Janice

22nd November 2025

Cusp of the Season

Saturday, 22 November, 2025

Ordinary days. On the 7th I finished my rehab sessions. 90 minutes of education followed by 60 of gym work. The group had started out feeling like it couldn’t gel, but week by week it did happen. There were always the odd ones, the fussy ones, the bewildered ones, the ones who bounded in like this was a heavy-duty gym experience and ate lettuce and raw almonds like it was their religion. What’s said in group stays in group. By the end, we were pretty much a team. One of the younger ones arrived with a QR code to scan and join WhatsApp so we could ‘keep ourselves accountable.’ Not so bad then. We exercised and had the most fun warming up to Blue Jays fan songs, willing ‘our team’ to win. They didn’t in the end, but it was quite a ride. I won’t get into it. It sucked to lose. There’s always next year. For a while, though, Toronto was buoyant. If you lived here and felt the animosity from the USA, this was a big deal.

Then we got an early taste of winter.

They were right. Out came the winter boots and coats. Here we go then. It lasted a few days, about two and a half days longer than I expected.

The first day it snowed, there was enough to shovel.

When it was almost clear, I had to go to an appointment at Wellesley near Church. This area is now called the (Gay) Village. It’s always weird for me since it’s not always been so chic. Back in the day I’m sure there were gay residents — their biggest stores, bars and other haunts were around there – but there were also the young straight crowd, the hippies. Along these roads they lived together in crowded and awful conditions, shooting up drugs and not coming out for days. There’d be sprays of blood on the walls, garbage on the floors. No one cared as long as they were high. Does this still happen now? Today it’s cleaned-up facades and rainbows, trendy restaurants and boutiques. Everything changes.

I was there to renew my WheelTrans pass. This is Toronto’s public transit alternative to public transport. I got it because I was in treatment and going back and forth while in a vulnerable position. No one really wants to need it but it opened up my life and I feel sure I’d have stayed housebound without it. I’ve seen a lot of the city too, the back streets. Somtimes I doin’t have a clue where I am, the buses and cabs zigzag around in sometimes illogical patterns and then I look up and notice something familiar and reorient. There have been some crazy journies but I’ll skip talking about these for now. (PS I was accepted for another year when I hope to be well enough to actually have adventures.)

One of the perks of the transport is going places I might not have elected to travel to or, if I had, would have been an onerous journey. On the last day of my rehab, I was invited to a get-together for the women I used to teach with. Some of them I’d known since the early 80s. Then we were together, with only a few missing faces, as if we had never been apart. There was a lunch that was mostly breads and a bunch of cheese, but the company was warm. We sat in the friend’s house and enjoyed each other’s company and her amazing living area, full of comfy couches and a view of the trees at the back. Envious, moi?

Suddenly raalising where I was after seeing this hippy bus near Trinity-Bellwoods Park

I went back to making dolls. My brother called this a Janice doll. I certainly didn’t mean to do that.

At least if it’s a Janice doll, she has hair

I really need supplies, though. I try to make my dolls from recycled materials and give-aways. After another rehab appointment on Friday, I went to look at a few fabric stores on Queen Street West. I did find a place that wasn’t too expensive, but I’ve been used to Ridley Road bargain bins and Stoke Newington remnants where the owner would ask me how much I wanted to pay for my handful of lace, ribbon, beading and colourful fabrics and never said no to what I offered. On Queen Street, I succumbed to buying two separate metres of lace – $9.00. Must find more donations in the neighbourhood or it’s the end of my sewing career.

Queen Street West has also changed. I took a few photos, though. I was there, after all.

I did my last Writing workshop (cancer-related) on Thursday and am not sure I learned much. Maybe. I also did my last art therapy workshop on Friday (also cancer-related, as most of my things are these days). I did learn from this one. My art group did gel pretty quickly. We were a mixed bunch but we’ll stay connected, I know it. Our final assignment was to look at common themes from all of our past works. This was my piece.

I learned that home was my common theme. Always with lots of windows, chimneys with evident smoke from fires, and although surrounded by trees and plants, most definitely urban. In this one the Gherkin and a bit of a botched attempt at the Tower of London are clearly there. This yellow brick road had no obstacles. A clear path home. The sky was blue, the sun was out and shining. A wish on paper.

Today I haven’t gone out. I made some noodle soup, mixed a little miso into the broth, cooked a perfect egg but forgot to marinate it, and added some marked-down tempura shrimp for that fancy touch. Winter comfort on the horizon.

