My Week 177: Questions I’ve Asked Myself

Questions That I’ve Asked Myself

A while ago, I was nominated for a Unique Blogger Award by my good blogger pal Cecilia, from Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks who writes wonderful posts about family, life, and cool DIY stuff. The post which, to me, best captures her writing and her warm personality is High School Planet Dance Notes: Tips for Survival, which made me laugh and get a little teary all at the same time.  Then last week, I was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by another blogger pal, Brooke Breazeale of Summoning Magic: A Gypsy’s Tale, world traveller, humanitarian, and all around super writer. One of my favourite Gypsy posts is this one—it’s both eloquent and brutally honest: The Girl Who Bullied Me Gave Me My Greatest Gift. But this is not about these awards, which are great and made me feel truly blessed, but more about how I’m not good at follow-through. I have pretty strict rules about this blog—I only post once a week on Sunday, and I only ever post humorous stuff or political satire, because humour is what helps me get through life’s sh*t. So herein lies the dilemma—how do I honour these amazing women while at the same time doing my thing? But I’ve come up with a solution. You see, normally you respond to these nominations by answering questions that are posed to you or whatnot, and today I will be answering questions that I have posed to myself, based on the notes on my phone that I was going to write about this week anyway. I don’t know if these are the kind of questions that demonstrate the appropriate gravitas for this type of accolade, but it’s what you get when you nominate mydangblog.

Question Number 1: Do you have any bathroom stories you’d like to share?

Why yes, I actually do. A couple of weeks ago, I was on the train, and I had to use the facilities. I try to avoid this like the plague for three reasons. First, you could actually GET the plague from a train bathroom. Second, the bathrooms on the train always smell like urine, and third, if the train derails, I would have no advance warning to brace myself against the toilet and the far wall, as one does. But I’d had a little wine, and decided that I couldn’t wait until I got back to my condo. I went in, shut the door, and slid the bolt across to lock it. I was just finished, and was standing in front of the mirror, not because I wanted to look at myself but because if you stand in front of the toilet and the train shakes, you might end up IN the toilet, instead of bouncing off the door. My legs were apart for stability, and my pants were pulled up at the back, but they were open in the front because I hadn’t started zipping yet. Suddenly the bathroom door flew open. A man was standing there, staring at me in shock. I pulled my top down over the front of my pants and gave a small shriek, but not before I looked in the mirror and caught the eye of a guy sitting across from the bathroom. He looked away, smiling to himself, and in that fraction of a second, I was pleased to note that I was wearing the nice underwear. Then the man who opened the door slammed it back shut, leaving me there mortified. So now what? I couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever; aside from the fact that the smell of pee was getting very heady, my wine was back at my seat. So I straightened myself up, opened the door, apologized to the man who’d opened the door for not locking it properly (because that’s what Canadians do), marched to my seat and tossed back my wine. Like a boss.

Question Number 2: Have you been in any car accidents lately?

Funny you should ask. Right after Christmas, I went to the mall to spend my gift money. On the way back, I stopped at a Yield sign because a car was coming the other way. Suddenly, my car jerked forward, because the person behind me was unaware that sometimes people have to actually stop at Yield signs in order to actually Yield, and he ran into me. It was about -30 degrees, but I put the car in ‘Park’ and got out. He was sitting there in his mini-van, looking annoyed. I gave him a “WTF?” kind of arm raise and went to his window, which he reluctantly rolled down. He was a tiny elderly man. He was wearing a fedora and an alpaca overcoat, which made him look like a cartoon character.

Me: You hit my car.
Him: I thought you’d started moving.
Me: Well, you’d better get out and look at the damage with me.
Him: But I’m on my way to work.
Me: Buddy, you just hit my car. You’re not going anywhere for a little while.
Him: But I’m going to be late.
Me: Dude. Come on.

So we pulled into a parking lot around the corner. At this point, I think he realized that things were getting serious, and he started apologizing profusely. As it was, he’d just taken a bit of paint off my trim kit, and honestly, it was so f*cking cold that it wasn’t worth the bother of making him feel any worse than he seemed to. “Well,” I said finally. “I can get some touch-up paint. Now, skedaddle.” OK, I didn’t actually say “skedaddle”, but that would have been funny, and totally in keeping with the way he jumped back into his mini-van and took off. Just like a cartoon character would.

