Yes, we have no cherry blossoms, not yet, anyway.
4:58 p.m.
However, as of the beginning of May, there is no smoking in bars and restaurants in Quebec. This is fantastic news. You have no idea how long I have waited for just such an event, how often I have avoided the company of my peers and those I would have as peers because of my inability to breathe in a smoke-filled room. Joy and rapture!
Also as of the beginning of May, our municipality has decreed that we all have these enormous wheeled waste containers to facilitate the pickup of garbage, presumably by one of those trucks with the automated lifting systems. Various flyers have come around to the house advertising these gargantuous garbage bins, and we have so far refused to buy one. Firstly, where the hell would we put such a thing? Secondly, we still have very serviceable green PVC cans that have done their duty for many years and still have many years of use left in them. Okay, so a squirrel chewed the lid of one and there�s a hole in the second lid from some plastic-dissolving liquid. So what? They still work. Thirdly, and most importantly, we are not going to buy something that we feel is the municipality�s responsibiity. Heck, they provided the green boxes for the recycling; they can bloody well chip in and get us those ugly cans on wheels.
Anyway, this morning, as I was chatting away with one of my internet buddies, complaining of all the dump trucks that are making their noisy way up and down our street due to the new houses going up (damn them to Hell!), I noticed that the garbage truck, the same old garbage truck as always, picked up our garbage. On our street most of us still put out our old cans. On the adjacent street, it�s those new bins. I never wanted L�ville to become a borough of Sh�brooke, so I�m not giving in. Nyah!
My baby girl has contracted a UTI, the second one in her life, but she doesn�t remember the first. She was quite young. She is in excruciating pain. I arranged to meet her at 3 p.m. in front of the library in town so that I could pay for whatever prescription the doctor at student health services gave her, after I had been to the bank where a cheque for $20 US netted me $24.66 CD. The current antibiotic treatment for cystitis is three pills, one to be taken daily for three days. Period. Imagine that; when I had my first UTI, at around the same age Little Princess is now, it was a 10-day prescription with around four pills a day. Things have changed.
I took her and her boyfriend to the Java for something to drink (gotta keep her pumped with fluids), and then walked back to the university to pick up the car since it was evident she wouldn�t be able to walk home without crying every step of the way. Passing by the rugby field, I noticed an ambulance in the middle of it with medics tending to someone on the ground. It brought back to me the story of Buddy Boy and the cookies and the moral that there is always someone out there who is having a worse time than you are.
Now, here is the crazy news that I got yesterday but forgot to relate here. There has been talk for years of a highway bypass that would cause the heavy trucks coming from M�gantic to avoid L�ville entirely, thus making it actually pleasant to sit out at the Lion on a summer afternoon, and also cut down on the high cost of road repairs. The Duke and Duchess especially have been wanting this bypass, because their house is situated below the highway where it curves suddenly, and many trucks laden with logs have gone off the road right in front of them. They got a phone call the other night that the bypass is coming through all right, right through their family room! There is no recourse. The government will pay them an amount for their property, and they must relocate. They have a century home into which they have poured much money and labour, and there is no way they want to see it go under the wrecker�s ball. So their plan is to have it moved (how they�ll get it up their 45� angle driveway I can�t figure) to a different location which fits their ideal. I wish them luck. I�m also glad it�s them and not me.
Addendum: Hubby had lunch today with someone who mentioned that a former student of ours is working in the Toronto branch of the CMC. You know who you are!
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