Holiday Planning (Plan B)

Well, any plans to go up North for a brief sabbatical have gone up in smoke, quite literally. The last entry I made about the fire risk situation was purely speculative. The reality of it happened the day after I posted it. I hate that I'm not only right in seeing the chain of cause and effect of disaster scenarios a little too vividly, but the severity of the situation is hitting too close to home, even though the real action is happening 400 kilometres away. The next day, I woke up that morning to find this whole city enshrouded with smoke that drifted in from forest fires around Lac La Ronge and area. Weather maps are showing the smoke extending and drifting right down to the US border. The air quality is bad here, and undoubtedly gets worse as one heads northward. This is the worst I’ve ever seen it around here for smoke accumulation from northern wildfires in all the years I've lived in the province. It’s so thick that I can’t even see the river valley from my place anymore; which is only a block and a half away. The weird, mad scientist, side of me was wondering and curious to know how long it would take for a slab of pork belly to cure and turn into a side of bacon if I hung one on my balcony. I better just keep writing before I start following up on an impulse to experiment with such crazy ideas.

The rain that was supposed to come today to help settle this didn’t come. I suppose I just have to comfort and placate myself with thoughts that align with “it could be worse”. As in: it could be worse . . . I could have reserved and made a financial commitment for a campsite up there earlier this year, and not be able to use it, or went up there earlier before this happened only to be forced back with an immediate evacuation, or it could be worse . . . I could be like the poor devils who are stranded up there losing their homes or property. As much as I’m complaining and agonizing about making a decision as whether or not to get away from here for my leisure, I’m at least not in a place where I have no choice but to evacuate, and forced to leave my home and all my possessions behind, with the sense of dread and uncertainty as to whether or not I’ll ever see them again. I would suppose that’s naturally what’s happening to the people in any one of the communities located near where any one of the hundreds of wildfires have been burning now in this province during this season.

So, my holiday plans have changed again; it’s not like any were set in stone anyway. Every place within all the corners of the “land of the living skies” is now fully immersed in a gagging, sun-blocking, dull, grey, haze. So, now it is pointless to go anywhere for a driving daytrip if this doesn’t clear up soon, because it is now all encompassing and there is just no way to escape it. After all this enduring and working through it, I’ve just nicely started regaining the full use of my lungs after struggling for six and a half months. I’m not going to now start sabotaging myself or foolishly sacrificing all that time of my progress by spending extra time outside camping and downscaling my shelter by tenting around and inhaling unbreathable air, alone at a place far away from medical aid. The risk versus the reward scenario kind of sours onto the side of the negative. It looks like it might be a staycation after all*. The onus is on me to try to somehow find those moments, make them count, and make things fun and interesting.

I almost forgot that I keep other lists and notes of ideas for times like these, and dug through stuff I wrote out on paper and digitally. My bit of recreational therapy theory is this: to get the most out of the time off, one has to directly substitute one’s typical work shift hours during the course of a day with only leisure activity, no exceptions! Since I work evenings, that relegates me to maximize my leisure time between 3:00 PM and 11:00 PM. I suppose it’s an opportunity to have some sort of social life like everyone else. That alone is both enough of a novelty and culture shock for me nowadays. Like being air dropped into the middle of some country where you don't speak the language, naked and without any money, and being expected to make something of yourself. 

It might be a good time too to try out something that I’ve never really adjusted well to: being pampered. Living alone, training with a soldier’s discipline and a monk’s patience with running, enduring and dealing with afflictions and injuries alone, constantly working to achieve self-sufficiency and independence, and being the sole provider for oneself with a sort of hunter-gatherer/survivalist mentality: it kind of sways and steers one far and clear away from that opposite end of the spectrum where anything involving “getting pampered” is found**. I’m sure it would be like a weird and alien experience for me.  I don’t know yet what that would even specifically entail the context of a vacation or holiday (which I could speak candidly about).

After reviewing, here’s what I’m thinking to do for myself thus far:

·         Continue with following my running and cross training program in the mornings

·         Do absolutely nothing that looks like work or chores after 3:00 PM

·         Book a massage, just for the sake of preventive measures (as opposed to opting to get one after getting physically buggered up)

·         Make a theme with an objective, for example, trying out the craft beers in all the brewpubs in this town

·         Take some kind of daytrip once the smoke clears, and hightail it out of town like I was on a jailbreak

·         Make no further effort to blog or post about the experiences along the way. Be less concerned about using precious time for writing, recording, and composing, and try just living for a change. This stuff will be just for me.

*- It does seem a little clearer now, and I smell less smoke; I wonder though if it’s because it is actually dissipating, or if my olfactory nerves have just become so saturated than I can’t detect it anymore.

**- There is about a 7% chance that Ella might fetch me one of my socks for me while I’m dressing if I ask her to. That’s about as good as pampering gets for me in my place.