today I put on makeup and packed up my laptop and walked to a meeting with a potential client, my first face-to-face meeting since before the pandemic began.

We sat at opposite ends of a long table that was disinfected before was sat down and after we left, we didn't shake hands or get that close to each other and I found it hard to focus on what I was saying because I was in a room with OTHER PEOPLE for the first time in months

and it felt awkward and weird and though I feel much more myself

happy, energetic, upbeat

after being around other humans I felt weird and apprehensive and I think we all did because even in a province that by all intents and purposes is (for now) relatively COVID-free

we're still in a pandemic and the world is a dumpster fire around us.

After my meeting I had lunch at Wall St Slice with Tineke who I also hadn't seen IRL since the pandemic began and even though the entire experience felt safe and clean and socially distanced

the whole time I was worried about how close people were

how long we were sitting

if our sitting was inconveniencing other people who wanted to sit

and a plethora of other socially anxious feelings that I managed to smother with slices of pizza and a beer and laughing and smiling and catching up with someone I love and haven't seen in

too long, honestly

the uncomfortable, anxious feeling of not knowing what to do, or knowing what other people around you are doing, and feeling like whatever you're doing is the "wrong thing" didn't feel so bad for a while.

Winnipeg has been lucky because (bless us) we're a big-small prairie town with low density and a high level of personal vehicles, so managing community spread seems to have been relatively easy compared to other places. Our cases started out low and stayed relatively low and have been low for weeks.

Things (almost) feel normal again.

But today Colin came over and a bit and as we sat a safe distance apart we talked about the precautions Sookram's is taking to reopen the taproom and about how other businesses are handling things and it was a reminder that

there's still a pandemic out there and until there's a vaccine life isn't "back to normal"

no matter what it feels like when yr out and about

and no matter how many slices of pizza or beers I have.

 

Marketable Depression

- by Alyson Shane

Today Raymi the Minx tweeted about her book Marketable Depression which I bought and still have and back when I first read it in 2005 made me feel

seen and
heard and
okay, maybe.

She was out there talking about her fucked-up mental health and how she was making it work and making a living off her blog and her social life

(today we'd call her an "influencer" but that language didn't exist yet)

I'd read her blog and see that she didn't care about nudity and sex and drugs and alcohol and depression and getting drunk and high and partying too much and used to think

she's so strong. I can turn my sadness and weakness and fear into something like this, maybe.

Maybe.

At the height of my Raymi-reading days I was living in Hamilton and it was a mistake and I was lonely and the part I regret the most is how I treated Peter who just wanted a nice, easier girlfriend without the baggage and anger and sadness

but it was me and it was us and it was then

so I'd drink too much and sit on MSN Messenger or paint or blog on my old old old old blog

(like this, maybe)

hoping that screaming into this empty void
I'd feel a sense of purpose
of value
of humanity

Like if I leaned into my sadness maybe it would make me unique. Special.

Give me the sense of purpose I was desperately looking for.

I thought
like Bukowski, like Kerouac
my value was in forfeiting my pride
to document the depth the human experience
as shitty as I could make it it could be.

I sat in our one-bedroom apartment drinking by myself wishing I lived in a different city and was a different person and wishing I could maybe go back to Winnipeg so I could party away these sad feelings

and then I did

for longer than I wanna say

and I made my life hard and complicated and chose drama and the wrong

friends
partners
jobs
situations

mostly because I didn't think I deserved better and thought that having "friends" who partied for days and encouraged me to shirk my job and overstayed their welcome and drank all my booze and would make out with me even though I had a boyfriend 

(who wanted an open relationship so contain your gasps folks)

was somehow what I wanted, deserved, was the best I could do

maybe.

More like I was addicted to the drama and to feeling bad and being around people who reflected my low self-worth back at me and whose drama and beefing made me feel okay and valued and

gave me something to talk about, write about, obsess about

I was really messed up.

Tonight I picked up Marketable Depression for the first time in years and read through it like the first time and holy shit that book covers a lot more messed-up stuff in a 2020 context but it reminded me that

the only way to make an experience permanent is to

document it
publish it
blog about it

because if there aren't words to capture yr experience
what the hell is there?