(Images by author)

I am glad that the high winds did not tear-down my improvised tarpaulin mesh sun-screen that I built for our balcony, or that the pigeons that hang around this city did not take advantage of our absence and build a palace on our seemingly deserted balcony. Flying rats, -that’s all they are.

After the Tornado

About a week after this tornado event when the weathered seemed straightened out, my son and I were on the way to the lake as usual and we walked past a lone city worker that was bent-over the afflicted lightning-strike ground examining the still present but dead power line. The chubby man was wearing a too-short T-shirt that reminded me of Winnie the Pooh. His pants were not pulled-up high enough either. He had a rather pronounced ‘plumber’s butt’ exposed skyward, -typical for the more sedentary city worker I presume.

Anyway, I inquired what had happened here hoping to get some qualitative information on the storm and the damage it caused. He ignored me and continued to study some electronic testing device that he was holding. I asked again what had happened here and again he completely ignored me. Maybe he just didn’t hear me? He wasn’t wearing instrument headphones or earbuds though.

Ignore the Pedestrian?

I stepped a bit closer this time shouted “What happened here?” directly into his exposed asscrack and still he ignored me. I guess he deemed his job too technical and important to divulge the intricacies of to the pedestrian likes of me, a mere passerby.

So my son and I dismissed ourselves and continued our walking trek to the splashy pad down by the lake. It was one of the most fun afternoons yet. We played, we got wet on the splashy pad. In the zoned area of the Lake where swimming is permitted he looked for pretty stones and shells (zebra muscle shells, yuck!) and I even found an arrowhead on the beach. It was a little roughed-up from the pounding against the pebbly shoreline it has received but still recognizable as an arrowhead nonetheless. It is the first arrowhead that I have found in Canada. I used to find these all the time back in New York state, where I am from originally.

We had kiosk french fries with ketchup for a mid-afternoon snack and came home later in the early evening, exhausted.

Beachcombing, My Son Looking for Shells and Pretty Stones

(image by author)

This is the last weekend of summer vacation for my son. He returns to school on Tuesday. Senior Kindergarten this year. Yay for him! One of the ‘big boys.’ While I welcome the several hours of ‘mostly me time’ in the forenoon that his attending school will bring I will miss him tremendously and our daily little red wagon trips to the splashy pad, the ferry boat rides to the Toronto Islands and our nature walks down by the lake.