In other news from The Shed, their canned coffee, Kool Brew, is now available. It’s potent stuff: enough to share over an afternoon with someone you love.
Best wishes to my friend Hai as she opens the second location for The Shed, on Queen Street. As a special bonus, there’s a brand new public library opening around her at the same time.
I took a week off.
Everything.
Work, parenting, household management, blogging.
Lisa and I spent five nights on the shore. Doing, mostly, nothing at all. It was sublime.
Longtime reader of, and contributor to, this blog, Andrew Chisholm, has launched Island Edition:
Learn everything you need to know to stay current with what’s happening on PEI. Island Edition will be in your inbox every Wednesday and Friday morning. For free.
Recommended.
If nothing else, COVID has gifted me 100% wearing-my-pyjamas-on-my-deck-while-eating-breakfast comfort, including casual chit-chat with neighbours.
If your reaction to this is “huh?”, then you don’t know me at all.
From Ton’s Week Notes for the past week:
Picking up Y after her sleepover enjoyed some live music in the garden of a random house in the neighbourhood. Today was the twice per year ‘Strolling Through The Gardens’/’Peeking In At The Neighbour’s’ event. Musicians and local bands set up in somebody’s garden and give multiple performances in the afternoon, while neighbours drop in and listen. We heard and saw a cover band perform, whose drummer turned out to be our next door neighbour.
I love everything about this.
According to Inside Rotterdam, the slash in Ton’s description of the event represents a merger of two festivals:
The annual festival Gluren bij de Buren (Peeking at the Neighbors) has been shifted to summer this edition, to join forces with the summer equivalent: Struinen in de Tuinen (Strolling through Gardens). Thereby the performances this year will be moved from the living rooms to the gardens of participants.
Olivia and I have a long-unrealized plan to hold film screenings in our back yard for our neighbours; this is inspiration to think more broadly about how a multi-backyard interconnected festival, by and for neighbours (rather than tourists) might be a lovely idea for Charlottetown.
Stephen DesRoches writes about following his lost luggage with an Apple AirTag.
Brother Johnny and his entourage are at YYZ as I type, in the belly of the Air Canada meltdown (they were supposed to be in Charlottetown at midnight last night; latest update says 9:00 p.m. tonight). I can’t imagine the amount of frustrated adrenaline flowing through that airport right now.
As I type I am lying in a a bright orange bedroom in my house. Against an almost-life-sized bear. Whose name is Nethan. Pronouns they/them.
I haven’t always understood Nethan.
When we first met, on that snowy winter day in a parking lot, I did not take to him. He was big. Ungainly. Floppy. Furry. Absurd.
When it was insisted that he come with us to Halifax for a 3-day break in March, I was even less enthusiastic. A bear. In a car. To Halifax?!
Last month, though, Nethan failed to catch a ride home, and he’s been living here in the bright orange room at my house since.
I’ve been warming up to him.
We run into each other from time to time.
He doesn’t say much, but he’s always smiling.
He must get bored.
I hope he likes orange.
Being under quarantine and inside-isolation-from-Olivia as I am, I’ve been wringing out extra sqooshes of novelty from my house, and needing to get a pack of laptop work done this afternoon, being banned from the dining room, and having already spent far too much time in bed, I decided to come in here. And lean on Nethan for support.
It turns out qualities that had previously turned me against him — big, ungainly, floppy, furry, absurd — today proved excellent traits for a pair-programming mate.
Nethan is warm. Friendly. He doesn’t judge me.
All of which gives you some idea of where the mind wanders into the third day of COVID.
Physically I’m improving bit by bit, hoping that there’s not a sudden dip into a new symptom thrown in as a surprise. The headache and body aches are gone. I’ve gained a cough—a coughing-fit cough in the middle of the night that’s slowed to an infrequent one now—and my brain fog seems to have, if not disappeared, at least lessened to the point where maybe I can believe I was always about this mentally acute.
If all goes according to plan, I bust out of iso’ on Tuesday morning. It will not be too soon.
Nethan may beg to differ.
About This Blog
I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
To learn more about me, read my /now, look at my bio, read presentations and speeches I’ve written, or get in touch (peter@rukavina.net is the quickest way). You can subscribe to an RSS feed of posts, an RSS feed of comments, or receive a daily digests of posts by email.