Question Number 3: Have you had any weird dreams lately?

I had a really weird dream last night, but it involved my dad saying a naughty word in reference to a man’s special parts, a word he would NEVER say in real life because he is dignified and mature, and also if he did say it in real life, it would be in a very broad Scottish accent and no one would understand him, unlike in my dream, where he kept saying it and everyone, including my mother who was also in the dream, just nodded sagely in agreement. But the other night, I DID have a dream I can tell you about. It was nighttime and Titus was running around the house, so I let him out into the backyard. Suddenly, he transformed into a small, female Asian child who was tending a fire in a firepit. I told her it was too close to the fence next door and might set it on fire, so she started piling rocks onto the firepit, but that wasn’t helping. I got a hose and started to spray the fire to put it out, then suddenly Gene Wilder’s head appeared in the firepit, and I sprayed him in the face. He started screaming and I woke up. Ta dah. Go interpret THAT sh*t.

Question Number 4: Are you good at math?

No. The other day, I was trying to do 2017 minus 24, and kept coming up with 1983. Then I would add 1983 and 24, and come up with 2007. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong, so I asked someone I work with, who said, “It’s OK. You take 4 away from 7, which gives you 3. Then you borrow 10 from a friend so that you can take 2 away from 11.” And even now, I only THINK that’s what he said, because it still doesn’t make sense, even though I know it’s right, and maybe the problem was that my stupid friend wouldn’t loan me 10 because he’s a dick. Or maybe I just suck at math.

There you have it. I hope that I’ve fulfilled my obligation. The other thing I’m supposed to do is nominate other bloggers, which I’m happy to do, because I love all your writing. However, a lot of my blogger colleagues have received these awards already, and I don’t want to overtax anyone by making them answer my questions. So if you have never been nominated for an award, and you’d like to be, just message me and next week, I’ll nominate you, because you all deserve it anyway. Don’t be shy. The only rule is that you have to answer the 5 questions above. But if you don’t have a second bathroom story, you can substitute a question of your own. And this better not be like the time when I was a radio DJ with a classical music show, and I ran a contest, and the only person who called in was my mom.

My Week 176: First Thursdays, Naptime at the Movies Part Deux

First Thursday

Sometime in January, I made the fatal mistake of saying to one of the Directors at the secret agency, “Whatever happened to First Thursdays?” ‘First Thursdays’ is NOT, as you may have imagined, a clever code name for a secret agent, but refers to a social event that is held on the first Thursday of every month. After work on this special day, we would all head to the nearest bar for drinks and food. It was a great way to mix, mingle, and watch senior management get tipsy. The event had fallen by the wayside over the last year, but we had a lot of new staff, and for some crazy reason, I thought I should bring it up.

“Oh yeah!” he said. “That was always a lot of fun.” Then he said the 5 words that filled my heart with dread. “Why don’t you organize it?”

He was a Director—I couldn’t very well say no. So I pondered for a while, and thought, “Well, OK.” Actually, my first thought was “Oh, F*CK”, but then I remembered how nice First Thursdays was for new staff to get to know people, so I decided to do it. A couple of weeks ago, I composed a really good email, using Broadway font as the banner, you know, to catch people’s attention. I’m normally a Times New Roman girl, or Calibri if I’m being lazy (my secret shame being that I was a diehard Comic Sans user for years until I was the subject of a font intervention, but that’s another story), so this was thinking outside the box for me. I sent the email to the Director in question for his approval. He emailed back right away with “Cool! I’ll be there!” But then I realized that I had no idea how to send an email out to over 100 people the way he used to do. Later that day, I bumped into him:

Me: So was the email about First Thursdays all right?
Director: Yeah, it’ll be fun.
Me: How do I send it out to everyone? Is there some staff link I can use?
Director: Oh, you can’t send it out in an email.
Me: Why not?
Director: Well, we wouldn’t be much of a secret agency if someone hacked our email and found out where we all were after work, would we?
Me: If someone hacked our email, doesn’t that mean they already know where we work, and could find us HERE?
Director: Well, there are liability issues…
Me: Can I put up posters?
Director: Um…I’d just spread it by word of mouth.

