Well here it is, getting on towards the end of February and this is the first time I've been inclined to get back onto this blog. This has been a good winter, little snow, not too cold but still winter and all that winter entails. If it wasn't for work there are days and days, weeks and weeks maybe, that I would not leave the house. The one high point was at the end of January Jenny and I went out for supper to celebrate her birthday. One of our favourite "dressing up to go out" restaurants is the Saffron Bistro in Pembroke. The decor is nice the food is wonderful and for a couple of hours you can get out of this small town and be in some other local that is a bit more up-scale and bit more "city". Of course at the end you step out into the cold of an Ottawa Valley winter and drive through the same old streets and back to the reality of life here. Not that I'm complaining, I am here because I want to and not for any other reason. Our other place that is our fav. to eat is the Creperie, a little French style place that serves only crepes but what good food. Lots and lots of garlic and so delish. that I could eat there every week.
Then there is Cafe Ole, the coffee house of choice for those that think Timmy's serves mediocre coffee and crap snacks. Timmy's has that sterile, fast food environment that has zero ambiance and is designed to get you in and out with as little lingering as passable. Ole is a place you can take your lap top, buy a really good coffee and sit for a hour or more sipping coffee, surfing the web and listening to good music. Christine and her staff chat and joke and occasionally dance to the music and make this place a treat on a cold winters day.
Working again is also fun and although I call it work it's more fun that work. You spend the day driving around people who are so grateful that this service is being offered that you can not be anything but happy at your job. Some of the old guys are full of stories about the old days and all the gossip from sixty, seventy years ago. It's a shame really that all these memories can't be gathered up and preserved because all of this is being lost, one death at a time and can never be brought back.
One of the weekly drives I do is taking some old person from the hospital, where they have been waiting for a bed in an old age home, to the near by home for the aged. I wheel some frail old person into the back of the van, strap them in and set off. As I do the short drive I'll look in the rear view mirror at this old lady, clutching a plant, usually in need of water, and I wonder at her life, what she's done, her joys, her heart aches and all that made up her life. We often don't see seniors as real people anymore but simply as some old person with nothing to offer. But I see a story wrapped up in a coat with a fur collar and a hat that is built for warmth. Now on her way to her last home and a little fearful of what's to come and dependent on others for her needs. Kindness is what she needs, what all of us need.