I felt adrift all day yesterday, not like myself at all. I did a load of laundry, some gardening, and tidied a bit. It was hot, for starters, very hot and humid. I couldn’t decide whether to stay indoors or out, and I found myself oscillating between A/C and jungle-like humidity.
Our youngest had a sleepover the night before and I fussed and puttered around grumpily. At one point I just stopped and asked myself, SELF, what is your problem? And then I sat in our hammock to stare off into space and give this more thought.
I think this was the crux of my grumpiness: I wanted to be DOING something for Canada Day, and I wasn’t doing anything outside of usual household stuff, and I couldn’t accept it or relax about it. There’s no shortage of things to do in Ottawa for Canada Day yet I couldn’t muster up the energy to do any of it. Also: I don’t like crowds, so there’s that. I had to let it go, but I couldn’t.
So I puttered around the house all day until it was time for dinner. Dinner was good: steak, and spinach salad with gorgeous pink grapefruit and slices of halloum cheese and baguette grilled on the BBQ. Afterwards there was vanilla ice cream topped with crushed strawberries.
After awhile we picked ourselves up and went downtown. It’s a tradition here at Casa Fishbowl to watch the fireworks. We have a secret/awesome place to park, and then we walk, and as we walked we watched the sky change colours and the people start to converge.
We walked and chatted and took photos while we made our way to our usual spot behind the Supreme Court building.
Here’s the thing, the crowds are sparse on this side of Parliament Hill (that would be the west side) and the view is a good one. It’s easy to get in, easy to get out. We watch near the big fountain, but there’s also a hidden park behind there (just down a set of stairs) that few people seem to know about. This was the view as the sun was setting:
And that was it for my photo-taking. I chose to live in the moment for a change.
As we waited for the fireworks to begin a thick reddish cloud made its way overhead. It started with one drop, then another, and then, a deluge. Water poured from the sky, the crowd shrieked and ran for cover (of which there wasn’t very much) and we all got soaked. As it turns out, the rain washed away my own dark clouds, and I settled in, looked up, and watched with a lighter heart as the fireworks began their beautiful rumbling across the sky.
