S.A.D.

Seasonal effective disorder.

According to our friends at Wikipedia, most people who suffer from winter depression have normal moods through the rest of the year, but experience depressive symptoms in the winter, largely due to lack of light.

I don't suffer from S.A.D., but I have been feeling like a bit of a mushroom recently.

I leave for work in the dark, go home in the dark, and sift through shit all day. Bring on some daylight.

So, last week, in the apocalypse that usually follows New Years -- the same apocalypse that results in long line-ups at the Pec-Dec machine at the gym -- a few of my co-workers and I decided to start a Walking Club.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions -- so you'd better bring your walking shoes.

The first rule of Walking Club is (of course) there is no Walking Club. The second rule of Walking Club is, Walking Club waits for no one.

This second rule is supremely important when it comes to my co-workers who are (and I say this in the most loving way) about as self-disclipined as kittens.

When you say, "Okay time to go," they usually disburse like they've been shot out of a rifle. One fiddles with her scarf here, another sends an email there, a third stares blankly into space like he's having a Grand Mal.

The rule is we leave at 12:30, no matter what. And we're back by 1.

Short walk, yes. But manageable for even the busiest of us.

Yesterday was Day One and it felt supremely good to leave the office midday for some physical activity. Three of the eight people who signed up for Walking Club did the power walk from Yonge and Bloor to Rosedale Station and back. A perfect cobweb burner.

When I was a smoker, I'd at least get outside five times a day, but as a nonsmoker who always brings her lunch, I can go weeks without exiting the building during daylight hours.

Third rule of Walking Club is that someone chooses a different route each day. Today I think we're walking to College Park.

Cops

About 3:30 a.m., I awoke to the sound of a radio. Not mine.

One of Toronto's finest was parked in the lane way beside my bedroom window. From the looks of things, there was a neighbourhood search going on.

Nice.

For some reason, my 75 year old Mother absolutely loves watching Cops -- the show, not the actual police officers. If you've managed to catch an episode, they generally involve lots of night running through trailer parks to catch suspects who inevitably are naked from the waist up.

When caught, said suspects always claim not to have any crack on their person. Then they act all surprised when the officers find it.

You must become immune to lying if you're a police officer.

It was hard to go back to sleep after this unnerving urban wake up call.

Even when I left for work this morning, there was a cruiser across the street and plenty of lights and sirens around Regent Park.

Famous Last Words

It's not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a great writer. Charlotte was both.

I've got an almost life-like porcelain piglet guarding my fireplace. He's a dead ringer for Wilber from Charlotte's Web. I'm looking at him now, as I survey my room of STUFF with the knowledge that I'm going to have to pack it and then unpack it again in the next month.

I'm starting the organizing frenzy today.

I'm hoping to take a load to Goodwill, as well as pick up some boxes at the LCBO.

This move will mark about the thousandth time I've moved and not organized my masters thesis notes again.Every time I move, I promise myself that I'll take an afternoon and do just that.

If anyone knows of anyone who would like to buy an armoire, please let me know. It's the antique monkey on my back.

Consecrated Chicken Soup

My BFF's parents are regulars at Casey's brunch in North Bay.

So, with his Dad currently in hospital, his Maman took the brave step of taking herself out for brunch last Sunday.

"Where's Slowpoke," the manager asked when she saw Maman come through the front door. Dad has been slowing down of late, and this has been the subject of a few laughs with the staff.

Once Maman told her about the hospital stay, she was ushered to a well-situated two-seater where, systematically, nearly every waiter in the place took their turn sitting with her for a few minutes at a time. The manager, the manager's son who was home from college, waiters and waitresses from other sections. Each one sat with Maman and had a few words or shared a laugh.

When she was nearing the end of her brunch, the manager came out with a take-out container and said, "Take whatever you'd like off the buffet and bring it to Slowpoke with our best wishes." She then told Maman that everything was on the house.

This is the same manager who gave Maman a box of individual peanut butter servings when my BFF's Dad was going through cancer treatments in Sudbury and was away from home for weeks at a time.

It kills me that there is such goodness in the world. There's more of it then we give the world credit for. We just need to shut up and notice it for a change. And now, a few words from Franny and Zooey to put all this goodness into context.

Jesus knew — knew — that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too goddam stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff.

And finally, for what it's worth:

How in hell are you going to recognize a legitimate holy man when you see one if you don't even know a cup of consecrated chicken soup when it's right in front of your nose?

Eat at Casey's. And pass it on.

Moving on

Moving always requires careful planning and a lot of thought. I'm trying to mitigate the pain by doing a little every day.

Yesterday I contacted my insurance company and a few of the utilities to notify them of the move and to ensure I had overlapping services at my old and new place during the month of February.

Imagine if your job involved answering the phone all day and talking to people about their insurance coverage? I'd have to put a bullet in my head.

Wendy, the exceedingly pleasant woman at Meloche Monnex not only has to talk about extended water damage endorsements and acts of God, she is also forced, by law, to read their privacy statement verbatim to anyone soliciting a quote.

It must have been half a page long. It was all about permission to use my personal information to provide quotes for their products and services.

Ridiculous really. Why else would I be calling them. I wonder what she would have said if I'd said, "no".

Anyway, when she was done, I said, "God, you must hate doing that". She giggled. Who wouldn't?

I'm very grateful for MY job today.

The face of conflict

It's easy to become immune to the doom and gloom in the news if you've got no experience of a place. But the events in Kenya, of late, have really shaken me to my core.

I know these people, or people just like them. I lived with them. Called them my friends. Now they're watching as their country -- long an anchor of stability in the region -- spirals into chaos.

It's heartbreaking.

I remember years ago, while working at CARE during the height of the Somali famine, that many of my colleagues had fond memories of Mogadishu as a jewel of a city. A beautiful port. I hope that this is not what Nairobi will become for me.

My BFF and I spent six months at CARE Kenya, working on a project that still remains one of my proudest accomplishments.

It was a magazine called Pied Crow.

When the AIDS crisis in Africa was still in its infancy, Pied Crow was packaging messages regarding HIV transmission in a language that children could understand and distributing the message to every primary school in Kenya. And it didn't just focus on AIDS. The magazine had entire issues devoted to water and sanitation, sustainable farming techniques, girl's rights -- everything you could possible imagine.

We worked with a team of Kenyan designers, illustrators, and animators. Every one of them was an artist in his or her own right. Brilliant and immensely talented. Plus the project was guided by a team of spirited teachers.

We travelled with them -- deep into the Kenyan bush -- to teach teachers how to use the magazine as part of their lesson plans. In some cases, this little publication was the only resource material teachers had at their disposal. More than once, we witnessed the teachers reverentially removing back issues of Pied Crow from a locked cabinet in the teacher's room.

A few years after we left Kenya, we learned that CIDA had stopped funding Pied Crow.

I never learned what happened to our team. I hope that life has been kind to them. To them -- to Change, Peter, Lucy, Alfred and Ham Kamembo, and others whose names have faded as the years, I send my best wishes to you. Be safe.

Happy New Year

May you be happy.
May you be healthy.
May you be free.
May you live with ease.