To review: every other Tuesday is my day off and I’m trying to use this time to recharge my batteries. No work, no meetings, minimal errands. Last time I went to the gym, then Ikea, and later celebrated someone’s milestone birthday.
I wrote most of this post at my local branch of the Ottawa Public Library. I rarely write outside of the house. Lucky me: I snagged a cozy chair by a window and was able to put my feet up and stare off into space intermittently. It was blissful.
It would have been perfect if I wasn’t feeling like I was going to nod off.
I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s not because I’ve been busy, only that Miss Piper has been waking up with the birds. The little stinker decides that it’s time for breakfast and comes upstairs to complain about the lack of service.
After work on Monday, Mark and I went to the launch of the Brewery Market at the GCTC. The Brewery Market is essentially an opportunity for people to sample some local brews in an open setting. It’s kind of based on a farmer’s market model: lots of vendors, local producers, and lots of buyers. The evening was a casual affair that included as much beer as you can drink and snacks from Thyme & Again, punctuated with a lot of hobnobbing. It was a very fun evening out and I’m glad we went.
After we’d had our fill of beer and people, I had a sudden craving for pizza so we motored over to the Westboro Farm Boy, where I ordered one of their BBQ chicken pizzas (WITH the chipotle sauce and topped with fresh arugula thankyouverymuch). I was so famished I could have eaten it in the car, but I persevered and waited until we got home before snarfing down half of it.
I went to bed early, woke up, er, with a mild headache, read a bit, and eventually fell back asleep again. All this to say, I was not pleased to see Piper at 6:18 on Tuesday morning.
Oh well.
Since it was my day off, I took my time getting started. I did a brisk, 40-minute walk on the treadmill (essentially, an entire episode of Scandal) and then had breakfast.
I wasn’t planning on doing any household chores but then a goldfinch made me go outside and scrub out the bird bath. I noticed him in the backyard, chirping his little heart out. He started out in the uppermost branches of our lilac tree, slowly hopping down the branches toward the bird bath. I watched to see what he would do. (In fact, he was quite hard to miss in his bright yellow outfit.) He trilled, and hopped, trilled some more, and hopped again, eyeballing the bird bath the whole time. When’s the last time I poured some fresh water in that thing, I wondered. And that is when he made his final descent onto the rim of the bird bath, turned up his beak, and flew away.
This is when I marched outside, brought the bowl of the bird bath inside, gave it a good scrub down, and refilled it with fresh water.
I checked the weather. Rain was coming. I didn’t have any earth-shattering ideas about what to do on my day off, so I decided to hop on my bike and ride to Mud Lake and maybe grab some groceries on the way home. (I think I predicted, in an earlier Andrea’s Tuesday’s post, that I’m doomed to do groceries on my day off.)
The ride to Mud Lake was fantastic. I practically flew there. I figured it was because of a few well-placed hills, but at that moment, I didn’t care. (Spoiler alert: I was cursing those hills on the way home.) I tried to remember that I wasn’t in a hurry, that I had time to breathe and enjoy the scenery.
The water levels are still pretty high and the paths were washed out in some places. As you can imagine, the local gangs of roving waterfowl are all quite pleased.
I could hear Mud Lake before I could see it. It was a cacophony of bird song; the CHEESE-bur-ger of the Black-capped Chickadees and the COKE-ah-REE of the Red-Winged Blackbirds, interspersed with the odd growking sound of ravens and honking of Canada Geese. Sidebar: Every single time I hear springtime birdsong I mentally refer to the birds as being “twitterpated,” which is a term first used by the Wise Old Owl in Bambi. (Here is a YouTube clip if you’re not sure what I’m talking about.)
I pulled over, locked my bike, and followed the path into the forest.
Mud Lake is a really cool place. I’ve written about it before. It is a little gem and we are so lucky to have it so close to where we live.
Within a minute or two, a chipmunk ran across the path and stopped to sniff my shoes. A White-Breasted Nuthatch descended its tree and gave me a long, inquisitive look (“Got any seed, bub?”). I was not alone for long: there was one woman my age with a camera, an older gentleman with binoculars, a school group carrying clipboards, and this guy:
My goodness, I had a good chuckle.
There is some work happening at Mud Lake; trees being removed along the path. There was obvious flood damage as well:
It was still a very pretty and peaceful walk, and mostly dry, as you can see by this little video I shot:
I walked a bit, ate my lunch, then set off for the grocery store. Unfortunately, my eyes were bigger than my stomach (and my backpack). I bought too much and then had to cram it into my backpack and BIKE HOME WITH AN EXTRA 20lbs ON MY BACK:
Ohhhh, why did I buy a litre of yogurt? And three large mangoes? Two cucumbers? A family pack of pork tenderloin? (And that’s not even half of it.)
Did I mention the ride home was a real struggle? I was pretty sure my heart was going to explode, or that I would throw up, likely, the latter. The only thing that kept me going was (1) the ability to change gears so that all I had to do was push down a tiny bit on my pedals and (2) the fact that I wasn’t in a hurry (3) thinking about how many calories I was burning. I was burning off all of that cheese and dip I ate yesterday, not to mention all the beer. (Yay!)
I also had a bit of an epiphany. You will think this is crazy but guess what? If I SLOW DOWN A BIT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO HURT SO MUCH. Sigh.
Anyway, yes, the ride home hurt, but I did it. I celebrated with a salad of multi-coloured grape tomatoes, honeyed goat cheese, and a drizzle of the fancypants balsamic vinegar Mark gave me for Christmas. It was a flavour sensation, to be sure.
After that, I went to the library to get some writing done, which is where I wrote this post and perused lots of magazines at leisure. All in all, it was a very good day.