An Almost Smell

2 Aug

Last December I lost the ability to smell and taste…bet you can guess how! 😉

Every now and then I get a faint whiff of a smell, a mere hint of something, that lasts for just the length of time it takes to inhale a regular breath. As soon as I realize I can maybe smell something I take a deeper breath, I try so hard to get a second chance to smell, but it never comes. Whatever smell breakthrough I had in that one inhalation is gone, and usually not repeated again for quite a while.

The weird thing, as if that isn’t weird enough on it’s own, is things almost never smell like what they should. I thought I smelled gasoline at work one day, it was someone’s lunch warming up in the microwave. I thought I smelled something a bit sweet, it was the cat’s litter box. It’s confusing and makes it hard to pin point at times what I might have smelled unless someone is there I can ask.

Last night I was on the water at dragon boat practice. Usually in summer the water we practice on gets a definite odour. It’s polluted, there’s power boats all around us, and as the temps rise the E.coli numbers also go up, so ya know, that probably is contributing to the smell. I have been spared smelling the water this year, a small silver lining.

However, at last night’s practice as we were taking a rest and gliding through the water I smelled a smell, it was gross, it made my nose wrinkle in full ick mode, and I thought of course. Of course I get a breakthrough scent from this water. Of course I get a chance to smell for a second and what I smell is wide spread pollution and general grossness. Then the person behind me took a deep breath in and said something along the lines of “Oh that smells great!”

Turns out the scent was someone bbq’ing, it’s a common enough smell when we’re on the water. People on their large power boats, mini yachts I guess, or maybe not “mini”, I don’t know what size you have to be for the yacht designation. Boat size isn’t really the point of this story though so let me get back on track. Someone was cooking meat, I don’t know what it was, but they were bbq’ing meat.

I love the smell of bbq! I’m a meat eater, I enjoy a tasty bbq’d burger, hot dog, steak if someone else is buying it lol The point I’m trying to make is I enjoy eating meat and I also enjoy the smell of it cooking on a bbq. But last night to me it smelled disgusting.

Of all the things for my non-working sniffer to mix-up. sigh. Here’s hoping one day I get my full sense of smell back and bbq once again smells like bbq!

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A Cat’s Jealousy

11 Jul

I worked from home today and the timing of that couldn’t have been better as Striker, the cat who owns me, was sick and if I hadn’t been here the blankets he got sick on last night wouldn’t have been washed as early as they were, and I would have come home to cat puke in multiple areas of my apartment. All focused on carpet and bedding of course. That is the cat way after all.

But that didn’t happen, I was at home so every time the poor little guy made the telltale noise all cat people know I’d go running, get him to the kitchen floor, then comfort him as he got sick.

Then of course, while he was laying down resting I was cleaning up the mess. Oh to be a cat.

Once I was finished working for the day and could escape my desk Striker and I moved all the way to the living room, approximately ten steps away from where I’d spent the day, and we did what he’d been wanting to do all day, cuddle.

When he’s not feeling well all he wants is a soft blanket and his human at his beck and call, and who am I to deny him either? So we sat, for hours, while I slowly got more and more dehydrated and hungry because I am most definitely not moving him for something as silly as food and tea, and he slept.

Later this evening, around 8pm or so, my landlady who lives upstairs texted asking if I’d sign a form for her, you know, one of those ones you need a witness for? Of course I said yes and that I’d be right up. Striker by this point was more laying against one of my legs rather than on top of both so he was out of his full on needy stage and more in a “I want you near by but could maybe tolerate a couple minutes separation, maybe” stage. Deciding to chance it I went up, signed a form, and we chatted for a bit, mostly about cats as we each are owned by one. Baxter, her lovely furball, just turned 20! I cat sit him sometimes so I scooped him up for a quick cuddle and a chat, it is all one sided as he’s totally deaf, but I still talk to him and he pretends to care for about 0.5 seconds.

When I came back downstairs I returned to Striker, who was exactly where I left him. I sat down, got comfy, and immediately I was being sniffed. My slippers, my pants, my shirt, my face. I had pulled my laptop onto my lap and completely ignoring it he walked over my abdominal area, he smelled multiple places, then he meowed in my face, glared, and lay down, draping himself over my arms, which were still stretched to reach the laptop keyboard.

I’d been pinned by a jealous cat who seemed hell bent on letting me know who I belonged to.

