You can't be jammin without Bob Marley

Yet another trip out to see my grandmother and another chance encounter with my aunt, who brought the piece of shag carpet with her that she calls a dog.

Grandma's insurance claim is finally going to court in September. In 1999 she had been in the passenger's seat of my uncle's car when they drove into an unmarked hole in a logging road. She broke her back and hasn't been able to walk since. She hadn't exactly walked much before (her enormous size will attest to that), but before the accident she had been able to get herself out of bed and on and off the toilet.

Up until now, ICBC had been quite reluctant to settle anything, presumably because my grandmother was in her mid 80's at the time of the accident and they figured that she would die and remove them of their responsiblility. But oddly enough, she's not dead yet, and they're getting tired of waiting.

She rubs her shaky hands together with glee at the thought of getting a cheque for fifty thousand. "We'll take it and divide it all up and you can all have some," she says.

"No, mom," Aunt Gay replies, "that's your money and you need it. And," she adds, "I hope you get more than that. It costs fifty-five dollars a day for you to stay here."

"Fifty-five dollars," she whistles, "good gall."

Conversation inevitably turns towards the selling of government assets to private companies, the price of base metals, the outsourcing of labour to China, Mexico and such. Construction for the Olympics is running far overbudget, and there's a labour shortage in spite of the fact that they're importing workers to pay them $5 per hour to do jobs that Canadians would do for 30. It looks like within 10 years or so it will be too expensive for me to live here in my home city, so if anyone has another country that I can crash in for a couple of years I'd love to hear from them.

Conversation is punctuated by Grandma's seemingly asyndetic remarks, such as "oh, there are horses," and "look, the chinaman is so frightened, he's just fallen overboard!" Maybe ICBC should wait just a little longer...

But that is an absolutely terrible thought.

A trip to a local farm has filled my fridge with some of the most perfect looking strawberries I've seen in years. If I had some pectin and some jars they would be jam by now. Maybe tomorrow. I'll have to go find my Bob Marley cd's to mark the occasion.