8th November 2025

Meandering in place

Saturday, 8 November, 2025

This morning I walked to the store. I bought a Sausage McMuffin, which is a very rare thing for me to do, but today I thought why not. No egg. Just the sausage and pretend-cheese. In the Longo’s near the flat, I bought a machiato (single – semi wet, so she said – and I picked up two packs of marked-down meat (good till tomorrow) and bemoaned the fact I had hesitated too long for the last bag of marked-down gianduiotti and it was gone. While I was doing all this, I knew I was ready to write again. It’s been an age.

Sausage McMuffin wrapper in Canada — Always bilingual in Canada. Sausage McMuffin this morning

An age.

Why? At first it was just ennui, an unwavering sense of boredom with my surroundings. I wasn’t used to this milder interest in where I was. It wasn’t crushingly boring, but it just didn’t stir me. What to write about? I’ll confess that this feeling really hasn’t changed all that much. I don’t know if it will. But then last October everything got murky.

Cancer.

I am just putting it out there without explanation for now. I have written a lot in draft and email and chat and, as always, in my head and I feel ready to talk about it. I’m not quite sure how to go about it because some of you may not want to know. My plan right now is to start plopping things in here and make the subject line Breast Cancer Journey – xxx. That way, anyone who wants not to know, not to get inside my head, can skip those bits. When they’re all done, which I hope they will be, I’ll link them all. They’re part of me so I don’t think I want them to stand alone. Deal? (Do let me know so my hesitation moves to determination.)

So…Art Therapy. I’m in a group. We’re part of an art therapist’s next thesis. It’s hard. It’s much harder than I expected, but that’s because I hear the other women’s (yes, all women) stories. They’re bittersweet, crushing, sadder than I can explain. And then I feel lucky, and then I feel bad about feeling lucky, and then I feel maybe I’m not going to be lucky, and then I don’t know how I feel. But sad, yes sad.

I’ve not been pleased with what I’ve done. The other women draw abstract forms that express so much. They range from amateur to promising, the latter maybe more than that. My drawings are poignant, too complicated, too real (too?) and they all depict ‘home’ in various ways. What I’ve been writing about is being me – I just want to be me – because this journey creates an unreal feeling, a sense of having morphed into this unrecognisable person. It’s a person who feels detached, often unwell, and in my case certainly a nomad in more than the sense of where I call home.

This week the assignment was The Path – where is it, how does it look, are there signposts, are there forks, how does the path feel? So here is mine, the most complicated of the group and thoroughly me.

At the bottom of the picture is a barbed wire fence. It’s daunting, but if you look closely, there are a few gaps to wriggle through if you want to get onto the path. It lies, yellow (brick road, of course) just through the fence and begins. At first, there are many thorny bushes to make me hesitate moving forward, and although these start to disappear, they crop up here and there, showing that even near the destination there’ll be challenging times. On the right of the photo there are pleasant distractions, a tree stump to sit on, a swing for the fun of it. To the right is a duck pond with a bench to sit on. The top of the pond is swampy, it’s not all lovely. A thorn bush and stump block the path near the top – more determination is needed. Throughout, the trees are flourishing, and there are nests – this place can be nurturing. At the very end of the path – home. It’s yellow, with a yellow sun in the sky to echo that. Two smoking chimneys show that someone is home and there’s a welcome inside.

Not hard to interpret this. It’s a difficult journey, one I want to abort many times, where I feel I can’t go on. My love of photos that show gardens so wild that the houses are only barely visible is a metaphor for home being there, but you need to look for it.

I’ll do my very best to keep writing and share my journey. It will be here if you want.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is how bad my eyesight is now. I was due to get cataracts removed, and that went pear-shaped after my diagnosis. If you spot mistakes, it’s because I am seeing things in double-vision and in a faded version. Getting my eyes fixed will come next, but it’s a tough decision to allow my body to be invaded again so soon. Wish me luck!

24th July 2024

I might understand monsoons now

Wednesday, 17 July, 2024

This summer there’s been a lot of rain. I mean a lot. Not only rain but thunderstorms and wind. Last week it was because of Hurricane Beryl. This week I’m not sure.

Monday, which I may have more to say about, it rained very hard for a couple of hours. I had to be out for appointments so there was no way to avoid this.

