Although we don’t push off until Thursday, we are now as good as done and ready to go! Our feet have at last caught up with our hearts! After months of counting the days, the moment of departure is nigh. We have nothing further on our diary. My four o’clock meeting this afternoon with a registered nurse at the Family Health Clinic completed my homebound ventures. The nurse removed the bandage from my recent surgery incision, examined it and pronounced the “approximation” of the tissue edges ideal. Healing quickly is the only physical attribute I have of any distinction, certainly not a highly marketable trait but nonetheless one worth having in the circumstances.  The surgery was precisely one week ago.

I had already been abroad once today to traipse to Manotick for an early morning facial and haircut at Rinaldo’s and then an in-and-out visit with my mother at Colonel By Retirement Residence to bring her some “paper” she had requested to document her telephonic splurge with the Manager of the Sisley Department at Holt Renfrew, Montreal yesterday afternoon.

Buoyed by the favourable medical report and its capping of my duties, I decided to take another drive, this time to stream into Bells Corners to revel in the spectacular summer-like weather we’re having and to take my accustomed double-shot espresso café Americano at Starbucks. Though the added draw of a car wash was off the table (I had already done that earlier today) I resolved to stop at the Glide Petro-Canada in Stittsville to clean some insect splatter off the windshield.  That detour satisfied my obsession to peruse the car in the late afternoon dazzling sunshine. At the same time I reinspected the front passenger-side rim to confirm it was indeed the new one and that the self-inflicted curb abrasions no longer contaminated the car.

It is illustrative of my shameless complacency that the drive home afterwards was for me provocative. While normally one wouldn’t trumpet monotony as an advantage (I have done this routine jaunt one thousand times), it strangely permits one to embellish  what is nothing more than repetitiveness. Where I excel in this otherwise uneventful vernacular is that I have polished the edges sufficiently to impart a glow. If one pretends to do anything well then one must at least do the simple things well. It is never beneath me to perfect the lowest mandate of any performance.  The ride home was against the setting sun (an event which as of Sunday takes place an hour earlier than before).  Above the gem-tones of crisp neon lights of suburbia’s big box stores and fast food joints the distant horizon was a dissolving band of pink, red and blue. The dome of the sky was midnight blue.  The latest succession of dry days meant that most cars on the road were clean and their tail lights blazed in the dusk. I was listening to my favourite music on the USB.