Last week, one of my colleagues asked if I wanted to pop down the street with her to look at shoes. I needed a distraction, and she needed a companion, because the store she wanted to go to was what I would diplomatically refer to as “sketchy”. There were always a lot of strange men hanging around outside, there were shirts featuring marijuana leaves in the window, and rap music was playing at full volume. But they sold a lot of popular styles of basketball shoes that she wanted to look at for her son. When we got there, it was raining a bit, so no strange men. It seemed like a good omen, and we went in. The ‘customer service representative’ was wearing a huge bomber jacket, and the place was freezing. It was already a little weird, but then I happened to comment on how much I liked camouflage pants, and the next thing I knew, the guy was going through stacks, saying, “Is this your size? Is this your size?” I told him I was a 6, and he pulled a pair out of the pile and handed them to me:

Me: Why does the tag say ‘15’? Is that some kind of foreign sizing system?
Guy: Too big, lady?
Me: A little. Like I said, size 6.
Guy: What about these?
Me: Um, maybe a little small—they say ‘3’.
Guy: You like shorts?
Me: No, not really.
Guy: These ones are ‘5’. You try them on?
Me: Uh…

So he directs me to the front of the store, where the ‘change rooms’ are. I put that in quotation marks, because it was just pipes with curtains hanging from them. When I got there, a very large teenage boy was going in at the same time, but the guy says, “There’s two rooms”, and I wanted to get it over with, so I suddenly found myself in the most gross change room I’d ever seen, with only a thin curtain separating me from a teenage boy, and only a piece of cardboard separating my half-clad self from Yonge Street behind me, because the back wall of the change room was actually a broken window that had been covered up. It was freezing cold. I could have just pretended to try on the pants, but I DO have a penchant for camouflage, and I decided that I had come this far, so I might as well try to fulfill my pants destiny. My colleague, thankfully, had decided to stand guard outside, which made me feel a little safer. Unfortunately, the pants, while they fit in the waist, required a much bigger butt than I currently possess, and they were way too baggy. I whipped them back off, handed them to the guy, and we hightailed it out of there, giggling like teenage girls all the way back to the office. When we told everyone where we had been, they were all, “You went IN there? Oh my god, you’re so brave! What was it like?!” So we regaled them with our tale, and they got to live vicariously through us, which made it seem like we had performed a valuable service instead of being scared sh*tless.

Monday: One of my worst nightmares comes true. And yes, it’s still only Monday

On Monday night, after a particularly exhausting day, as you can see from all of the above, I decided to tidy up, then have a bath, and go to bed. The sink in my condo is especially deep, and it takes a while to fill, so I started it going, then went to run a nice, hot bath. The bath was luxurious; I felt all the day’s chip and dip tension slowly slipping away, and I had a good, long soak. When I got out of the bath, around 20 minutes later, I was about to wash my face, when I looked in the mirror and saw something moving behind me on the floor. I turned around and almost literally fainted when I realized what it was. Yes, I had left the sink faucet on FULL BLAST and then had forgotten all about it. For over TWENTY F-ING MINUTES! Do you have any idea how much water can fill a 600 square foot condo in TWENTY MINUTES??!! A LOT of water, that’s how much, and it was all over the place! I splashed over to the sink as fast as I could, and turned off the tap, then I stood there, hyperventilating, not knowing what to do next. So, I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken.

Me: OH MY F-ING GOD, KEN! That nightmare I had a couple of weeks ago just came true!!
Ken: Which one?
Me: The one where I flooded my condo! Only the water isn’t anywhere near the balcony door, so I can’t open it and let the water drain out, like I did in the dream!
Ken: You actually flooded your condo? How did you DO that?
Me: I left the sink running while I had a bath. There’s water EVERYWHERE! What do I do?
Ken: (calmly) Get every towel and sheet you have, and start soaking it up.
Me: I don’t think I have enough sheets and towels. It’s gone right through to the bedrooms and the carpets are soaked too!
Ken: Then you’ll just have to keep ringing the towels out. It might take a while, but you can do it.
Me: (still hyperventilating) I’m naked and I’m standing in front of an open window.
Ken: Then get dressed first. It’ll be OK.
Me: I’ll call you when I’m finished.

Two hours later, I had a bathtub full of wet towels and bedsheets and a relatively dry condo, but any benefits I might have felt from my earlier bath had gone down the drain. Literally. When I finally called Ken, I was exhausted. After we finished talking, I looked at the clock and it was after 11 pm, which meant one wonderful thing—this day was just about done. The rest of the week could only be uphill from here–and it was.