Have An ‘Ice’ Day

By Lucy

I went into the kitchen before dawn on Wednesday and did a double-take. There was a man I had never seen before sitting there having coffee, but also he looked a lot like a co-worker who used to tease me mercilessly last summer, to the point that I thought it was him until he started speaking. His name is Wayne.

He’s been in Cuba for two weeks, which is why I haven’t met him before now. To my understanding, he’s retired and volunteers at the church up the road. We talk most mornings, as we’re the only ones up, and he likes to sit in the kitchen and have his coffee, which is usually when I’m cooking breakfast. He’s also the room next to mine, so if the walls are thin that’s how I’ll find out.

I asked him about laundromats and he told me there was the one around the corner. I had been hoping to avoid that one because the google reviews said it’s pricey but… well, is it worth it to go to a sketchy laundromat to save a dollar? Even though it was around the corner, I opted to drive. One of the few times I’ll abuse my privilege.

It was six dollars for a wash, half an hour. Dryers make me nervous – my jeans will be ruined if they are in too long. I put in 2 dollars for 18 minutes, but they were still slightly damp when it was done. Turning on the machine again meant another dollar, which I didn’t have. I just took the laundry back to my place, opened the window and hung them in front of the window.

I noticed a consignment store downtown had some PC screens for 20 bucks, so I went down to check them out. They were all VGA connections. I have VGA to HDMI adaptors, so 40 bucks to power up my PC is not the worst proposition in the world, but Brandon thinks I should just buy new screens and actually use the graphics card I spent a lot of money on. It’s a catch 22, if I had work to justify spending a few hundred dollars on some brand new PC screens, I’d be too busy to use them. Now is when I should be streaming, but I don’t know how long I’ll need to make my money last.

I walked into the union hall and was greeted with “Well, you’re on the ball! We were just talking about you!”

I looked down at the papers in my hands. Really? I’ve had these done and sitting on my desk for three days because I couldn’t be bothered to drive to the union hall and turn them in, and I told the clerk so. I was also curious that apparently I’m the subject of gossip already!

The ministry of whatever already emailed them to let them know that I’d switched everything over, which is apparently impressive. We stood around chatting for half an hour and I was thinking to myself, is she actually having fun talking to me or just bored? Next time I go into the office I might ask her if she wants to get coffee sometime. So far all my new friends have been male and I’m still unsure if some of their intentions are just friendly.

Thursday I went to a spa. There was a bunch of Pride and Trans Lives Matters signs all over the place, so I asked the woman at the desk if she knew anything about Pride. Turns out, she’s the chair of Thunder Bay Pride! How do I luck into this stuff? We chatted for a bit and then I googled them once I left. There is an open space on the board… maybe I should apply?

For a couple of days the Facebook hiking groups I’m in were covered in pictures of a place called Silver Harbor. A bunch of ice washed up on the shore and turned blue and it looked really pretty! They have a yearly pass, 40 bucks lets you park at any of their locations for free. So I ordered one and invited Hunaman out with me. Was not disappointed! The slabs of ice were easily 6 inches thick, if not more, and the pile was taller than our heads! The lake also sounded like the ocean as it washed onto the icey shore. We climbed over the ice as much as we dared, it was quite slick. There were also parts where the ice had been worn down to small chunks, like how large rocks are worn down to pebbles and sand.

Hanuman, grey-haired kid that he is, noticed a shale cliff on one side of the park, so we walked over to it. That’s when we discovered there’s a little dock… launch… thing for diving. There’s signs about diving and some diving “flags” nailed to the rocks. We started wondering if maybe there’s a boat wreck or something nearby that might be worth diving too, although neither of us have been diving before. The other sign said that the park isn’t maintained beyond the sign, but that didn’t say it was private property or forbidden to us, so we had a race to see who could free-climb the cliff faster. It was like every time my father forbid us from climbing on the rocks at Peggy’s Cove, except no one was telling me no! We climbed all over the rocks for a couple of hours, showing each other cool rocks that we found, and we found a place where someone had clearly brought a bunch of ceramic plates and flung them off the top for some reason. There were also some tags, naturally. We sat on the top of the cliff for a bit and watched the lake roll until the sun started to go down.

Since he doesn’t drive and we were on that end of town, Hanuman asked if we could stop at Beefcakes and get a burger (after I stopped giggling when he asked me if I know ‘beefcakes’ and then exclaimed “not that kind of beefcake!” as I broke into childish mirth). He also offered to buy me dinner again, so I had the bacon and blue. I like less bacon, more blue cheese, but it was good. We also had a good laugh because the owners are east Asian and remember Hanuman because of his name, although they seem to get a chuckle out of it. He says the name was bestowed upon him by an ashram in India because he’s such a prankster.

On Friday morning I just felt like going for a walk by meself, so I drove down the Mission Island Marsh. They say you can feed the deer there, but the deer haven’t been around because of the unusually warm winter. I didn’t see any critters. There was lots of obvious beaver activity, with half chewed trees and other trees that were wrapped in chicken wire in an attempt to stop the beavers from cutting them down. There was also one spot with empty coffee cans strung in the trees. Bird feeders? Deer feeders?