My Week 225: Who The F*ck Is Daniel and Other Interesting Questions

On Friday, I had a rather stressful experience. I had been invited to appear on a local social media show to promote my novels, both published and upcoming, and I had to go to the taping on Friday morning. I had recently discovered how to use the GPS on my Google Map during our trip to Ottawa—it was invaluable in helping us actually FIND Ottawa, as well as our hotel and various museums. I used it especially for walking trips since it was December in Canada, and everyone knows that you calculate the possibility of walking ANYWHERE by subtracting the outside temperature from the time it would take to get to your destination. For example, 20 minutes minus 20 degrees means “hard pass”. I don’t think I’m doing the math right, but that’s par for the course, if you know me at all. Anyway, the taping for the show was at the Woodstock Curling Club at 11 a.m., so I programmed the GPS with the address and set out in my car at 10:25…

Hmm. It doesn’t want me to take the highway? OK, maybe this back way is faster.
 Turn right at Pittock Trail? There’s no right turn here.
Turn LEFT on Pittock Trail and turn around?! I don’t see a road. That’s a WALKING TRAIL.
Turn right on Landsdowne? OK, this seems familiar.
I’m lost. Where the hell am I? I should pull over and check the GPS.
How could it possibly take 41 minutes to get to the curling club from here?! None of this makes any f*cking sense! I’ll ask this old couple for directions.
How do you live in a city your whole life and NOT know where the damn curling club is?!
Oh my god, I’m going to be so late!! They’ll do the taping without me and I’ll never be famous in Woodstock! I should do what any normal person would do…
Ken! I’m lost and also this GPS is a piece of sh*t.

Sure enough, Ken was able to search the address from his work computer and guide me to the curling club. It was 7 minutes from where I was and I got there just in time (I’ll post the link when the show goes up—I’m sure I looked like a lunatic, all out of breath and whatnot, so it’ll be good for a laugh if nothing else). Then later, I was having lunch with my aunts and I had to go to Kitchener at 3 o’clock, so I looked up the address and it said it would take me 6 hours and 7 minutes to get there. I said to my aunts, “This stupid GPS is broken. How could it possibly take that long to drive to—oh. It’s set to ‘walking’ instead of ‘driving’. That explains Pittock Trail…”

So one mystery solved. But I have a few others. And since I was just nominated for another Leibster by the creative and inventive sci-fi guy Simon at Planet Simon, and because everyone knows that if you nominate me or tag me for anything, I will either answer your questions in my own weird way or simply make up my own, here are my responses to questions that I have been asking myself this week:

1) Who the f*ck is Daniel?

This is an excellent question and one that I can’t currently answer. On Monday, I decided to watch a little Netflix on the big TV in my condo. I haven’t done this for a while, because I normally use the TV in my bedroom, but I’d been halfway through Lord of the Rings at home before I left to go back and wanted the grander scale of the 36-inch living room screen. I scrolled down to the “Continue watching for Suzanne” section, but that’s NOT WHAT IT SAID ANYMORE. And I was like, “Continue watching for ‘Daniel’? Who the f*ck is Daniel?!” I messaged my current roommate, hoping that he was a friend of hers but no. I messaged my previous roommate, the one with the fruit fetish, thinking that she and Daniel had shared a cantaloupe or something, but she was adamant that she had never had anyone over to our place, let alone someone named Daniel. So now all I can think is that “Daniel” broke into my condo, logged me out of my Netflix account, watched a bunch of cooking shows and documentaries about Paleo dieting, then forgot to hide his tracks by logging himself back out.

2) How many shop vacs is too many?

Four. Four is the number of shop vacuums that Ken found in his workshop last week when we decided to clean our attic. Two of them are brand new in boxes. Why the hell do we have four working shop vacs? Ken says he doesn’t remember buying them and I certainly didn’t, so where did they come from? Did Daniel put them there? Every once in a while, I say to Ken, “Remind me not to buy any more jars of butter chicken sauce for a while—I have three in the cupboard right now.” Apparently, I need to start doing that with shop vacs.

3) Am I the queen of sexual innuendo or do I just have dirty-minded co-workers?

You be the judge. As I mentioned, Ken and I were cleaning out our attic over the holidays. When I got back to work, one of my colleagues asked me what I’d done over the break.

Me: Ken and I went up to the attic. We hadn’t been up there for a long time. It was pretty dirty.
 Colleague: Hubbadahubbada!
Me: What?
Colleague: Nice!
Me: NO. We actually went up to our attic to clean it. How does that sound even remotely sexual?
Colleague (laughing): I don’t know—maybe it was the way you said it.

