Going Viral

Last week at work, one of the vendors came in and approached me for some help with bags. I took them from her and as I did, she wiped her nose with the back of her hand, sniffed, and said, “Ugh, I feel so crappy.”

And I was like, what the actual f*ck?

Me: Are you okay?
Vendor: Yeah. But don’t worry, it’s not covid, I tested. It’s just a bad cold.
Me: Yet you’re here, and you’re not wearing a mask.
Vendor: Well, it’s not covid so…

Don’t worry, it’s NOT COVID? Since when is that a thing, that it’s acceptable to spread your germs to other people as long as it’s not covid?! Why on earth do you think I want to get a bad cold any more than I want to get covid? Because I DON’T. Yet—I did get a bad cold, thanks to this person and their communicable disease. So I spent the last week sick as a dog—but don’t worry, it’s not covid, I tested—and had to lose three days of pay as well as cancel my mom’s 81^st birthday party because, even though it WASN’T covid, I didn’t want her and my dad, and my co-workers and the myriad of customers who come into my workplace to catch whatever sh*tty virus I had.

I honestly thought at this point, after everything people have been through, that they might be a little more considerate when they’re sick, but I’ve actually heard that phrase “Don’t worry, it’s not covid” more than once from people with colds, flu, or stomach bugs. And I remember pre-covid, when people used to stagger into work, hacking and sneezing and sharing their viruses with everyone around them, and we all just thought it was par for the course. But can we not do that anymore? Because after almost two years of not getting sick, I’d forgotten how awful even a bad cold can be, and how incredibly grumpy it makes me. And what the hell is wrong with my immune system that I’ve eluded covid for over two years but can’t fight off the common cold? Of course, I only have myself to blame really, because I wasn’t wearing a mask. Apparently, I am now going to have to wear a mask for the rest of my life because a) people can’t be trusted and b) I am very un-fun to be around when I’m sick, like the other night when Ken and I were watching Drag Race Belgium:

Ken: I didn’t know chicory was a Belgian national food.
Me: Well, apparently it is.
Ken (looking it up on his phone): Did you know that chicory is not only used as a coffee substitute but it also can be used as a sweetener?
Me: No, I didn’t know that.
Ken: The chicory we have here in Ontario has blue flowers but it’s different from this kind of chicory, which is technically Belgian endive.
Me: Uh-huh.
Ken: Ooh, you can also use it in some kinds of beer, like Belgian–
Me: Okay, Trivial Pursuit, can you stop rambling on about chicory and just WATCH THE GODDAMN TV SHOW?!
Ken (whispers): You’re so mean when you’re sick.

And then, to make matters worse, a couple of days ago, there was a news story about bird flu and how people are getting it now, and I was like, What new hell is this?! Why do birds hate us? Although frankly, I don’t blame them, and if you’ve ever had an encounter with a Canada Goose, the evil lake chicken that is our national mascot, then you’ll know I’m right. But the newscaster was like, “According to the WHO, the situation is worrying but the risk to humans is still very low.” And I don’t believe that for a moment:

Me: Are you okay?
Vendor: Yeah, but it’s not covid, I tested. It’s just the bird flu. C-caw!

See, this is why the zombie apocalypse is an inevitability. I’ve been watching The Last Of Us, which is basically The Walking Dead meets The Mandalorian, and in it, the world is infected by a mutated fungus. And just like everything else, the fungus spread because, although it was initially in the food supply, it kept going until most of the people on the planet were zombies. Why? Because a lot of the people on the planet are jerks:

Me: Are you okay?
Zombie: Yeah, but it’s not covid, I tested. Just a little mushroom thing. *tries to eat me*

And now I’m an incredibly grumpy zombie.

My Valentine Is Bigger Than Yours

It happens every year, on pretty much every occasion—I get outdone by Ken. It’s bad enough that I have a terrible memory and Ken writes EVERYTHING down:

Ken: Guess what day it is today??!!
Me: Oh, god, no. What day is it?
Ken: It’s the 33rd year anniversary of our third date! Here, I got you a little something…
Me: Sigh.

But it’s worse on the major occasions. We’ve been married for almost 32 years, and Valentine’s Day is no longer a big deal. Of course, when we were first dating, and then married, it was a week long celebration of our love, complete with red roses, special dinners, and flirtatious lingerie, and let me tell you, Ken looks wonderful in boxer shorts decorated in hearts. After a while though, as it does, the excitement died down a little. Twenty years in, it became less of a surprise and more of a competition, which Ken inevitably won:

Ken: Is it OK if I drop you off at the grocery store? I went to three different places yesterday, and I can’t find the thing I want to get you for Valentine’s Day.
Me: What? You don’t have to get me anything. It’s not a big deal.
Ken: No, I have this thing in mind. You’re really going to like it.
Me: All I got you was some chocolate…
Ken: That’s OK. I just want to get you something special. Do you want to know what it is?
Me: Um…OK?
Ken: It’s a digital picture frame!
Me: But that’s really expensive. All I got you was chocolates.
Ken: But you’re worth it. Don’t worry about it.