He’s adorable, and cuddly, and when others are around does his best to be a ninja and hide while also acting like he has no need for a human, and apparently he is also jealous when I come home smelling of another cat.

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Goodnight, Travel Well by The Killers

6 Mar

It’s old but it’s still good.

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Grief

18 Nov

Grief is an odd thing, we will all at some point experience it and yet, no two people will go through it the same way.

Some crush it down refusing to acknowledge it is there. Others become so wrapped up in it they never function the same way again. Most I think muddle through, alternating between days where they can fake things well enough to appear to be ok and other days they drown under the waves of emotion that bombard them, until they find a new normal. A slightly calmer ebb and flow of grief, one they can handle while still functioning in society. An odd tear at a random moment, a brief hitch of breath when a stab of pain finds their heart, but those come farther and farther apart until you can almost pretend the pain was never there. It isn’t under the newly formed scar, it isn’t something you’ve learned to live with, you just pretend it’s gone, never was, and that all is fine again.

Grief isn’t a bump we trip over while going through life, it’s a hole we fall into and have to crawl our way out of. Grief is a tsunami crashing over us that if we don’t hold our breath well enough, and swim strongly enough, we’ll never escape.

Grief comes to us because we have experienced a loss so painful we can’t brush it off, can’t look the other way, can’t eat a bit of ice cream and move on. It comes to us when our heart breaks, when our soul feels ripped in two, when the world no longer makes sense and we are left scrambling to find our footing.

Maybe at first you don’t try to find your footing maybe you let yourself stay afloat, unmoored, not tethered to anything, because the pain is so overwhelming you don’t even know how to reach out to someone so they can help anchor you.

When your feet finally find the ground again the pain doesn’t go away, it intensifies because now you’re forced to feel it all. There is no buffer, no cloudy mind to help hide the truth of what has happened. Now it’s just you and the pain facing off.

Does the pain win? Do you win? Can there be a winner or just a vague truce made between the two?

Eventually, if you live long enough and if you’ve let yourself become close enough to others that you feel love, you will feel grief. There’s a quote, something about the more you hurt the stronger you loved. I don’t know if that sentiment is right, but I do know that right now my heart is destroyed, I am broken, the pain of loss has beat me and I don’t care if I ever come back from it because I don’t want a world where this person who is vital for my happiness isn’t here. But that isn’t how life works. We lose people, it’s inevitable, and the world keeps going on about its business while those like me are left stumbling, off rhythm from everyone else, because they are no longer whole and don’t care enough to try to fake being ok.

Grief is an equalizer, a painful one. By choosing to love we voluntarily sign ourselves up to one day feel this way. A poor bargain is it not? Is the love once felt worth the pain that takes it’s place?

The person I lost, the reason I am drowning right now, I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t had them in my life. Their impact on who I became was huge, and the memories I have of them so dear to me I will fight with everything I have to preserve them. I cling to one of their cardigans, I ordered their favourite meal at a restaurant, I’m eating their ice cream, all to try to bring them back to me, to feel them close just for one more second. It’s a stupid game I play, one that will only hurt me in the end because they aren’t coming back and trying to cling to them just makes the pain last longer, cut deeper, overwhelm me even more.

The value I place on every photograph of them, every item they once used or touched, is so high I would make rash decisions and poor choices to keep all these items just as they are. I can’t make their entire house a shrine, and I shouldn’t try, but every time something changes I hurt a bit more because that is a change they won’t see, an update they won’t know about. It is proof life is going on without them and right now, with the pain so strong, I don’t understand how that is possible.

He is dead, and I am lost, but I guess the pain is the price of such a strong love and since I don’t want to know what a life without that love would have been like, who I would have been without it, grief is the price I must pay.

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The Ridiculousness of My Evening

28 Sep

Well, it’s been a minute since I’ve written anything. I stopped because I was living a covid life, by that I mean a boring not going anywhere life due to covid restrictions, not a “I’m sick with covid” life. Weird the things we need to clarify now…

Anyways!

Life was boring, I did nothing and went almost nowhere, so had no idea what to write about. Now here I am, almost at the end of September 2022, I’ve had a full summer, and written nothing. Ah well, least I’m starting up now and not next week, right?

I really wanted to share the ridiculousness that was my evening, because I couldn’t have made this up if I’d been asked to.

Striker, the furball, the one who pays no bills yet rules this apartment, the chonky boi, the Overlord, has been having some medical issues lately and oh my god, the drama! From me. From him. Put two dramatic souls together and things will get interesting.

