Today was not what I’d call a resounding success though I’m mindful that one mustn’t for even the most plausible reason dismiss a moment of life. The unglamorous agenda today was to have a replacement part installed on my vehicle. That didn’t happen. Even after having called the dealership about the part yesterday and having been told it had arrived; and after having appeared at the dealership as requested at precisely eight o’clock this morning; and after having taken the President’s vehicle while mine was in hawk, I received a telephone call mid-morning from the service department that they had ordered the wrong part. They offered to pilfer a similar part from one of their used vehicles but I confirmed I preferred to await the arrival of the new part from the United States and re-attend next week to have it installed. Not exactly a roaring start to the day. Nonetheless it was a pleasant summer day and we mischievously determined to punctuate the delinquency of the dealership by bringing them five dozen fresh donuts from Healthy Food Technologies in Almonte. Our Trojan Horse didn’t have quite the bang I had hoped but then again we didn’t stick around to witness all the repercussions.
Our next stop was the ritual visit with mother. She was in a foul mood from the outset. It is useless to attempt to ascribe any particular reason to her state of mind. All that is apparent is that increasingly she is negative and paranoid, no doubt a reflection of her deteriorating mental state generally. We left her in the wake of a minor storm. Our escape was however incomplete as later in the afternoon she telephoned me to reignite another useless controversy, this time some rubbish about a garage sale that she imagined my sister anticipated to dispose of my mother’s surplus belongings. It is impossible to finesse these assaults as rationality is totally lost upon her. She simply glues herself to an idea (invariably a preposterous notion) and refuses to retract for any reason.
We decided to profit by the breeziness of the summer afternoon by traveling to Cedar Cove for a bite to eat. We sat outside on the deck overlooking White Lake.
The size of our hors d’oeuvres was substantial and we succeeded to exhaust our appetite without anything further. I had my usual PEI mussels in a chili/lime cream sauce with buttered toast points. The mussels were plump, the sauce exquisite and the bread superlative! We lolled home on the scenic back roads, idly chatting about the day’s fortunes and misfortunes. We reiterated as always our accomplishments over the past four months and touched cheerfully upon our upcoming hibernation plans.