Then later, I was trying out my new SodaStream machine, but I forgot to screw the bottle in tight and the water went everywhere, including all over me. Right after, the same woman came into my office:

Colleague: Are you OK?
 Me: I just soaked myself. I’m so wet!
Colleague: Ho HO!!
Me: With WATER. From my SodaStream!!

Then we both started laughing hysterically and making attic jokes. I’m just glad I didn’t tell her that the bottle wasn’t screwed in tight enough.

4) Should grown-ups sleep with stuffed animals?

Of course. If children are allowed to do it then adults should be too, and there should be no stigma attached to that. I personally have two stuffed animals that I currently sleep with: one is a duck named Quackers, and the other is a tiny shark named Brian. It is a complete coincidence that I started tucking Quackers, who used to belong to my daughter, under my arm at night after she left for university. Quackers is just the right size to keep my arm slightly elevated and prevent my shoulder from aching in the morning and that’s the ONLY reason I sleep with him. Brian, of course, protects me from the monster that lives under my bed.

Safe from the monsters.

5) How did Ken almost kill your horse?

Last year, Ken joined a service club in town. He does a LOT of stuff with them, fundraising and whatnot, and it’s good that he keeps busy when I’m away for work. But a couple of weeks ago, I had this strange dream where Ken and I were taking our horse to the vet. We don’t have a horse in real life, but in the dream, we were pulling a horse trailer and driving along, when suddenly we passed a park where all the other members of the club were assembled. Ken looked at them, and then looked at me with this really wistful expression on his face, and he wouldn’t stop staring at me, so finally I said, “FINE. Go be with your friends!” And then he leapt out of the truck and ran off, leaving me to take the horse to the vet by myself. I started driving up a really steep hill and I freaked out about the horse falling out the back of the trailer, so I turned around and went back, but I got lost. In a situation eerily close to real life, I couldn’t get my GPS to work, so I called Ken and yelled, “Thanks for almost killing our horse, KEN!” I don’t know what any of this means except that Ken needs to be more equine-conscious and that next time, I’m taking Daniel with me. He’s not a very clever criminal but I’ll bet he knows how to program a GPS.

So I know that I’m supposed to pass the Liebster on, but I also know that some people don’t like to answer the questions or whatever, so here’s the deal: if you can solve ANY of my mysteries, then you automatically get one and then you can choose to post your own answers to your own questions or go back to Simon’s post and answer HIS questions. However you like. Deal? Let the detecting begin!

 

 

46 thoughts on “My Week 225: Who The F*ck Is Daniel and Other Interesting Questions”

  2. You’re definitely the queen of sexual innuendo.
    Btw, I love your stuffed animals. Yesterday, my son didn’t want his fave duck in bed but when he wanted to put it on the night stand, I said – no no, leave it. It’s for mom. Guest what. I slept like a baby.

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  3. The Daniel thing is really strange. It sort of reminds me of how the woman at CVS always used to call me Brian and I wondered why until i finally figured out that I had found my CVS card on the ground somewhere and it apparently belonged to someone named Brian.

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    • That happened to Ken and me the other day–I didn’t have my Canadian Tire card on me, so the woman asked for my phone number. I gave her an old number thinking that was what it was under, and she said, “Are you Steve and Tracy?” I said No, but now I could call them and be like hey Tracy–remember me? Can I come over and watch Netflix at your place?”

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  5. So many mysteries here, so many answers…
    1) “Daniel” is really the ghost of Daniil Kharms, the Russian absurdist writer who wrote bizarre little stories like the one about how much Pushkin loved throwing rocks, and how sometimes he’d just stand out in the middle of the road so overwhelmed by all the rocks he’d just twirl his arms like windmills. Kharms was a weird guy but he really just wants to make you laugh.
    2) Three is really too many shop vacs. You need a main one for when you’re vaccing and one spare. If you have three one’s not going to get enough use and will get jealous.
    3) Everything is a sexual innuendo now. Even people who’ve never watched “The Office” will throw “That’s what she said!” into conversation these days. And I have to watch myself because of the temptation posed by every word ending with -er. When people talk about a specific breed of dog it’s funny to say, “Schnauzer? I hardly knew her!” On the other hand with words like “mobster”, “flower”, and “butter” it gets into questionable territory.
    4) Anyone who claims to have a problem with adults sleeping with stuffed animals probably secretly has a stuffed sea lion named Roger. And Roger? I hardly knew…never mind.
    5) Well, you’ve answered how Ken almost killed your horse, but I imagine anyone with four shop vacs is going to be pretty good with animals.
    None of this addresses the real mystery, though, and that is, how does anyone in Toronto not know where the curling club is? You’re excused because you only work in Toronto, but how did that old couple not know how to get there? And then there’s the mystery of why the curling club was free to host a TV show taping in the middle of what I assume must be prime curling season.