On the way to the hospital, the first of the rain started. I had to call an Uber to get there

At the front of the hospital (Women’s College Hospital – a story I need to tell). I worked here for 12 years but it didn’t look like this then. They pulled the old building down and now it’s very modern and has become 100% ambulatory

Yesterday was a different but similar story. I woke in the morning to a dark day with some threatening clouds. I knew I had to go out at lunchtime for the third of my four appointments this week, so I hoped and hoped as I listened to the loud thunder out there somewhere. It didn’t take long for the rain to arrive. And I mean rain.

Threatening clouds and darkness in the early morning

It rained so hard we couldn’t see much outside. It came down like it would never stop, loud and relentless. I thought about my appointment and wondered if I could dare to step out in it even for a second.

It rained like this for three to four hours, letting up slightly just as I needed to leave to go out. When I got down to the apartment lobby, all the power went out. It stayed out for another few hours and I soldiered on. Leaving my appointment I was stunned to see brilliant sunshine, not much fun when you have had your pupils dilated, but again I pushed on. Some stores had simply closed up for the day – there were talks of this continuing late into the evening – while others seemed to be in holiday mode, relaxing in their doorways, chatting to people inside and out. Transit was ‘moderately affected – streetcars run on electricity from overhead cables, but I did manage to catch one and made my way to the Philipino shop that has a hot counter. They’d promised to stay open one more hour and I’d promised to bring something home if we couldn’t cook. I stood making my choice when the lights came on.

It was like a celebration in there. It felt almost like lockdown everywhere and I had a nostalgic moment or ten. Everyone was chatting, complaining lightheartedly about no hydro, no internet, no stove to cook on, food defrosting in the freezer…and it felt like family.

I’m glad to have had those moments and remembered only too well how people come together when things are rough, and here it was again.

We eat on the balcony if the rain isn’t coming in the wrong direction. We just pull the table in closer to the window and watch the weather

In total, Toronto had 10cm of rain. It was as much rain as usually falls in a single month in July. Cars were partially submerged, some even floating, basements (many which are apartments) were flooded and uninhabitable, roads and highways were closed. Today many still don’t have power 32 hours or so later.

So the climate is changing and climate emergencies are more frequent. Much like the pandemic, which was anticipated for decades, we aren’t prepared and I haven’t heard of anything in the works either. Maybe I just don’t know about it – not just maybe. All I know is it all felt apocalyptic yesterday. I didn’t feel scared but I did feel curious.

I didn’t take photos. It was too wet, then too hot, my hands were occupied and my battery slowly died.

Other than that, it seems I am old. Who knew! One of my Monday appointments, was supposed to be to confirm that, yes, I did now have arthritis in my hands and I needed a splint🙄. However, the lovely OT told with me great enthusiasm it was to offer me a walker (‘mostly covered by OHIP’ (Ontario’s health care system) . The next day my appointment was to inform me that my cataracts were ‘mature enough’ for me to get them removed and I could have the first one done next week – what?! I hesitated and said I needed a little time to organise my life. Perhaps many older people don’t have much else going on and, although my life is a bit sticky right now, I do have things to arrange.

Today I thought about my mother peeling hardboiled eggs as I attempted one myself. Then I thought about how she was younger than I am now on the particular day I was reminiscing about. This led me to consider my grandmothers, both of whom were proper little old ladies with their floral pinnies, beige lisle stockings, varicose veins, full corsets, and orthopaedic shoes while younger than I am now. I pondered it all.

My paternal grandmother, Sophia (Sophie). In this photo she’s holding my brother John and so is probably not 70 yet

My dad with my maternal grandmother, Charlotte (Lottie) perhaps a little younger than I am now

Before today I’d thought of writing everything that’s been messed up in the last few days – crazy-making stuff that only now seems funny – but it’s not in the cards now, unless i need some material for my stand-up act. (I don’t have one.)

Today it didn’t rain and that’s enough. To sweeten the deal and the day, cocktails in a can will be available in Ontario corner shops this week. No big deal, you say? You have no idea! Yes, in 2024 this is just happening. I say it all the time but I wish I drank. Or do I?

P.S. According to the Met offices, Tuesday was not a record day for rain. In fact, the day I went to the hospital to have Robin — 28 July 1980 — was quite a bit worse at 118.5mm. People roll their eyes when I tell them how heavy the rain was that day (the air was turquoise,’ I’ll often say) but, you see now, it really was.

17th July 202417th July 2024

When a highlight is a lowlight

Sunday, July 14, 2024

It was a pretty quiet week, the highlight being a bit of a lowlight.

