You get two posts in two days because I am procrastinating.

So the neighourhood where I live used to be a village called Brockton which was swallowed up by Toronto as the city expanded west. (This is where Lord Brock got his name, btw.) The plumber's supply shop at the corner was once the town City Hall and there are old goal cells in the basement.

The main employer at the time was a rope factory. Most of the streets at the time were little short things with lots of bends but there are two very long streets north-south streets near me that had no intersections that were used to twist the ropes. Even now the only cross-streets are the major thoroughfares the city built when they expanded out this way.

The factory owners, along with all the other wealthy people, lived south of the railroad tracks and down towards the lake. Big three-story houses with lots of windows and wide front yards and two staircases - one for servants. In the 50s the city built a highway along the lake and all the rich people moved out, a lot of those big houses were turned into apartments and boarding houses

The houses on my street were specifically built to home the factory workers and they are all row-houses on lots 15-feet wide or smaller. Most didn't have basements. They all had the same "summer kitchen" setup that I had to tear out. The insulation, where it existed, consisted of torn up newspaper.

My house is at the end of a row of three and was built in 1913. There are still sections on streets all over the area that were built at the same time, and also lots that were cleared and used to build more recently.

There are creek beds that were funneled into pipes and ravines that were filled in while they were building. There is a creek running under the next street over, you can hear the rushing water through the access covers every day of the year. Some of the houses we looked at when we were buying are settling into the old ravines, if you drop a marble it rolls the full length of the house and out the door. (Yes I did this once. The realtor tried to explain it away and I have no idea what he came up with because I could not stop laughing.)

There are history walks in the area all the time. I find this stuff fascinating.

Achievement unlock.

Back when it first became confirmed that my vestibular damage was permanent I bought one of those bike stand things that turns your normal bicycle into a stationary bike. I figured even it was no good for transportation at least that way I could still use it, only without the falling off and throwing myself into traffic part.

I still do fall off it sometimes when the gravity is really bad. At least don't have to contend with cars.

Anyway that was 15... maybe 20 years ago now? I dunno, time is toffee. Anyway, the original stand had plastic bits, like foot-pads and adjustment pieces and they had been gradually breaking off over the years. So recently I replaced it with a second stand. And last week I was using it and there was a snapping sound and the bike just... sagged. While I was sitting on it. When I got off and took it apart it turned out that the rear axle - the one that supports all the weight - had sheared right off.

The axle was a part of the assembly kit and it was exactly the same between the two stands so I didn't bother changing it when I swapped. So I spent three days digging through The Stuff to find the second axle that came with the new stand. Which I found. Also the assembly manual. That manual was laughably useless, whoever wrote it wasn't even trying. BUT! There are videos online demonstrating how to assemble the stand, so I watched those to figure out how everything goes together. Assembly did not require tools. Getting pieces of metal that have been living next to each other for possibly more than two decades to now let go of each other, that required tools. (One of those tools being a hammer.)

Bike now functional. Skill upgraded.

***

Something that is very much above my skill grade, the stairs that lead up to my top floor go straight up until they meet exterior of the bathroom wall and turn and continue to go up until they meet the second floor. At the corner of the turn there is a light on the ceiling. It's probably 10-12 feet above the step immediately below it.

The lightbulb in that light has burnt out.

Fucked if I know how I'm going to get up there. There's no landing to put a ladder. I have a ladder that extends, I could maybe brace it against the door on the ground floor and then against the wall at the top, but then I'd have to climb up it while it's bent over and the idea of my permanently dizzy ass trying to stand on ladder rungs that are tilted?

Yeah I don't think so.

I have a nephew that used to have those rock climbing hand holds all over his bedroom as a teenager so he could make it from the door to his bed without touching the floor. I'm going to ask him to do it.

***

Tomatoes I seeded at the start of the month are growing like gangbusters. All but two of the seeds sprouted and multiple seeds have produced twins or triplets.

Not one of the peppers has broken soil.

This has been the story every year. So help me, I am going to figure out what I am doing wrong. I WILL CONQUER THE PEPPER.

***

I have a stack of paper on my desk that I am trying to force myself through. Scribbled notes with instructions and reminders, notices from the city, bills, voting information, appointments I have to make, letters I have to write to politicians, ugh.

I promised myself I would set aside a day and just dig through this pile this weekend. I need to set up a schedule, one day a month I will deal with all the "paper" crap. Otherwise it gets very large and overwhelming.

On the plus side, today I walked to the farmer's market and it was raining but also very warm. And one of the farmers had a sow that rejected her piglets so they were all at the market being carried around like dolls by the staff. (When I was a child I thought pigs got to be the size of a golden retriever. Then I visited my Irish family and one of them had a farm and introduced me to his sow. So I don't think that any more.)

There are worse things in life than being able to pet a sleepy piglet.