Suitcase Face Again

Posted on 24 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

There’s something about suitcases seen end-on, but angled, and from a slight distance.

I had thought it might be limited to hotel rooms, but it turns out it applies to hospital rooms as well. Or as ill, maybe. Anyway, as we waited for the paperwork that would spring the Big Guy from the Heart Institute, I noticed this rather pouty little guy. A bit blue, maybe, in more ways than one.

He also reminds me of a piece of wall art that my parents brought back from Mexico a few decades ago: a Mayan calendar in green stone, I think, with a distorted face at the centre. A frog? A sun god? Dunno. But he looked a bit like this fellow.

 

Posted in Photos of Faces | Tagged | 4 Comments

Faciem Accidens

Posted on 17 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

I was going to write a thoughtful piece on merging behaviour under different traffic conditions–a subject I’ve had ample exposure to over the last few weeks–and I still might, sometime. This week, though, what life allowed was the discovery of two more accidental faces in hospital bathrooms:

  • One (on an import – my own rain jacket) that reminds me of The Scream or Home Alone.
  • One (on the sink infrastructure) that reminds me of a moose or (rein)deer.

Posted in Laughing Frequently | Tagged | 15 Comments

Magnolia Termina

Posted on 17 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

A few days ago, the magnificent magnolia tree a few blocks from the hospital was already faded and sparse. Today’s cloudbursts will have stripped off any remaining flowers.

The squirrel-beleaguered magnolia in my backyard bloomed almost without me noticing it this year, but I did catch its final moments yesterday. They were magnificent, too.

Posted in Appreciating Deeply | Tagged | 6 Comments

In the Cloud

Posted on 17 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

In my third week of parking in an under-repair and, hence, under-resourced parking system, I know what’s what. As Mary Tyler Moore said, “I’ve been around. Well, maybe not around, but I’ve been nearby.”

If I arrive during daytime visiting hours at the hospital, I wait for at least 30 minutes as cars enter the parkade on a one-out, one-in basis. Waiting in a line of indefinite duration is something I lack the bandwidth for at the moment. OK, then – early it is. But how early?

Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Landscapes | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Magnolia Stupenda

Posted on 10 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

About four blocks west of the Ottawa Heart Institute, just across an intersection with no traffic controls that pedestrians can use, is an exceedingly old magnolia tree that fills the small front yard of its house. Thirty feet tall? Possibly. Branches down to the ground? Definitely.

I’ve been keeping an eye on it for about 10 days. Here’s how it’s changed in that time, looking left to right.

Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Flora | Tagged | 10 Comments

Peaches No Ice

Posted on 10 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

There comes a time in a hospital stay when the patient is invited to choose their food for the next day. If you come into the hospital conscious, you’re good to go immediately.  If you come into the hospital unconscious, you must first become conscious and then show that you can swallow without choking or aspirating solids/liquids into your lungs.

After a few days in the Intensive Care Unit, the Big Guy met these criteria and I was helping to fill in a meal form. Right away there was trouble. For breakfast, did he want apple juice or peaches no ice?   I can’t remember the last time I served canned peaches so maybe I’m out of touch, but it seemed like an odd thing to specify. Yeah, we have peaches, but you can’t have them with ice. Why did they feel the need to temper expectations in that way?

And since they did seem to feel this need, why stop there? Why wasn’t it crackers-no-ice? Meatloaf-no-ice? Chocolate-chip-cookie-no-ice?

Continue reading →

Posted in Language and Communication, Laughing Frequently | Tagged , | 10 Comments

The Terrible, Horrible

Posted on 03 May 2025 by Isabel Gibson

This sucks.

As the Big Guy wanders in the mental fog that attends the aftermath of cardiac arrest–If you’re lucky!–this is his phrase-of-the-day.

This sucks.

He can’t articulate the pain, confusion, and anxiety that I imagine he feels, but this phrase captures it nicely, I think.

This sucks.

From his perspective it’s hard to argue the point and yet, for those of us who have not been sedated for two days, *this* does not suck.  The day before yesterday sucked. Yesterday sucked. *Today* is a damned good day because the Big Guy is awake and alert.

As I wander the Ottawa Heart Institute’s parking lot, halls, and adjacent neighbourhood, I find more signs that today is a good day. The truth is, the signs were there before I was of any mind to see them. Waiting for me to find my perspective, maybe.

For the next few weeks, I expect to be busy with this latest turn of the road, and not so busy with this blog. If I’m not here, I’ll be somewhere else. Wherever I am, I hope I can remember that even a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day doesn’t totally suck. And even if it does, maybe tomorrow won’t.

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora | Tagged , , , | 28 Comments

Knowledge is the Power

Posted on 23 April 2025 by Isabel Gibson

If only there were a network of computers
hosting all of mankind’s knowledge.

Oh, wait, there is such a network, now. We even have access to it with convenient handheld devices, an innovation that has permanently ruined the sport of bar bets.

If only those computers didn’t also host
so much nonsense.

Wait, what? You mean that you can’t count on the accuracy of what you find online? Say it isn’t so.

Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 12 Comments

If It’s Broke, Fix It

Posted on 19 April 2025 by Isabel Gibson

At about the 15-minute mark, the sensible thing would have been to go home and try again later, but by then perverse curiosity was calling the shots.

Can this
get any stupider?

In this case, *this* was us trying to cast a vote in the first hour of the first day of the Advance Poll in our local community centre. You know, before they got busy. As it turned out, a few others in our neighbourhood had the same idea: There were unexpectedly high numbers of Advance voters, especially for one polling station among the 5 or 6 that our centre was serving. Our polling station, as it turned out.

Was *this* a finely tuned system being overwhelmed by too many pesky voters? Not so much. Let’s look at the things that went wrong.

Continue reading →

Posted in Thinking Broadly | Tagged | 12 Comments