(Restaurant review alert…)

That was going out for dinner the day after Krish’s birthday. We chose a Philipino restaurant we’d thought about for a while now. We’ve not liked the idea of this cuisine but then enjoyed the Philipino fast food we’ve had so were going for a real restaurant this time. I think we should have stuck to the fast food counters! We chose one prix fixe and one a la carte item. We started with grilled oysters, buttery and cheesy. I liked them. This was followed by a skimpy belly pork with some rice and a vinegary cucumber and tomato salad (more like a relish) and some sizzling kalbi ribs. The cassava and coconut cake finish was sweet and interesting. We enjoyed the kalbi ribs the most but at $26 we might have done better at the Korean place across the street and had some banchan to round it out. On top of this, the meats were dripping with grease and I ruined my new favourite top.

Pork belly with rice and tomato and cucumber salad

Cassava and coconut cake served in a banana leaf

However, silver lining, we got OUT. Was nice being adults for the evening. And this week we are going back to Batibot the Philipino food counter down the street for some adobo pork – lots of it at a fraction of the price. (Well, I think we are.)

Not much happened until Saturday and that was a thrilling walk to a bargain supermarket down the street. Freshco has cheaper prices but we go there mainly because they have a lot of ethnic food on sale, like freezers full of Chinese dumplings, Korean noodles, Indian snacks and meals.

To get to the Freshco we have to walk under the railway bridge at Dufferin Street. I dread that bit of the journey but it’s the only way. To think how much I enjoyed walking through the Blackwall Tunnel and the underpass to the Isle of Dogs when I was a child. Now walking through these longer tunnels are somewhat terrifying. At least no trains thundered overhead.

At the east end of the tunnel is an engraved plaque that confuses many Torontonians since there is already a Queen Street subway station on the Yonge-University line. This, however, is the name of the tunnel – subway meaning underpass.

Once through the tunnel, Gladstone House, now a hotel greets you. It’s Toronto’s longest continuously operating hotel Built in 1889, it has traditional light hardwood floors, restored exposed brick walls and works by local artists throughout the building.

By the Freshco is Island Foods, a popular Trinidadian roti shop In 1974, the first Island Foods. This isn’t the original location, of course. That was opened in Ruth and Ramasar Sawh, who arrived in Canada in 1968 with no previous restaurant experience, but with a desire to build a bright future for their family. Krish knows them well and we go by sometimes for their doubles and roti.

Shepard Fairey (@obeygiant) art by the Freshco

I finished The Giver of Stars. I’d tried it twice before and not got very far before abandoning it. This time I stuck with it and, although the Kentucky mountain accents put me off at first, I quickly began to enjoy the character and story development. It got very gritty towards the end and that surprised me. Recommended. After that heavier-than-my-usual read, I started a fluffy romance from Christina Lauren, whose books are fun to read if you don’t mind her common themes and frequent forays into soft-almost-hard pornographic paragraphs. Denise has sent me the entire audiobook of The Perfect Mother (Caroline Mitchell) so @Denise (hi!) , OK I will but you now have to promise to read a Jojo Moyes in return – unwritten law.

I have a very busy week coming up. I’m seeing a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist ( on the same day) a consultation for lens replacement, and getting a phone call from the Women’s College Breast Centre, as well going to lunch with my sister.

The fasting is going OK. Most days I can make it till noon, but there are definitely some rough patches. If I don’t make it a religion and circumstances allow, I’ll continue. Do I feel any different? I don’t think so. However, I am thinking about meals, mostly out. Where should I go next? Well, there’s lunch with Ruth but maybe also somewhere else. Thinking.

Stay tuned, I guess.

13th July 2024

A birthday, not mine – and Beryl

Wednesday, July10, 2024

Quiet days yet busy in their own way. I have now made three different soups from my chicken stock. A laksa with chicken, a pho with chicken (photo last blog), and a Chinese soup with shrimp and tofu. Eating on the balcony is relaxing, much more so than on the coffee table.

And diet update – well, who knows. I start eating at noon and finish by 8. The mornings are the hardest. By 11am I am usually feeling quite woozy. This is expected. My other choice is to start at 11 and go till 7pm but that might be hard to do. After a week, if my blood sugar continues to not cooperate, I’ll know that’s the better plan. I’m mostly buddying with Krish as he does this, but maybe I’ll benefit.

I’ve flipped through way too much Netflix, Prime and Roki screens to find something to watch. I miss live TV but I don’t want to be one of these ‘I never watch TV’ people.