He had a vet appointment to test his kidney levels. About six months ago he had dental surgery and his pre-op bloodwork showed slightly elevated but still in normal range readings on some kidney stuff. Yes I know, I’m so technical with my wording. I’m not a vet or a doctor people, the bio wording they use means nothing to me! So his readings were a smidge high and they recommended bring him in at 6 months for a blood and urine test. Ok, sure, of course I will.

He has his blood and urine taken, I apologize profusely to him for the indignity of the entire process, we go home. No biggy. The next day, while I’m working from home (oh yeah, since I’ve last written I have a new job and work from home a couple times a week, see, shit really has been happening since I’ve been gone!), I get a call from the vet saying he’s stage two almost stage three kidney failure / disease and boom, world turned upside down. How did that change so quickly in six months? They talk about him needing subcutaneous shots of fluid once a week and how they’ll teach me how to stab him with a needle, how he needs a special type of food, how things are bad.

Then they also say they want to run one last test, they have enough urine they don’t need a fresh sample, so can they? Of course they can! Like I’m gonna say no to that?

The next day, after I’ve been ugly crying and holding Striker like I can somehow physically ward off his death if I hold him tightly enough, I get another call from the vet. Super chill this time. No protein in the urine, things are great. They know Striker is food picky so if he eats the kidney food great but no big deal if he doesn’t, not yet anyways, he doesn’t need the weekly shots. Basically, a roller coaster of emotions over a 24 hour period for them to be all “yeah, it’s all chill now, we just need to keep an eye on things”.

What the actual…I’m trying to swear less, so just imagine how that finishes lol

So now I want to go over there and slaughter someone. Do they not take training on how to talk to people when going to vet school, cause they should!

I took away from this when things do get worse health wise for Striker I will not handle it well, like that’s a surprise to anyone who knows me *rolls eyes*.

I was still edgy over the whole kidney scandal when I notice Striker is licking his back paws, like, a lot. An abnormal amount. I take a look and holy hell they are scary looking. Red, and irritated looking, and sore, and just not ok. Weirdly enough, an injury I can deal with better than an internal organ thing, so I clean them best I can and book him a vet appointment.

Vet visit number 2, in under 2 weeks…he’s plotting my death, I’m sure of it.

We went to the vet yesterday and they described his poor back paws as looking as if they’d been burned Burned! From what you may be wondering. Did he jump on the stove when a burner was on? Did he walk through freshly fertilized flower pots? Did he make friends with a bbq? Nope. None of these. All he did was use his litter box, with a different litter than normal. It messed with his murder mittens so badly they are being described as burned.

Lemme tell ya, my anger levels are real. The vet said we’ll never know if he is allergic or if something was wrong with the litter batch, but that part doesn’t really matter to me. What matters is I brought something into this apartment, for him to use, that hurt him. And I want the blood of someone to make up for his hurting. But I can’t really get revenge on myself, cause who would feed Striker then? So revenge will have to be forgotten, while I am now a caregiver to a strongly opiniated ball of floof.

All of that back story to get you to tonight. I came home from work and set up a Striker Spa Session, as I have decided to call it. Towels spread on the floor, the antiseptic wash soaked into gauze squares, a bowl of warm (but not hot!) water for rinsing the paws, and an antibiotic cream for after the paw cleaning and drying is over. They did this at the vet yesterday, showed me what to do, and uh yeah, fun times for us.

To be fair to Striker, he is remarkably well behaved when I have to do random things like this to him. Once he realizes I’m committed to whatever it is I’m doing he just sorta sighs and waits till I’m done. Such a trooper!

So I deep cleaned between his toes and around his toe beans, removing built up icky stuff, which he actually made sounds about but after he seemed to feel better so let me off with no fresh wounds. Then rinsed the wash off his murder mittens. Then dried them as best as I could…why do cat paws not dry quickly? What’s with that? Then used a q-tip to get the antibiotic ointment between his toes. Then held on to him for as long as I possibly could to give the ointment time to absorb because he and I both knew as soon as he was let loose he was finding somewhere to hide so he could lick his paws.

He does have a cone of shame, that I had to buy, and that he was put in when we left the vet. He managed to get out of it while still in the carrier on the way home. I put it back on him as soon as we got home and I learned that (1) when wearing a cone of shame Striker can only walk backwards and (2) he gets out of it in under 20 seconds.