On that Valentine’s Day, he presented me a beautiful digital frame so I could have pictures of him, Kate, and all kinds of flowers, clouds, fences, and trees that I could look at while I was working. But I won in the end though:

Me: Here’s your chocolate. AND YOUR CARD.
Ken: Oh no! I forgot to get you a card. I’m so sorry.
Me (a little smugly): That’s OK. The present was enough. Don’t worry about it.

In recent years, it’s been a little hit and miss—sometimes we just have a great dinner; other times Ken gives me something special and I get outdone once again, and I can never predict what’s going to happen. So this year I decided to nip the whole thing in the bud and announced last week, “Here’s what we’re doing for Valentine’s Day. I’m going to buy you chocolate and you’re going to buy me wine. No cards. Cards are a waste of money, and we just throw them away now anyway.” Ken agreed.

Then, the day before Valentine’s Day, I had completely forgotten about it, and I was driving home from work when it hit me that I had nothing to give him in the morning. Luckily, the local liquidation store was open until 6, so I drove there quickly and grabbed him some delicious gifts—a giant peanut butter cup AND a more pricey tin of Bailey’s filled chocolates. I was feeling pretty good about everything, so the next morning while he was at work, I put them on the counter with a piece of scrap paper that I had lovingly drawn a heart on in crayon. When he came home, I dragged him over to show him his presents:

Ken: I have your present in the car, chilling. I’ll just go and get it.
Me: Ooh!

And he brought in not one, but THREE bottles of wine. I was flabbergasted. Outdone once AGAIN!. And then he said, “Oh, hang on, I forgot your card!” He ran upstairs with me yelling behind him, “We said no cards!!”

“It’s okay,” he reassured me. “It’s just a piece of paper with a heart drawn on it. I mean it’s bigger than yours and more card-shaped….”

Outdone, indeed, but my heart was drawn more symmetrically. I may have snickered a little to myself at that point. But don’t tell Ken. He’ll always be MY Valentine.

Smells Like Teen Syrup

On Thursday, I went out shopping. Thrift store shopping because this month is ‘Cabin Fever’ month at the antique market, which means most of the booths, including mine, are on discount to encourage people to come out even when the weather is crappy. Sales have been good—or I should say, stock has been moving, because between the commission the market already takes combined with the discount of 20% that I agreed to, I needed to do a little buying. So I headed into town to Goodwill. It was absolutely pouring rain, in keeping with the ‘weather is crappy in February’ theme (three days before it was a blizzard), and I ran into the store, soaking wet. After taking a turn around the metalware section, I headed for vases. A few months ago, I found a vase at a different thrift store, and recognized it as something I’d seen at the market before—turned out it was a Chinese vase from the late 1800s and I resold it for $300—not bad considering I’d paid $5 for it—AND had a coupon. So I’m convinced that the same thing will happen one day, just like I’m convinced every time I play the lottery that I’m going to win, but I never do and I’m always disappointed. And on Thursday, I was not only disappointed but also disgusted. Why? Because I was looking through the vases and turning them over to see it there were any interesting makers marks, as one does, when I picked up a small urn that looked like it might be satin glass. As I flipped it over, suddenly my hand felt…wet. Something had dripped out of the vase and onto ME. And it wasn’t water. No, it was some kind of weird oil. AND IT SMELLED. I immediately went to the cashier, holding my hand in the air:

Me: Do you have any paper towels? Something just dripped onto my hand from that vase over there.
Cashier: No, sorry.
Me: Nothing? Like Kleenex or wet wipes? Seriously? It’s BURNING.

He grabbed me a couple of tissues and passed me a pump bottle full of hand sanitizer. And as I cleaned myself off, I realized that the smell was kind of perfume-y, but not the good kind of perfume. The smell was more like if you said to an AI, “Design me a perfume that smells like maple syrup and gingerbread” and it gave you a bizarre approximation of what it THOUGHT that was. Or like when you walk past the Yankee Candle store in the mall, and the mixture of scents is initially sweet then REALLY off-putting. And I had to keep shopping with this weird, expired candle/moldy syrup smell on me until I got home.

Once I was home, I washed my hand very vigorously with soap. I dried off and checked but it was still really pungent. I took off my rings and washed them too, but it didn’t help. That night, I had a long bath, and when I got into bed, I shoved my hand in Ken’s face.

Ken: What are you doing?!
Me: IT STILL SMELLS!
Ken: Yes, it does. Please get your hand away from me. It’s like a candle that no one wants burning in their house.
Me: I KNOW!!