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    • That’s so funny–I was going to title this post “Liebster? I Barely Know Her” but I remembered that you had already done that! I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on the “sharing the cantaloupe” reference which I didn’t mean to be sexual but certainly could be construed that way. As for the curling club, we taped the show WHILE the curling was happening in the background–I can’t wait to see what it looks like, me all flustered in front of people yelling “Hurry, hard!”

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      • Really…”Hurry, hard” you’re a walking sex bomb. I’m not going to lie, Daniel troubles me. No GoT, Vikings, Ozarks,The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel…wtf is a Paleo documentary and why would anyone voluntarily watch….that’s it, Daniel was held against his will and forced to watch shitty shows….I suspect the fruit fetish roommate. Two shop vacs is the maximum needed – one to do the work and a back up, that’s it end of discussion. The GPS in my car is a certified idiot, for realz. I call her Sharon and that bitch has put me on the George Washington bridge during rush hour in NYC. I really hate her. I hope the horse is OK.

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  7. Daniel has been all over the freaking place! I recently got new neighbors and since they’ve moved in I’ve experienced my Netflix being interrupted by their casting Hulu, their Netflix or whatever movie they are watching at the time. I will get up to get a snack and in the middle of my watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and come back and a movie in Spanish will be playing. I had to disable the pairing for my t.v so this wouldn’t keep happening. Apparently they also have a Sony t.v like mine and we’re so close to each other that their phone can cast to mine. I should cast Debbie Does Dallas on their television and see what happens. And darn it Ken, how could you be so careless with that horse!?!? This was one heck of a story, I don’t feel so bad now being GPS challenged. 🤣😎

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  8. I learn that I have holes in my knowledge of North American English whenever I read your blog! What the hell is a shop vac? Some kind of vacuum cleaner I guess? For a shop? Is it a Henry? (Henry is the vacuum cleaner most often seen being dragged around offices and retail outlets at closing time). I am confused. We’ve actually got 2 Dysons in the garage, along with a Vax carpet cleaner, plus a Henry and a normal Vax under the stairs. We’re pretty good at sucking… said the actress to the bishop.
    I’ll leave that one there.
    😀

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    • 🤣🤣🤣 That was a favourite expression in my house growing up. And a shop vac is a kind of vacuum that you can use for sawdust and bulky things—it has an extra wide hose, kind of like a Henry, I think!

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  13. The answer to the first three mysteries probably stems back to that swinging New Years Eve party you and Ken went to with your co-workers: after a few too many libations the conversation got lewd, and your co-workers took note. Upon staggering “home” you returned to the wrong one. Belongs to some guy named Daniel, who has a fetish for shop vacs.

    As for the stuffed animal question, for some years I had one or two real ones with claws and needle-sharp teeth share my bed. Compared to that stuffed animals are small potatoes.

    And as I’m sure you’ve noticed, the dream machine does like to horse around from time to time…

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  14. A peak into your life ends up being one of the finest novels I’ve read in weeks. I swear this happens all the time. Please do us all a favor and create a 300 page/80,000 word masterpiece of a day in the life. I’m not asking for much.

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  15. Great post-really funny:) Congratulations on the book promotions! I can’t wait for the link! I cannot use a GPS to save my life. It makes me too nervous–it doesn’t give me enough warning about what lane I need to be in or when to turn, so I just don’t use one. I either consult a map or pull over and call Nate and say something like, “I’m at the Burgermeister somewhere, can you help me?” and he knows exactly where I am!

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    • Exactly! The only time I’ve ever really used it before is when Ken’s driving and I’m navigating, and then I can give him advance warning, like, “Change lines in two kilometres. Stay on the right, Ken. Move over now, KEN!”

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  16. This was hilarious, apart from the Daniel thing. That’s a bit weird. We sleep with 3 small stuffed toys that sit on top of our headboard. They’re all holiday souvenirs and have names relating to where we bought them. And they all look after each other. We do refer to them as ‘the kids’. I think sleeping with a cuddly toy like you did as a child would be very comforting and totally something I’d do if I felt lonely or scared. Looking forward to that video 😉

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  18. Sadly, I sleep with several stuffed animals — including a squeaky camel, a corduroy puppy, and a hedgehog that seems to stand itself upright when I’m not looking directly at it, like Chucky or some other demonically possessed toy — that are all brought into my bed nightly by the world’s most selfish Chihuahua, who insists on sleeping lengthwise, thereby consigning me to a space of about eight inches on the very edge of my own goddamn mattress!

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