I tried making a little foot wrap thing for him, but no go, he got that off in about two minutes. Not gonna lie, kinda proud my foot wrap lasted longer than the cone of shame.

We are now working on the honour system, I keep telling him “No cone than no feet!” as in, if you don’t wear a cone then you can’t lick the feet. So far he is proving to be less than honourable, but at least when I tell him to stop he does, for about five seconds.

What’re you gonna do? He’s a cat, it’s an instinct. A stupid instinct but an instinct all the same.

Tomorrow we will be having another Striker Spa Session, and will be having them once to twice daily for the next 5 to 7 days, or until he kills me in my sleep, whichever comes first.

Sleepy boi.

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Cooking a Duvet

2 Jul

Sooo…can you cook a duvet if it is in the dryer too long? I would say “asking for a friend” but let’s be real, we all know I did it lol.

I got home from a workout / hang out with a friend to find the cat got sick on my duvet. sigh. Usually the duvet has a cover on it, and another blanket on top of the cover to keep it protected from potential cat vomit (you live with a cat long enough you learn tricks like this!) but today is laundry day and the cover was off because I’d washed it and hadn’t had time to put it back on before going out. My bad. I should’ve known the opportunity to get sick directly on the duvet would be too much to resist.

I spot treated the affected area then stuffed the entire thing in the washer. I had some doubts, since it was hard to get it all in the washer but figured once it was wet it would sort of shrink down and be ok. Note to self, that doesn’t happen. The washer started making this sound, this very unhappy sound, during the stage where it should be spinning and sucking water out of the machine. When I checked the duvet was wrapped tightly around that middle post deal that is inside the washing machine (well, if you have an old washing machine it has that post), and it was doing zero spinning. Figuring the best option was to get it out I started pulling the duvet out of the washer only to find that it wasn’t evenly wet, so hadn’t been cleaned all that well, and the bottom of the machine still had a lot of water in it so the part of the duvet nearest the bottom of the machine was soaked. In my effort to squeeze the water out enough to move the duvet to the dryer without getting water everywhere I proceeded to get water everywhere. Soaked my shirt, the floor, the front of the washer. Yup, total highlight of my evening.

Eventually I got the duvet in the dryer, got it running, and figured everything was fine. I Googled to make sure it was safe to put a duvet in the dryer, Google said it was ok and who am I to doubt Google? When I went to go check on it there was a mild concern because as soon as I opened the dryer door there was a smell, like, I dunno, I was cooking my duvet? It wasn’t a great smell, and it sort of made me think of fire. Which is ridiculous, I’m not going to start a fire by drying my duvet in the dryer, that’s crazy.

I pulled the duvet out, shuffled it around because of course the part that got folded into the middle while the machine was spinning was still wet, stuffed the whole thing back in the dryer and once again walked away…thinking of fire…

Eventually I took it out, thought it just had to be done by now and uh, yeah, it wasn’t, technically that should be present tense, it isn’t done, still. Hours later. It is currently spread out over the back of two chairs, turning my living room into one big messy fort, so the patch that is still noticeably wet can air dry. Ya know, air dry in a basement suite where it is chilly enough even in a heat wave it takes pants three days minimum to air dry. I’m resigned to my duvet being stretched out like this for a while…and my being cranky and chilly in bed because I am without it.

But yeah…you don’t think I’ve like, cooked the feathers or something…right?

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Cat vs. Ear

29 May

A couple weeks ago, maybe a month now (wow, time really has lost all meaning hasn’t it?), I got my ears pierced. Yes, I know, it is a thing most women have done when they are kids so it is simultaneously weird and strangely interesting to friends that I have done it now. I did get them pierced when I was a kid, I begged and pleaded and harassed my mother until she took me to get them pierced. It was horrible. Everyone said it doesn’t hurt, it did. Not knowing back then getting your ears pierced with a gun is a bad option. The person doing the piercing did not do a good job. The result was blood, pain, the piercings not healing, and lots of scar tissue in my ear lobes.

Why do people do this?

After all that I thought I was someone who couldn’t have pierced ears, since I had such a bad reaction to it. As an adult I googled a couple times to see if there was a way to get them pierced despite the scar tissue in my ear lobes and the results I found said I’d have to have a dermatologist surgically remove the scar tissue, wait for it to heal, then have the dermatologist pierce the ears. All that meant to me was a lot of money to get decorations on my ears, so I again dismissed pierced ears as a thing I couldn’t have.

