rain at last

Thank the good lord, it's raining. Thundering, actually. If there's one thing the people and gardens of Toronto need right now, it's a good soaking, after many days of torrid, possibly record-breaking heat. My only concern is that the epsom salts I sprayed on the raspberry leaves last night might be washed off, and I'll have to do it again. Otherwise - rain on, McDuff, thanks.

As I write, my neighbour and her boyfriend are outside under their deck umbrella. His voice is so loud, I can hear him clearly, every word, even through thunder and downpour and my closed doors. Amazing. What lungs, that he never stops talking at the top of! I wonder if anyone has ever asked him to keep his voice down - can he possibly have gone through life bellowing like that? Perhaps a lack of awareness that there are other people on the planet, with functional ears? Let us ponder. If it goes on, I'll have to block him out with headphones, as I do now on a regular basis. And then there's the cigarette smoke. I know. First world problems.

Yesterday was a busy day, Covid-style. At 3 I had a phone call with an editing client who is starting a new book. At 6 an appointment at the Y to pick up the stuff in my locker; they let me in through the staff entrance, masked, and I traipsed through the empty building, so silent, the floors shining. It made me sad. I emptied my locker because we have no idea when the Y will open - when it will be safe to go there.

At 7 I took in the friend of a friend's book launch on Zoom, and at 8 I attended Ringo Starr's 80th birthday party on YouTube with a group of his talented friends, including Sheryl Crowe and, of course, at the end, Macca - at least, Ringo drumming "Helter Skelter" not long ago with Macca. Ringo is a sweetheart, everyone seems to love him, including his grandchildren and - yes - his great-grandchildren. He's 80 and rocking; puts my own upcoming 70th in perspective.

And then the last two hours of the doc on women's suffrage. Canada granted women the right to vote two full years before the U.S. did - and how close the vote was there, even at the end. But when I looked it up, I saw that France and Italy didn't grant full suffrage till 1945! Unbelievable! And of course many Muslim nations only a few years ago. Strongly religious countries, it seems, are not fond of liberated women. What's sad about the tale in the U.S. is that the organizers of the movement were forced to choose between suffrage and racial justice - because white women who wanted the vote did not necessarily want to share that privilege with African-American women.

It's still pouring. He's still shouting. Time to practice the piano - make some loud messy noises of my own.

Here's your treat for the day - the new profile picture of my handsome boychik. Aka the giraffe.

Sorry in summer

Yesterday I emailed a friend who lives on a farm in Prince George and has a big raspberry business. There's something wrong with my raspberries, I wrote in despair, do you have any idea what this is? And sent pictures of the yellowing striated leaves with brown patches, the shrivelled fruit.

She thinks it's a magnesium deficiency, and the cure is a spray of Epsom salts. "And afterwards, you can have a bath in them," she wrote. I'm off to Shoppers to buy Epsom salts for my deprived raspberries. What a wonderful world.

Yesterday was my father's yahrzeit - July 6 the day he died in 1988, 32 years ago. I celebrate every day the gifts he gave.

How I wish he could see another form of his legacy - his great-grandsons, including the one who looks a great deal like him as a boy. Eli and Ben rode over with their dad Thomas yesterday, all the way from their house to mine, a long hot ride. Tall 8-year old Eli has done it before, but Ben is four, and a small four at that. But tough as can be, wanting to do everything his big brother does. Thomas gives him a push every so  often, when he tires. They spent the afternoon here, with lunch and then to the splash pad on Wellesley, hours of delight.

And for me too, as I sat watching children scream with joy under the sprinklers. Around me the parents - one a trans man with many tattoos and a pierced lip, beaming as he guided his tiny daughter to the edge of a puddle; a mother with the sides of her head shaved, a naked woman tattooed on her back, and many cutting scars on her thighs; a Black family, an Asian family, an East-Indian family, all the children a multi-coloured blur of activity. Ben never stopped running.

A game of Sorry to cool down,

and then to the new ice cream store on Dundas East for  their second ice cream treat of the day. What are Glammas for? I had a Muskoka Mocha cone, delish. And then, after an exhausting afternoon of running and shrieking, they set off, riding back across town. Very tired when they got home, another gift for their mama, who was grateful for some time off.

And I watched a PBS documentary on suffrage for women. I knew about the suffragettes but didn't know quite how brutally hard it was to convince men to allow women to vote. We take so much for granted. But I do try not to take anything for granted. Especially them. And this.

the bliss of haircuts and Hamilton

Not my happiest place, inside in the AC, but better than the alternative, the suffocating heat outside. Soon it'll lessen and I'll go water the parched garden. It's rosé time, solitary today.

Yesterday, to the market; at 7.45 a.m., there was a lineup outside that moved quickly. Such deliciousness inside, all local.

Though, feeling guilty, later I also went to NoFrills and bought cherries from Washington and mangoes from Mexico - but I promise, I will only buy local produce now till the end of summer.

A few hours later, Helene, a friend of my former hairdresser Ingrid who has closed down her business, came to cut hair in the garden. She does hair for film and TV, and she cut my hair and then Monique's. What a lovely place to have a haircut, on the deck under the pergola. And now my head is lighter. The first time since February! Never has a haircut been so welcome.

That night's treat - I borrowed Anna's log-in and password for Disney+ and watched Hamilton the film. I saw it on stage when it played here in the winter before theatres closed down, and marvelled at its ferocious energy and confidence, its eclectic musicality and originality, overwhelming, breathtaking. Despite the historical complexities it details about the creation of the United States of America, which we Canucks don't know much (or perhaps care much) about, I felt that again about the film. My ex told me recently that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the phenomenal talent who wrote the book, lyrics, and music and also starred as Hamilton for some time, is now a billionaire.

