Holy jet lag. Good thing I went to sleep early.
I already noticed at yesterday's arrival that my view of the mountains is a thing of the past. During my absence, a whole new level was added to the high rise in construction next door.
5:45
The waiting without being able to do anything productive drove me bonkers ...
so I booked Mother's and my FRA-YVR-FRA return trip. Good. Now I have the corner stones in place and can start scheduling around it. Hotels, train tickets, etc etc. I feel slightly better.
6:30
I've ordered some shoes. I've tried at least FOUR times now to get Converse shoes in Asia AND Istanbul in any size above size 43. It's impossible. So this time they will travel with me to the countries of small-feet men !
7:00
Breakfast time. The breakfast room is FULL of Chinese tourists, all frantically running around to add hot water to their imported noodle-breakfast mixture or to raid the fruit basket. And all 20 arrived within 3 minutes of each other. It was a planned raid !
OMG, during breakfast I kept browsing the shoe store website. And I just HAD to buy these too, LOL
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| Now I can keep up with Peter in foot fashion ;-) (Hallo Marion ! ;-) |
Time for a 2nd breakfast and WINE at Denny's.
A waitress who shall remain name-less (I know that the manageress reads this blog ;-), fills my glass of wine to non-sanctioned levels. Do-Je saai !
Visiting Grandma is disconcerting. She looks the same on the outside, but inside ....
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| not mine, but very similar |
WTF?
1st of all it is MINE. And the attached watch is a 1960s mechanical automatic watch that certainly does NOT need to see the watchmaker. Then the caretaker pipes in. Apparently Grandma had told her that this bracelet and the watch belonged to Grandma's late husband. People are allowed to BELIEVE in different versions of reality. But let's face it: There can be only ONE !
The caretaker tries to be helpful: "Yes, but you can put a new battery in the watch". I demonstrate how the watch is self-winding but I don't think she gets it.
I wake up in the middle of the night realizing that I will have to move ALL of my stuff to a safe location, otherwise Grandma will just randomly bring items to the watchmaker, use items as presents, or simply loose the stuff.
OK, time to get used to the idea that now I have TWO ancestral women with limited mental capacity and that I'm the ONLY one in my family branch still ticking properly.
Talk about time to step up and stand on my own.
It's a lousy night, I don't get much sleep, and only make it to breakfast at 9:30.
I really don't want to miss seeing my kookum for the last time before she flies to Edmonton today at 1:30 but I'm not sure I can make it there .... FUCK
OF COURSE I make it. I ride the bike to East Van. Neither traffic nor the resulting air quality did improve since I was here last. To all those now saying "But Vancouver is such a beautiful city", try riding your bike across the city, instead of just along the beaten tourist conveyor belt around Stanley Park and you will probably change your mind.
And I'm glad I did make it to see Kookum.. In retrospect I would have never forgiven me for not seeing her for one last time. When I first spot Kookum, I am shocked. The last time I saw her was 5 weeks ago, but I'm looking at a different person. She lost half her weight and her face is drawn. But what floors me are her eyes. I've known this woman for 20 years and I never noticed. Now, that she is very ill, her eyes are a carbon copy of George's eyes. I'm under no illusions that I'm going to see her alive again, so I try to say to her all the things that need telling when there won't be another chance to say them.
Ride back to North Van. A quick lunch at my Viet place leaves me disappointed. NO, the didn't get worse, but they, unlike the Viet place in MomTown a week ago, do NOT have those special Vietnamese herbs that make the dish special.
Back to the hotel. Now: Refill Safeway Card, deposit cheque, visit Grandma and talk to Caretaker. What a day !
Grandma is in a foul mood and doesn't even attempt a semblance of good manners towards me or her caretaker. When I talk to the caretaker I learn that Grandma had spun a tale around my watch bracelet in which Grandma had it for her deceased husband. It would have been nice if she had done so, but unfortunately that tale was completely invented.
What did a nurse once say? They die like they lived.
At least Baggins Shoes & Canada Post delivered my shoes already ;-)I can now wear
"Pastel
Camouflage"
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