I started thinking about it during 2020, the pandemic gave me way more thinking time so I looked into it, again. I found a piercer who said they could work around the scar tissue, and that it should be fine. I mean, they said more than that but I highly doubt you want a verbatim recounting of the conversation.

End result, I got them pierced. Experience went really well. It was done properly, with a needle, by a trained professional. Yay, right? Well, yeah, yay, but omg the healing process is a whole thing I was not expecting.

My work peeps said they would take a week to heal, and with all the questions I asked the piercer none of them were “how long is the healing process” so after a week when they weren’t hurting but were uncomfortable I reached out and asked her and she was all “a week? yeah right!” healing time for my ears, as an adult woman, is 4 months. Four months!! That is…commitment.

So there I am, cleaning my piercings three times a day, tending to them as instructed, actively having to ignore all the “advice” friends are giving me because they got their piercings as children and go figure things have changed since then when the cat goes and does something that put me on a whole new path for healing.

I was sleeping on my back, the cat is sleeping all snuggled up next to me, he stretched his front murder mittens out, towards my face, claws slightly extended and while one paw landed on my face the other got my ear and yanked on the piercing. It felt as if one of the claws actually got in the hole. So ya know, woke up to pain, lots of pain. I grabbed the cat’s murder mittens, held them in one hand, while breathing through the pain and telling him what he did is not ok, and do you know what he did? He started purring. Apparently he liked my holding his murder mittens all snugly like that and thought we were cuddling. Yes, this is how I discipline the cat, super effective huh?

That was a Saturday, I remember because I got up, cleaned the now very painful ear, then dealt with the pain all day, grateful I didn’t have to be at work. The next morning when I was cleaning my ears there was blood, the first blood there had been during this whole experience. Me being me I immediately jumped to “I’m gonna lose the piercing” dramatics and started searching things on YouTube and Google to see what to do. FYI, don’t do that, unpleasant things come up.

Since then I have been babying the right ear, trying my best to keep it happy and claw free. It was doing alright when Striker and I were playing and my ear got smashed, again, and when I put my hand to it in reflex I hit the lobe, causing even more pain. Like, wtf, my poor ear!

So here I am, I think a month in to healing, and there is a noticeable difference between my left and right ear. My left ear, which has had no claws, or hands, or anything bashing it, is healing well. The right ear is a constant flux between no pain, to discomfort, to pain. All it takes is a little touch on some days for full on pain, and yet, other days it gets touched and it seems ok, which gets my hopes up that it will eventually heal, and be fine, and I’ll be able to wear something beside these starter hoops that the piercer put in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the hoops, I just am hoping for a day I can change my earrings out, without pain and easily, so what I’m wearing can better reflect my mood, or personality, or whatever. I say this knowing that all my friends with pierced ears tend to wear the same earrings every day, every week, every month, every year, so maybe I’ll end up that way also? Let’s just hope the right ear lobe heals well enough for me to find out!

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Taco Cat

18 Apr

Ok, so, last week I wrote about the whole getting beer on the cat incident, for which the cat made me pay dearly. This week I can top that, much to the cat’s dismay.

It all started when I decided to get tacos for dinner. There was quite a bit of sauce on the tacos, making them messy to eat. So I’m sitting at home eating my messy taco, sauce on my hands, when the cat starts making the noise he makes when he is about to be sick. He was in the carpeted living room so I sprang into action, I wanted to nab him and move him to the kitchen floor to be sick on the lino, a much easier clean up job for me.

Seeing me coming for him he runs to the bedroom, also a carpeted room, undeterred I follow and scoop him up by grabbing him around his middle and unceremoniously hauling ass to the kitchen.

To make sure he didn’t go for the carpet again I kept my hands around his sides until he was done. Once I knew he wasn’t going to be sick I removed my hands only to discover that there was no longer any taco sauce on them…it was all on the cat’s fur.

Yup, two hand prints of sauce on each side of his body, wrapping around his middle.

I feel I made the choice anyone would in that moment, I washed my hands and went back to my taco, no one likes a cold taco!

The cat, being severely unimpressed sat across from me, with his back to me, sitting straighter than I have ever seen him sit. For the rest of the evening whatever I did he sat in my line of site, back to me, completely upright. Like he was making a point of ignoring me and he wanted to make sure I was aware of it.