The music! I have "The room where it happened" on the brain and can't get it out! Just one of the best musical moments ever, yet one of many. I defy you to listen to it without snapping and tapping and wanting to dance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WySzEXKUSZw

Joy.

This afternoon, Jane Ellison's 1 1/2 hour class, then cooking some stuff from the market while listening to Eleanor Wachtel. And now the heat has faded, I can open the doors and go water. Only 20 tonight. Tomorrow, only 31. It's going down.

Les Blancs, and scams

I'm on interminable hold with Visa, with that horrible music playing; I was stupidly scammed twice in April, buying stuff to help Anna with the boys - a bouncy castle and a table pingpong set, both, it turns out thanks to my friend Google, scams. My kids tell me Visa sometimes refunds those purchases, so it's worth a try, though they make it as painful as possible to wait. Of course they do.

What's weird is that a tiny package arrived from China today with a cheesy bracelet inside, worth, it says on the package, $5. Maybe there's some law that even if you pay for a bouncy castle, if they send a $5 bracelet, they can't be charged as scammers. Who knows? The description of contents is "hand catenary sofa cloud made with magnets." Aha. That helps!

I thought that I should write something about turning 70, so I started to compile a list of all the ways I've been lucky in life, and then of all the ways I'm not so great. More in the first list than the second, happily, but it's an interesting exercise. I told Monique about it yesterday, and she said, for the second column, "You're too nice, you don't set limits, and it's too easy to take advantage of you."

Yes. True. Viz: sofa cloud made with magnets. But there are plenty of worse flaws on the list than gullible. On the plus side: first of all, being white, female, healthy, smart, half-Jewish half-British in heritage and Canadian in citizenship, with a sense of humour. Can't beat that for lucky genes.

The heat wave continues - we're all stuck inside, it's just too damn hot. 35 degrees yesterday, around that today, to continue into next week. Much much watering to do. Poor garden. But first thing in the morning, before the inferno, it's paradise out there; I do my morning inspection, floating through my personal park. Talk about lucky! Picked rhubarb yesterday and made rhubarb-mango compote for my friend Rosemary's visit, but she cancelled - too damn hot, particularly for someone with a heart condition. So I'll have to struggle to eat it all by myself. Lots of beans and lettuce still, too. Cooked some beans with cherry tomatoes and garlic. Lucky.

Tonight's treat: Anna has shared her Disney+ password with me, so I'm going to watch Hamilton again, this time with Lin-Manuel. The show here was so good, I can't imagine the original being much better, but I'll see. Last night, Les Blancs from the fabulous National Theatre in London - an extraordinarily prescient, timely play by Lorraine Hansberry, finished after her death by her ex-husband - a powerful exploration of the legacy of colonialism in Africa. A bit melodramatic, but a true drama in the best sense of the word.

Joyful news: my friend Margaret in Vancouver is now a grandmother. Son William and wife Christina just had a daughter, Faye Catherine. Margaret and I were pregnant together, with Anna and William. The world moves on to the next generation, and the next.

And then, there's this. Yes.

Canada Day - a silent celebration

Canada Day, 2020. How infinitely lucky I feel to live in this country, to have lived here almost all my life. My daughter would be the first to point out Canada's flaws, and there are many, no question. But to me, our namby-pambyness, our colonialism, our forms of racism, are outweighed a hundred times by what is good here, most of all, right now, a sense of shared responsibility for our fellow citizens that is so very lacking to the south of us. The ferocious American need for individuality is what has made their country great, and what is destroying it right now: an inability to see that one small action, say, wearing a mask, may be uncomfortable for the self but is necessary for the greater good.

Thank God, again, for Tommy Douglas.

Mind you, I went this morning to a place I call Planet Rosedale; my friend Carole, teacher of my favourite Y class for 30 years, held a Canada Day class in a park in Rosedale, a 15 minute bike ride away. Rosedale, a 'hood of unimaginable wealth, is barely on earth, as far as I could see - mansions, wide streets, enormous old trees, this lovely, beautifully maintained park - I think my grandsons from Parkdale, with its cluttered, filthy streets lined with often angry homeless people, would be bewildered here. I couldn't help but think, as I rode along the smooth, freshly paved roads, about how ghastly the streets are in much of the rest of the city - along Gerrard to the south of me, for example, barely navigable, so pitted and rutted. But in Rosedale, for some strange reason, magnificent boulevards of fresh flat asphalt.

Inequality war aside, the class was fun; I was the least fit, but no matter, we were together. Carole had posted exercises on trees so we went from tree to tree, doing sit ups and pushups, and I, avoiding any running, though the others were keen. We have missed each other and our routine.

The city and the 'hood are quiet today, on this holiday. I am waiting for the new tenant to arrive, a young woman who'll live downstairs for the month of July. Final shop yesterday to replace the missing towels and bath mats. The place is gleaming.

Yesterday Annie came for lunch - a salade niçoise with green beans and lettuce from the garden, and of course rosé. We watched a webinar together put on by the Friends of Allan Gardens, about pests that eat vegetables. There are so many! I'm terrified. But I've ordered some "food friendly diatomaceous earth" which will fix everything. Stay tuned. Oh, and he also said - apply fertilizer in the morning and kill bugs at night. Your tip of the day.

RIP to Carl Reiner, a happy, loving man who made the world a better place. Listen to his Shakespeare!
https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/10158766712658675
Thank God for Tommy Douglas and comedians.

Happy Canada Day to you all. May you have many good laughs today. And so, on into mine.

Carole. She's the grandmother of three grown women and has run 50 marathons. (Hint: She's bionic.)

PS. And she just wrote to say that those roads in Rosedale were just as pitted as anywhere else until recently. I'll take her word for it.