*Halfway through a full year of fun times and crazy blogging. Huzzah!

Monday: I get totally stressed out by International Chip and Dip Day

At work, we have a social committee. They plan fun and interesting events, like ice cream socials, drinks after work, etc. At the beginning of last week, they sent out an email announcement that they were hosting a mini-celebration for International Chip and Dip Day. Now, I never knew that this was an actual festival, but it made total sense, because who doesn’t like chips/and or dip? Probably only the Belgians. I was really pumped for it, but then the stress started. We had to sign up at reception on a big, totally PUBLIC flip chart, and say what kind of chips we liked, and what kind of dip we were committing to bringing. This was a COMMITMENT. I take these things very seriously, so right away I should have known there would be issues. Here they are in chronological order:

1) I was excited to sign up, but when I got down to reception, there was only one other person signed up before me, and I didn’t want to seem too eager, so I left and waited until there were more people on the list. I spent a lot of time peeking my head around the corner, and when there were about 5 people ahead of me, it seemed appropriate. Yes, I realize that I was overthinking this in a very big way, completely disproportionate to the event itself. Thanks for pointing it out, Ken.

2) I had to specify what kind of chips I liked. In public. Were there chips that would make people think I was weird? If I asked for quinoa chips, would people think I was a little elitist? Would BBQ make me seem kind of redneck-y? I went with my gut and wrote down “Anything bacon-flavoured”. (This was after I figured out how to use the magic marker, which had a button that you slid up and down to get the marker nib out. It was very complicated and I almost threw in the towel right then and there, but there were chips and dip on the line so I persevered). Then it was time to commit to a dip. I panicked and wrote down the first thing that popped into my head, which was “Ranch Dip”. OK, cool. I had specified a chip and made a promise regarding dip. Now all I had to do was wait until the night before, and buy dip. Awesome. I totally had this.

3) Three days later, I had a panic attack. I had forgotten to buy dip, was working off-site, and had no way to get the dip to the office, even if I had it. When I finally confided to my co-workers that I was overwhelmed by guilt, they reminded me that Chip and Dip day wasn’t until Monday. Crisis averted.

4) On the weekend, I completely forgot about International Chip and Dip Day until I was driving to have coffee with a friend. I pulled a U-ee, and ran into Zehrs, where I purchased two tubs of ranch dip. I decided that if I kept it in my car, then there was no way I would forget to take it back to Toronto, and I was only mildly worried about it staying cold. Which is weird in retrospect, because you’d think I would be more concerned with NOT giving my new colleagues salmonella.

5) Sunday Night. I put the dip in the refrigerator in a plastic bag, all ready to take to work the next morning.

6) Monday Morning, 7:45 am: I left my condo and forgot to take the dip with me.

7) Monday Morning: 10:15 am: I popped out of work to run to my condo and get the dip (the party didn’t start until 2:00 pm—I thought). When I got back to work, I put the dip in the refrigerator and then realized that my colleagues had disappeared. When I finally found them, they were all in a VERY important meeting that had been called while I was out getting the dip. I didn’t know where the meeting was, and ended up coming in noticeably and embarrassingly late. Stupid dip.

8) At 2:07 pm, I looked at the clock and realized that the party had started, and my dip was still in the refrigerator. I took off from my desk, ran to the kitchen, got my dip, and went to the boardroom where the party was being held. The only person there was someone from a different department who was carefully arranging chickpeas in a circle around a glass, flowered plate of homemade hummus. She gently reminded me that the party didn’t start until 2:30. I cracked the lids off my tubs of dip, and left her there, lovingly spooning out her decorative chickpeas.

9) As it was coming up to 2:30, I made a decision. It was all more than I could take, and I refused to start worrying about when would be the right time to go to the boardroom ie: if I went right at 2:30, would people think I was over-anxious (yes, I get the irony), but if I waited until closer to 3, would I miss the party altogether? I was done. The only way I was going was if someone came to my desk and personally invited me. Screw it. But I had forgotten one very important thing—my new company was pretty fantastic, and the people were very caring and sincere about making everyone feel part of a team. So at exactly 2:30, members of the social committee began going to everyone’s desks, inviting them individually to come to the International Chip and Dip Day celebration. A couple of my colleagues were sad that they had forgotten to bring dip for the party, so I said, “Hey, no worries—I brought two tubs, so we can say it was a group effort.” They were like, “Excellent!” so we all went to International Chip and dip day together, and I was so relieved that it was finally over that I barely cared that most people had brought home-made dip, while I had cheaped out on Philly.

Monday: Yes, it’s still only Monday.

At some point during the chip and dip drama, 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.