It’s possible he picked up on being so dramatic from me…maybe…

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Beer Volcano

13 Apr

Picture this, I’m sitting on my comfy living room chair, my knees are bent and the cat is sleeping under my legs on the ottoman, you can’t see him though because there is a blanket draped over my legs creating a tent. On the table next to me is a can of beer, sitting for at least fifteen minutes to ensure it won’t go all foamy when I open it.

I lean over, grab the beer, crack it open, and a beer volcano ensues!

Beer flowing over the edge of the can soaking my sweater and blanket. It is so obviously a lost cause I stay still, letting my Eeyore sweater take the hit, foolishly thinking that will be the worst to happen. But no no, because the beer also flows onto the blanket, only the blanket for some strange reason doesn’t absorb the beer, instead the beer pools on the blanket. The valley of the blanket reaches max capacity and overflow occurs! Now beer is flowing quickly down the side of my body, soaking into my pants but also landing on my leather chair, beer is going everywhere…much like lava from a volcano, only ya know, not as hot. 😉

Realizing the worst is much much worse than I anticipated I try to get up quickly but if you think getting a cat out of a cat tent when he is sleeping is a quick thing, well, trust me when I say it is not.

I start moving the blanket off my lap, using it to cup the beer since the beer still isn’t soaking through. My movements are sending beer flying all over the place while I’m nudging the cat awake. One quick confused glare from the cat and he is jumping off the ottoman and going to the bedroom to pout about his silly human and her weird ways.

After cleaning up the beer from the chair and the floor I go to the bedroom to get undressed because I now smell like someone who spent the night in a bar and am soaked; the cat is sitting on the bed looking disgruntled. Because I am well trained I apologize to him for rousting him so unceremoniously and lean over to give him a quick “I’m sorry” cuddle only to notice that his forehead is wet. No, not just wet, soaked, with beer.

Seems his anger wasn’t just at being woken but also at having beer poured on him! Oops?

I could not stop laughing, he was so funny. He had a little mohawk going on and just looked so hard done by. I just kept laughing and apologizing, which I think he thinks means I’m not sincere, but I promise I was! Then the thought, do I have to wash his fur to get the beer out, or can I just dry his forehead, because washing his fur will be an experience neither of us will enjoy.

Grabbing some tissues I start drying his head, while still laughing and apologizing, and all I can say is thank goodness I have a cat who trusts me and lets me randomly dry beer off his forehead without putting up a struggle.

After he was at more of a damp level I scooped him up for a proper apology cuddle, thinking we were out of the woods, but instead I uttered this question to him:

“Why is your paw wet?”

Yup, that’s right, little patches of beer soaked fur on various parts of him. More tissue, more drying of fur, more laughing by me, more disgruntled looks by him, and eventually he was at a consistent damp fur level in all affected areas, and I was regretting not stopping to take a picture before I dried away his mohawk.

Deciding neither of us needed the trauma of me trying to bathe him I had a shower while he pouted on the bed and later we both cuddled again while I drank the remainder of the beer, from a glass!

FYI, it was a really nice beer, I recommend it…the cat does not…

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Fake Safety

26 Mar

I feel I should warn you, this maaaaay turn into a rant…

I like to hike; I tend to flip between what I think of as “real” hiking and “fake” hiking.

Real hiking is a trail you can’t just stumble on, you need to take gear because you could encounter all manner of random wilderness situations (and by gear I mean like, water, a phone, spare socks, rain shells, stuff like that, not ya know, ropes and carabiners so I can scale the side of a mountain, what am I, a mountain goat? 😉 )

Fake hiking is more trail walking, trails you can get to more easily (I have one accessible from my neighbourhood), you just take music, maybe a water bottle, you don’t need to worry about being out too long in the elements or being stranded in the forest.

The majority of the time I do both of those types of hikes alone.

Of these two I think most people think “real” hiking is the more dangerous. I might come across wildlife, you can die in the wilderness, what if a sudden storm hits, or I fall and break a leg and nobody finds me. I tend to be the idiot who doesn’t always tell someone where and when I am going, and I pack light because I’m going for speed and distance, not a leisurely stroll. And again, I tend to be doing this on my own. What can I say, my days off aren’t most people’s days off and I like doing stuff like this on my own, I can go my own pace, enjoy being alone in nature, but ya know, not touching it cause ew. It’s just a thing I do that I don’t think too much about.

However, I think the argument can be made that my “fake” hiking is way more dangerous, and you wanna know why? Because of humans!

