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epitome of incomprehensibility
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The flood on Friday had a name. And that name was Debby. It came from a tropical storm that had been a hurricane, Debby, which doesn't sound like a hurricane at all. More like your mother's reliable friend, who seems nice but boring. Except maybe she used to be a porn star and her moniker was Wet Debby, which you find vaguely amusing-slash-embarrassing though it doesn't alter your opinion of her nice-but-boring nature. Except that's just a goofy thing you thought of, we're talking actual nature, and the relevant four_letter_word here isn't porn. It's rain.
Wet Debby Does Montreal's West Island, But Not in a Sexual Way.
So yes. On Friday, the clouds dumped a lot of water on many streets around here. But I was downtown, sitting in Concordia's mezzanine, after an activity at Atwater Library called Shut_Up_and_Write. My dad called and said, "Kirsten, it's raining heavily, maybe you should stay there until it stops."
"Raining? Yes. Heavily?" I couldn't tell. I was sitting in the middle of a largely empty large room, peopled mostly with soft chairs, mini-couches, and low tables. I walked to the big rectangle of a window overlooking the street. "Not THAT heavily."
But it was worse in the west. When I walked home from the day's last train (after eating, after shutting up again and writing) the Pine Beach tunnel featured a puddle of water that went up to the tops of my shoes. I waded through. Past puddles had been deeper - one a couple of years ago rendered the middle impassible, necessitating a roundabout route.
Better having wet feet than taking a long time. But the next day, Saturday, was wet feet and a long time: the local clubs fair where I was at the artisans booth was held in Pine Beach park, whose fields were still bogged down with water. The sun shone, but I was in the shade and my sandals were soaked. I sold about $80 of my own craftiness while fulfilling committee-ish duties in bringing fliers for things. Plus the environment club was handing out free jars of honey from its local beehives. So far, so good.
But after that I had a headache and dawdled in making it to Julia's party in Lafontaine Park - I got there just as they were leaving early due to a short burst of rain.
The salad I made, I ate alone. I sat on a bench across from some Canadian Forces building that looked like a castle, or at least a fortress, and gobbled up half the contents while reading Alberta_and_Jacob. Got tired of salad. Bought a muffin around Prince Arthur Street. Decided both together were supper. Tried to determine how to get to either Mount Royal or McGill metro, found a map on St. Denis that said YOU ARE ONE SHORT LANE AWAY FROM SHERBROOKE METRO, DUMBASS because maps yell at people sometimes. Took the orange line to the bubble_tea place I used to visit weekly and started brainstorming part 2 of my novel, though I'm still on the last chapter of part 1.
All that excitement aside, I found I had a cold. So it was just as well I couldn't hang around a bigger group of birthday-celebrators for long. And I'm still sniffly, but I wanted to write about Shut_Up_and_Write as well as spoils_from_the_flood.
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