This was turning into a bit of an ordeal. I didn’t really have much choice though—at this point, the only two people who knew about the upcoming First Thursday were me and the Director. If I didn’t spread it around, February 1 would come, and he would go to the bar and be the only one there (since I had no plan to actually go myself under the circumstances). So I told a few people in my immediate vicinity, until I came to one of my more outgoing colleagues who said, “Why aren’t you using the chicken?” And I’m going to pause for a second so that you too can experience the complete lack of understanding that I felt in that moment. Ready now? OK, so “the chicken” is a rubber chicken wearing a sign around its neck that can be used to advertise social events. The sign tells people where to go and at what time, and instructs people to “pass the chicken on” to the next person. Brilliant, right? So I created a sign, stuck it on a rubber chicken, and gave it to someone to start passing it around. My job was done. And that was the last I saw of the chicken.

On February 1, after work, I headed down to the bar. There were a couple of people there, and after a while, a few more showed up, including the Director who’d started this debacle, until there were about 10 of us there. I thought it was a little strange, considering there are over 100 people working at the agency—10% turnout was lower than I’d expected. But we had a good time, drinking and eating and conversing awkwardly (well that was me, of course):

Colleague 1: Aren’t you drinking?
Colleague 2: No, I had drinks the last two nights.
Me: Don’t feel bad—I’ve had drinks the last 300—700—wait, when did I have that surgery and couldn’t drink…?
Colleagues: *awkward silence*
Me: Well, I don’t DAYDRINK.
Colleagues: *awkward silence*
Me: I’m kidding, OBVIOUSLY.

I just let that hang there so they could decide for themselves which part I was actually kidding about.

The next day, I was at a meeting and the subject came up:

Manager 1: Did anyone go to First Thursday?
Me: Yeah, it was good. There were only about 10 people though. I thought the chicken was going around.
Manager 2: Is that what the chicken was for?! It was creepy.
Manager 3: I think someone hung it up by a string in the break room.
Me: Next time I’m putting up posters.
Director: OK.

Naptime at the Movies: Part Deux

Last week, Ken and I went to see the movie Jumanji. I’d had a very trying day, being right in the middle of a short story—I know how I want it to end, but I can’t figure out yet how to get there. I was exhausted. We went to the VIP theatre, you know, the one with the reclining armchairs where there are waitresses who bring you wine and poutine. The movie was hilarious, but afterwards, I realized that there were definitely some gaps in my memory between the beginning and the end. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know that a) I have a bad habit of falling asleep during the movies and b) not long ago, I played a pretty good prank on my brother for doing the same thing during Bladerunner 2049 (I told him that Ryan Gosling’s character actually had wings, and I was so convincing that he had to google it later to see if I was lying or not—here’s the link if you want the full background story.). So the next day, Ken and I were driving to his parents and discussing the film:

Ken: I thought Jumanji was really funny. I like the part about the cake.
Me: Me too. And those guys on motorcycles were crazy!
Ken: I know, right? And their leader—talk about nasty, the way he vomited up mice.
Me (pause): Uh huh…the mice–yuck.
Ken: And how he was made out of giant bugs, and at the end, when he was defeated, the bugs all fell apart and scurried away.
Me: That IS really nasty.
Ken: It was crazy how he kept popping up out of nowhere because he had those wings.
Me: Oh yeah, those wings.
Ken: Seriously? You’re going with the wings? You WERE asleep! Oh my god, wait until I tell your brother!
Me: You jerk! Ok, but was Nick Jonas actually in the movie? Because I feel like that was part of some weird dream.
Ken: Yeah, he was there. With wings on. HAHA.

