After a fashion

With Victoria Day out of the way, I hear people claiming it's summer.

No, it isn't.  Not even in Victoria, where a run of cool days have resulted in a mixture of clothes downtown:  from quilted winter coats to tee-shirts.  An older gentlemen just walked by dressed in shorts with a fleece jacket --- Look!  There's another one!

I wouldn't be intrusive enough to snap pictures to illustrate, but I can do a sort of written snapshot.

Here's something I wrote over my bowl of oatmeal (with maple syrup, bananas and sour cream) at the Blue Fox Cafe last February, when no one was in shorts.  Not even in Victoria.

The girls my daughters' ages are wearing toques in neutral shades, pulled down to just above their ears, with the toque-tips arranged in artful pockets, and their wavy tresses carefully flowing down from beneath.

They wear layers, some draped over the backs of their chairs:  cable sweaters - also in neutral shades - sheep-skin-lined patchwork jackets (but not real sheepskin - that's cruel), broad shawl-style scarves perfectly covering their shoulders in soft folds.

At the next table, a lady with bobbed, noticeably tousled, dark, dyed hair looks out from what's left of her eyebrows.  She's wearing what appears to be an exact replica of the close-knit midnight blue pullover worn by the honey-blonde (possibly also dyed) taupe-toqued young girl a few feet away.  The lady has a gold band hanging from a pendant, heart-shaped.  Her close-fitting jeans are folded up to reveal her stylish ankle-boots.

Women dress so much more deliberately for the company of other women.

A spot of bother

I saw my hair on the bus yesterday. I was seated behind a young woman with long, thick wavy hair with stray strands of grey weaving in and out. I recognised my hair immediately. I mean, mine had a few more red highlights in it, but it was essentially the same. The girl, clad all in black with soft edges and small breasts, could have been me, too, right down to the tall, slightly chubby boyfriend next to her. It was nice to see me again.

Actually, what I really liked about her hair was that it was hers, colour and all. Sometimes I'll sit near the back of the bus, and not a single head in front of me has the hair colour it started with. A little sad, really. There's something about the sheen of hair without dye, it reflects the light in scores of different shades.

Yep, working on my people-watching. I spent about seven hours in transit yesterday, but that was because we had to head back to younger daughter's school for a barbecue. With luck, I'll keep it down to 4½ hours today.

Writes of Passage Number Two:

This happens more often in Ottawa than in Victoria, but every so often, a girl will board the bus who is bandbox perfect in every way. Her hair is groomed, her clothes are impeccably coordinated, and her make-up meticulously applied. I can only sit in rapt contemplation of such girls. They are always girls; women don't have the time for such perfection.

Take a girl I saw on a Victoria bus. She was sitting with her boyfriend on a sunny morning and her get-up was subtle, yet carefully planned around a theme. The polka dots on her dress were echoed in the polka dots on her Alice-band. She was all in bronze and black, even her eye shadow and lipstick fit in with the colour scheme. I wondered, as I always do with such females, how many hours it took to shave, shampoo, moisturize, gel, and paint to show herself for a few brief hours before it was all to do again. Then I saw her nails. Bronze polish with, get this, polka-dots. I glanced at her boyfriend. Well, I was reasonably sure he had showered, and maybe he had spent a few minutes artfully tousling his hair. Other than that, tee-shirt and baggy shorts, and, dare I say, oblivious to the effort that had gone into producing the vision seated next him?

Stuck on the bus, Gus

I spent five hours in transit yesterday, waiting for buses, leaving late buses, missing buses, running for buses. By the time I finally made it home, three hours after departing to pick up younger daughter from her new school, I was exhausted and depressed, and bellowed like an aggrieved Wookie at elder daughter for failing to bring in the recycling bins. Clearly, if I'm going to make it through the school year, I'm going to have to take the one-day-at-a-time approach, and not let my mind slip to the horrifying prospect of spending 4 to 5 hours each day on OC Transpo. That way madness lies.

We did manage to get to younger daughter's school by bus this morning, on a bus that was fairly crowded at some points (though not as bad as the picture), that was reasonably direct, and ended with a picturesque stroll up a quiet street. (Here's where I don't allow myself to think about what that will be like in the winter, or on a rainy day, or during spring thaw, etc.) Left younger daughter telling me that she was feeling "overwhelmed", but she seemed fairly happy at the end of her first day, so I'm trying to keep my chin up.

On the morning trip back from the school, I struggled to my feet as the first of the three-bus transfers pulled into the Transitway station at Westboro. A handsome young fellow glanced around wildly at his surroundings, then looked up at me from his seat and asked with a sheepish smile: "Is this the 85?" I laughed and tried to remember which bus we were on (it wasn't the 85). I'm not the only one trying to find a rhythm in my daily travel.

I've been attempting to ease my loss of time and freedom with newspapers, puzzles, and people-watching, but I don't find the last as beguiling as I do in Victoria, where all sorts of cameos and mini-dramas take place during the course of a bus-ride. Here's Write of Passage Number One (I may need to do a few of these to keep up with September's NaBloPoMo):

It's a summer's afternoon in Victoria and I'm facing backwards watching where we've been flow out through the rear window of the bus. In the very back seat, two Japanese ESL students, evidently taking the long trek back to their quarters in Gordon Head, have set up camp. They are surrounded by bags of groceries which seem to mostly consist of potato chips and pop, and they look like a double X: each girl has her knees tightly clutched together with the ankles splayed out to each side for balance as she folds scores of paper cranes. They've stuffed the completed cranes in their pockets; one breast pocket has blossomed into a multi-coloured corsage of pastel beaks and wings. I want to know what will happen when they run out of pockets, to say nothing of trying to juggle their purses and grocery bags with their origami when they have to get up, but it's my stop first.