I went out briefly again yesterday to meet a friend, Esmeralda, who is visiting her old home of Toronto from Bologna. We ate in the Portuguese cafe where they served me a matcha latte, disappointedly from a sweetened (ugh) mix. This friend is one of the few I have that seems to drift through life, as I have, letting the waves carry you along while you make decisions based on the scenery and the weather. No forward plans, not really. I’m not sure this has served me.

She has talked for some years now about moving from Bologna and she’s now thinking perhaps the Azores (she’s from Macau so has a connection with Portugal) or Bolivia. I envy her the ability to even think about this. I talked to Krish about how the single woman I know are usually keen to have a relationship but, when it comes down to it, they love being able to make their own decisions, without conferring with anyone else. I’m a tolerant and cooperative person but this sounds perfect in some ways.

I went into the Dollarama to buy a paintbox and a sketchbook, partly to finish a birthday project for Krish (it’s TODAY!) and partly to have something more creative to do from the balcony than blow bubbles.

Out on the street lady yelled at me angrily when I took this photo. What was in my view was one group of homeless people on the corner. They gather here on each corner and across the road daily. I told her ‘I take photos every day.’ She raged on

The weather was very warm and stiflingly humid. In my haste to get back and cool off, I forgot I promised to get cilantro to make mango salad and cold spicy tofu today.

Last night I took hours to watch a video on how to make a ‘paper dancing man’ – I watched it over and over, stopping it and cursing the large Pause button that covered my view of the instructional video, and I made about six, all of which failed. I wondered then worried about the state of my brain or at least the wiring that made it so impossible to translate what’s in front of me to an actual creation. How can I even pretend to be an artist when this is the case? I seem to manage really, but my dolls were the first thing that I could just create without getting tangled up in directions, left or right, purl or plain, up or down, which way to turn this, how will it look when I turn it inside out? This morning I got up and pretty much breezed through my final and acceptable version. Then I wrapped the little present, started on some applique tissue design on the outside and wrote the card with more applique hearts made from Post-Its. Needs must.

Why such trouble with the dancing man? What goes on during the journey from brain to hands? I shared the video with my brother and sister, over Messenger – as a test – could they do it to see how long it would take. My sister was characteristcally quiet and my brother (who I knew would spring to the task) left the chat and came back within about five minutes with a video of his creation. Well, damn! Anyway, here’s the video that shows you how. Want to try it?

Hurricane Beryl is passing through. The intemittent rain has been heavy, the sky has been mostly leaden. There have been a couple of very windy periods with some huge rain.

The rain was a loud, heavy and furious curtain

We stayed indoors and even our plans to go out for dinner were foiled, so we will go out tomorrow instead. We planned where and when and that’s almost the entire battle around here. The plans were not foiled by the weather but rather the inability to choose where to go. This is far from new. It happens all the time.

Krish went for food and I finished up the present wrapping, and made a bunch of salads for lunch, including the mango salad now that Krish had bought the cilantro. We ate on the balcony and somehow didn’t get wet.

Birthday lunch – beet, squash and orange salad, baba ganouj, cold spiced tofu, mango salad and naan. We ate on the balcony and the meal was fun

I listened to more of The Giver of Stars and managed to nap. The book is good – it’s about an English woman who is living in Kentucky with a new husband who has never touched her. She gets hired into a new visiting library scheme in the Kentucky mountains and this will change her life – I’m already sure of it. Jojo Moyes manages to write love stories where the romance isn’t the only focus. Strangely, this is rare, and makes the story feel more real.

My gift was a success – as predicted, the wrapping was the biggest success. So I’m going to try to draw and paint more. Little things and maybe more paper crafts. They feel disposable, a bonus these days.

The gift-wrapped box, in which the robot toys were, and my final and only successful paper dancing man.

I think about my discarded arts and crafts supplies, though. I’m pleased I was able to pass them along to someone in Hackney, but sometimes I look over to see them here and they’re gone. I took a lot of pleasure in gathering those things – the fabrics, from donations, from remnants in the fabric store in Stoke Newington, cut from old clothes found in charity shops. Then there was the lace, the buttons, the beads and brooches, the felt, the embroidery threads, colourful and some metallic. The pipe cleaners and glue gun and fake flowers to pull apart to make skirts for the little Day of the Dead and the Christmas peg dolls. The paints and the pencils and who knows what else. It will be a challenge to collect a new box or three. Looking forward to that.

Meanwhile, it’s Toronto, it’s Parkdale, it’s Hurricane Beryl leftovers and it’s Krishna’s birthday and it’s been a pretty good day.