There was a story on the news lately about a woman downtown, in her own neighbourhood, out running errands in broad daylight, who got followed by a guy for 40 minutes. She eventually found a group of strangers at a park and asked if she could stay with them, telling them this guy had been following her. She had been recording him while he followed her, he could tell he was being recorded, but that didn’t scare him off.

It was crazy. It was scary. It was unfortunately, not a new or isolated incident.

I first heard about this when reading an article online, the woman who got followed had a message for women out there that basically boiled down to the things we hear all the time, be careful, don’t go out alone, blah blah blah. Not that I’m trying to be rude to her, just that isn’t a new message, I’ve been hearing it since what, before puberty?

That message pisses me off.

Why, whyyyyy should I modify my day, my errands, my life, my leisure activities, to avoid being stalked like prey? Why, do we as a society, tell women to hold their keys between their knuckles, take self defence classes, don’t walk anywhere alone, completely modify your life, if you want to be safe. But ya know, not actually safe, just a pretend safe that can be taken away from you in a moment when some ass decides to stalk you during the day, in a populated area, just because he can.

So this was bad enough. I was more mad at the message being thrown out there, the message that to stay safe women have to change a bunch of stuff instead of men keeping their jerk friends from doing stupid things, men policing other men when they notice they may be a threat to women, policing systems cracking down on predatory behaviour more swiftly, the judicial system keeping predators like this in jail once they are caught and awaiting trial and then the penal system keeping them behind bars where maybe they can experience what it is like to be hunted.

But then, oh it got worse. A friend who knows I like to hike alone sent me a link to a video where a woman, on a trail I go to often (I mean, not yet this year, but often in other years) got followed by a creeper of a guy. So she did one of the other “tricks” we are taught, where you stop and pretend to retie a shoelace so the creeper passes you by. A bit farther down the trail he was behind her again, there are no trails branching off from that main trail so he had to have gone in to the bush, hidden, waited until she passed, then started following her again. Super awesome and totally normal behaviour right? So she keeps going, getting more scared, understandably. She tries losing him, it doesn’t work. She calls the cops and is telling them what is going on, where, if I remember correctly, she was told don’t take video or pictures of him as it might set him off. She then saw a woman coming the opposite direction from her so she told her what was happening and asked if she could walk with her. The woman said of course, turned around and they went together. They also came across a lone woman starting off her hike that they warned so she joined them. The three of them got back to the parking lot together, waited, and yup you guessed it, creeper came out, went to his vehicle, pretended to drive away, then eventually did drive away.

We don’t know what would have happened if that woman hadn’t found another person on the trail to pair up with. We also don’t know what would have happened if they didn’t warn the third woman they saw who was headed directly towards the creeper. I mean, we can hazard a good guess, but since none of us can see the future (if you can see the future hit me up, I have lotto questions!) we have to what, breathe a sigh of relief nothing bad happened and move on?

How is this ok?

I had actually planned to use that trail tomorrow. I hurt my knee this past week and wanted something without a high elevation and that trail is perfect for it. But now I’m all, huh, maybe I shouldn’t…which is so wrong! I shouldn’t be stopped from having a nice long “fake” hike, on a trail that is thought of as safer because I won’t run into a bear or cougar, because it is now the hunting ground of some guy.

Oh, and again, with this article, the focus was on women changing their behaviour to stay safe, not on society changing it’s behaviour to keep all citizens safe.

I know not all guys are predators. I am not saying all men are evil. I am saying that something has gone very very wrong that the victim in these situations is being judged for doing something we should all be able to do (go out alone), and we are propagating the myth that the only way for women to be safe is for them to modify their behaviour. Do we, as a society, really not know of any other way to keep women safe, so they can hike, grocery shop, walk to meet friends, etc. alone?

I shouldn’t have to be debating with myself on whether I think it is safe to go on my hike tomorrow or not because of this. I shouldn’t be wishing I had a big mean looking dog I could take with me. I shouldn’t be cursing because my knee is not great right now, which means I can’t run, which means I now think of myself as easier prey. I shouldn’t be thinking that a run in with a bear or cougar is a less dangerous situation for me.

I have no answer for this rant of mine, I mean I do, it involves castration and a lot of time behind bars for crimes that have been shown to be precursors to more violent crimes against others…but that isn’t a popular opinion. So instead I guess I will walk with keys in my hand, and change my route to be harder to follow, and be suspicious of every man out there I pass, because that is what I can do to stay safe…but not “real” safe, just “fake” safe, which is apparently the best I can hope for.

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