Toronto's city-worker strike has exposed just how wasteful our lives are. Creative Commons photo by Laurie McGregor.
Toronto is entering week 5 of a garbage strike. I am not sure of all the issues, but one of the biggest ones is that the city wants to take away the privilege of banking sick days. The compromise is to make the raise a little sweeter. Now, I don't think that is too much to ask. In most jobs you can't bank sick days. I get six days a year and if I don't have to use them, I lose them. I'm not of the mindset that I should even use them if I don't need them. Isn't that unethical. But hey, who am I to say? After the first couple of weeks we took our garbage which wasn't really that much to Special K's brother's place. This morning we decided to brave it and go down to one of the transfer stations to wait in line. As it turned out. It was unnecessary for us to wait in line. Though the dump site was actually closed, and crawling with picketeers, a temporary site that no one was waiting in line at, was open staffed by non-striking city workers.
So, after feeling supremely lucky, we took ourselves back to Balzac's. It was quiet at 7:30am, and settled in for a coffee and a pastry. I had a blueberry, cranberry muffin and Special K had a cheese croissant. I read a Seed Magazine from a couple of months ago I didn't know I had and did some blackberry messaging with my sister and brother to plan a night out for my father's birthday. It was just my brother's birthday last week, mine and my Dad's this week, and my sister's a week after that. So birthday's were always interesting when we were growing up. My mother swears that she used to produce a birthday cake just before midnight on my birthday to catch both mine and my dad's since we are a day apart. I certainly do not remember that. Perhaps it occurred exactly once. And as it happens, Special K's brother's birthday is the same day as mine as well, so some years we actually celebrate together with her family on the actual day.
After our morning coffee , the plan was to go to Ikea and Hom(o) Depot, but Special K had another idea and we went first to another shop that had furniture. We have been looking for something for the bathroom for over a year. We finally did end up up Ikea and bought two shelving units, one for the bathroom and one for me for the bedroom for my more than overflowing books and papers. The age of paper needs to come to an end for me. Our place is bursting at the seams with all my books, magazines, memorabilia and other artifacts from the life of Ninja. Really I have to start to go completely paperless or our house will look like one of those eccentric places with newspapers piled high to the ceiling and arranged in a mazelike fashion.
We love our house, but it has run out of room. So we are now looking for creative ways to increase our storage space. One of those ways is to eliminate some of our material goods. Hence Ninja has to pare down her stuff. One thing I can do that is very possible is instead of buying magazines simply check them out online instead. I rarely have time to read an entire newspaper or magazine anymore.
By the time we got home and walked over to the local restaurant for lunch and back, the day was pretty much over.
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