Friday, after Madigan walk and first coffee

I’m working this morning. It’s normally my day off but the work has piled up and spilt over. Frankly there’s not much else to do when the rains have been so hard and I don’t feel ambitious.  I’m happy to work and help.  There’s reason to earn money for a change, The steady reduced income took care of my needs but now I’m planning a vacation, a birthday gift for Laura and me and it’s not just the cost. But I won’t be working for weeks.  People on salary with government and corporate jobs never understand that work slaves without benefits have to forgo income to take time off.  I did like that the NDP granted 5 mental health days a year. I won’t have to lie to myself as employer and employee of my own company, that I’m physically sick to take a day off.  I can just admit to mental illness and take a day off, in my case without pay.

We walked in the dark today.  Madigan didn’t like it.  He was thinking or smelling cougar, bear and coyote. This is the feeding time of the predators.  Pre dawn. I had my pen knife.  A little key chain thing that I imagined defending myself against all monsters with. I imagined little Madigan jumping on the back of the monster only to be swatted away,If he didn’t run first and look back to see if I was following.

Nice to get the day exercise done. I have laundry too. I sort of meditated.  

My life it quite serene. Paying the rent and gas and food bills.  Much harder with the Trudeau inflation but I’m getting by. It suddenly impacts on me that other are struggling with the floods .  Sandy describing Roger staying in the city because the 100 km commute has become 6 hours each way because of the road destruction and repairs. Others are sick. I’m in my little bubble with Madigan doing one day at a time , grateful, mellow. 

Planning a trip is exciting.  I’ve been reading a history of Aberdeen.  Extraordinary. Thinking of Grandad as a boy and me meeting him as a child who told me not to chase his chickens as it would make them tough to eat.  I loved him lifting me onto the huge horses.  I was on an elephant. Percherons.  I was 5 yo.  His house was beautiful polished wood but bare. I’m here in cluttered piles , dog food bags, shoes, just a clutter. Their house was bare floors and few pictures on the wall.  Pristine and simple.  He came to Canada as a young man to build a farm and log. He did both.  He became the Reeve.  In the end the lawyer stole his land and inheritance.  Literally stole it.  Made off with the money and was never caught by the police or fellow lawyers and judges.  A thief.  He took all the money he held for so many farmers. I’d meet those affected over the years.  We understood thieves but the system of support. Judges and politicians and police and lawyers all corrupt and ‘letting this lawyer steal millions’.  When they hunted down Obama Bin Laden I knew they could have found and captured this lawyer but he was one of theirs and never caught.  I have thought of vigilante justice but believe all those who colluded to take the wealth of hard working men like my grand father are rotting in hell and their families are cursed for generations. It’s not for me to do.  In another life time these evil folk who were the core of Nuremberg will castratrf and hanging pithed frogs from the city walls.  

I’m not sure granddad care. He worked and laughed,  Hardship was a way of life for him.  I’m going to the place of his birth to walk where he walked and pray.  I’ve had a life of relative ease compared to those children of the war years and rationing and being settlers.  Today life is good. I’ve heat and water and food and am thankful.  

Dad never went to his father’s home. Mom never did either. I’ve been to the birth place of my mothers family and have just the birthplace of my fathrr’s father to visit. I expect Graeme, Andrew or Alan will go too one day. To pay homage to the settler who pioneered in Canada facing the harshness of northern Canada and making a home.  

Meanwhile I’m arranging attending a Shakespearean Opera in Edinburgh half way around the world.  The distances are so much less.  Grandad took what he knew was probably a one way ticket to the wilderness.  I’ve flown all over the world to dozens of countries and most continents.  I’ve even sailed across oceans and bicycled across continents. I wanted to motorcycle Scotland but with Covid and lockdowns and my birthday I’m taking the first opening to go to this place I’ve thought so much about .  There are many places I’d still like to visit but this was top of the list.  I want to remember Grandad.  My father’s father. A hard man as men were who survived and thrived back then.  My father, his oldest fought. Dad left as a teen but they were friends later and Grandad’s visits were usually annually maybe more and an occasion.  Grandad would come with Dad’s brothers and the whole Hay household so ruled by Mom would change.  The north would invade the south. Grandad admired Mom and she respected him.  It was though like a king coming.  I read the visits of Scottish kings and Grandad’s arrival in town was like that. Always in an new big boat of a car, an Oldsmobile I think and Dad would take the men and us for dinner. They’re talk cattle prices and logging and I’d be enthralled. A World so far away and above the city.  When we visitted the north it was a boy’s delight. I loved my cousins and the freedom. Mom would be picking her way about avoiding cow pies and puddles in her shoes before she learned to wear galoshes.  I remember her visits north and how at first she was aloof from the earthiness of the farm then she adapted becoming more relaxed and laughing more.  I never saw her ride a horse but Dad did and I rode with him.  It’s hard to imagine grandad as a young man.  I knew him old when he sat tall on a tractor and was in charge.  A king of man.

Time to get ready and go to work in my garage virtual consulting.  

Thank you Jesus. Thank you heaven. Thank you God.