On Friday, the scent was still very strong, despite me having washed my hands several times and soaking my hand in wine, which is totally something that normal people do. And then I had a bath again on Friday night, but every time I waved my hand near my face, I could still smell the combination of old gingerbread and expired maple syrup. Sure, it was getting fainter, but how the f*ck was it still lingering?! Was it the cockroach of smells? On Saturday afternoon, Ken and I were out, and I held my hand up to his nose:

Me: It’s still there!
Ken: Get it away from me!
Me: You are SO mean. “Meh, don’t make me smell you!” What a baby.
Ken: Is this going to be a forever thing? Like, you will always smell this way? Because…
Me: That’s not very nice.
Ken: And neither is the way your hand smells.

I have scrubbed it and scrubbed it, and even as I write this, if I put my hand up close to my nose, I still get a faint whiff of that oil. But I don’t feel quite so bad tonight though, because Ken just made coffee and it smells even worse. Maybe if I rub the grounds into my fingers…

Here’s a picture of Ilana in a box because a picture of my hand is nowhere near as cute:

In other news, my new short story collection At The End Of It All came out last Tuesday, as you might have read, and I was completely floored when I saw that it debuted at Number 1 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases Chart. And it stayed at Number 1 for most of the day before being supplanted, so despite reeking like the corpse of a gingerbread man who has been embalmed in maple syrup, I was pretty excited. I know a few of you have started reading it—I hope that if you like it, you can give it quick review. It would mean a lot.

Creative Tuesday: Release Day for At The End Of It All

It’s finally here–today is the day my new short story collection At The End Of It All is released! A huge thank you to Potter’s Grove Press and publisher extraordinaire River Dixon! At The End Of It All is available in a variety of formats through either Potter’s Grove Press itself or on all the Amazons. I hope if you do purchase, that you find it appropriately twisty and weird–just like me.

A Novel Idea

As you may or may not have known, I haven’t been working at the antique market since before Christmas. I didn’t really specify why—it was mostly because I haven’t had much time to write, and I had a new novel idea brewing in my head that I really needed to get done. So I took a six week leave. Well, I asked for a leave and they told me I’d have to just quit, so I did, but then a couple of weeks ago, I was asked to come back. And I am. On Monday. And not a moment too soon, because on Friday, I finished the book. I initially felt like I powered through this one, but I worked on the last novel pretty much once a week until it was done. So technically, this one probably took me the same amount of hours, except that I wrote about 2000 words almost every day since January 2. It’s called Charybdis—yes, like the whirlpool monster from Greek mythology and it’s a gothic thriller. I’m super happy with it. I like to finish a chapter or two and let Ken read it first for feedback, but this time, as I got close to the end and started explaining to him what was going to happen, he said, “Stop. Don’t tell me. I want to read the rest of it in one chunk and find it for myself. I want to be surprised.” And that was fine, but then the other day, I was driving on the highway and the weather was shitty, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I crashed my car and died, he would NEVER KNOW. And it would haunt him for the rest of his life. So I started trying to summarize the rest of the book in my head VERY succinctly, so that I could whisper it to him as they were loading me into an ambulance or whatnot.

But then, after I had finally come up with a pretty good synopsis of the ending for him, I started struggling with the plot a little, trying to make it both suspenseful, twisty, but logical. I literally lay awake in bed for hours, trying to put all the pieces together in a way that made sense, and once that happened, I completely changed what I’d thought I was going to do (because I’m a pantsing plotter), and then I had to re-summarize the whole ending AGAIN just in case I got hit by a forklift or something. So as you can see, I’m exhausted. If only there was a place where I could sit and rest…

Seriously. Was there no thought AT ALL put into this sign? If I’m sedated, why would I BE DRIVING?!

And here’s something really weird that happened last week. I looked out the window at my balcony, and I yelled for Ken. He came slowly ambling in (because no matter how much I yell, he never runs), and I pointed at several small pieces of blue and green paper:

Me: How did that paper get up here? It wasn’t there yesterday.
Ken: That stuff is all over the neighbourhood. It’s like someone shot off a confetti cannon. There’s a gold paper star right in the middle of our back yard.
Me: AWW. That’s kind of nice. But strange.
Ken: Maybe they all flew out of a recycling truck that drove by very fast.
Me: I think you’re reaching. Let’s just call it magic.

In other news, I just found out that my first novel Smile is under contract with my Canadian publisher to be translated and published in Georgia. And every time I tell people that, they say “Great, y’all!” No, not Georgia the state, Georgia the country. And what language do they speak in Georgia? Georgian, of course. It’s due to be released this summer. Maybe I should buy a confetti cannon. Now that I’m going back to work, I can afford one.