I’m on TV, People Who Know People

It was a rather exciting week for good ole’ mydangblog. Exciting, as in full of disruptions to carefully-attended-to routines, mingled with a certain amount of terror. You see, dear reader, I was asked to appear on a local TV show to promote my new novel. That was all fine and well, but I’ve never been on TV before—aside from being on Big Al’s Ranch Party when I was very small (I won the birthday cake and had to speak to the host, a frighteningly large man wearing a cowboy hat and a sheriff’s badge),  a childhood appearance on Romper Room at the age of 5 (I drove the director crazy by insisting that it was Saturday and jumping up and down like a frenzied squirrel), competing on a Canadian game show called Definition at the age of 19 with my brother where you had to buy letters to fill in the blanks to solve a cryptic puzzle (damn you, “Kookie Sheet”—you will forever be my nemesis), and being interviewed by a local news station after witnessing a man run into a burning barn—actually, in retrospect, I’ve been on TV a lot. But I was still really nervous. Couple that with the fact that I had to go back to Toronto Sunday night to go to work on Monday, then come home Monday after work for the taping, then go back to Toronto on Tuesday night, then come home again on Friday…luckily, VIA had given me back all my train points so I was able to travel with minimal cost. And the upside was that I got to meet some very interesting people…

Sunday: My seat partner was a man who apparently had no personal space issues, and didn’t seem to recognize mine. He sat OVER the space between the cushions, because apparently he was raised by wolves. He bumped my elbow on several occasions, and insisted on talking very loudly on his cell phone to someone who I assume was his wife. The gist of the conversation was this: their son, a very academic and motivated young man, was upset because the family was going on vacation right before exams, and he was worried about not being able to study and pass said exams. The guy next to me was very clear with his spouse that “teachers just push them through anyway—he has nothing to worry about.” In his case, I can only assume that the apple fell VERY far from the tree. At this point, I put on my new Bluetooth headphones. A few weeks ago, I was ranting that the future wasn’t living up to all that I was promised as a child, but these headphones almost make up for the fact that there are still no flying cars. Almost.

Monday: On the way back home again, I started to go to my seat. After Sunday though, I was a little gun-shy, and when I saw that there was only one person sitting in the foursome seats, I plunked myself down there, kitty corner to her. She smiled. I asked if she was going all the way to London. I also got a very strong whiff of marijuana. She started talking. She was going home for the first time, having been working on the east coast for a couple of years, but she’d been in the hospital and wanted to see her family now that she was better. Where had she worked on the east coast? I asked. A “medical dispensary”, she replied. A medical MARIJUANA dispensary? I inquired. She sheepishly smiled. Yes, the distinctive smell of pot was coming from her. Now, this might seem exactly the situation that I would want to avoid, but she was intelligent and delightful despite being stoned, which I’m starting to think is probably par for the course. Also, she knew the guy who had just won the first round of a new TV singing show called The Launch, which reminded me of a few weeks ago when I met another young woman who was the cousin to the guy who plays for one of Canada’s top curling teams. And I was like, Damn—I’m getting to know some minorly famous people by riding this train so much, and also, Is it weird that I’m super-introverted yet I strike up conversations with strangers?

So on Tuesday, I got up and put on my new dress (the day before, I had gone to Winners with two friends from work, who helped me pick out something that would look good on camera) and went to the TV station. I was super-nervous, mostly because I had no idea what they would ask me, and I didn’t want to come off like a babbling idiot, but my lovely auntie was there and she made me a cup of tea. The two co-hosts of What’s Up Oxford? were young women who both worked for Goodlife Fitness as trainers, and they made me feel comfortable, and just slightly like I should be exercising more, but the problem was that no one said anything about when the taping would start or where I should look. They all had headsets in, and at one point they just turned away from me and exclaimed cheerily, “And we’re back!” And it reminded me of the time when I was the principal of an International Languages school, and I would be asked to “say a few words” on special occasions. I would be waiting on the sidelines as someone addressed the crowd in whatever language, practicing how I would say Happy New Year in Vietnamese or whatnot, when suddenly I would hear, “And Suzanne!!”  It always took me by surprise, and I would have to then run to the stage in a panic and say “Chúc mừng năm mới!“ Then the crowd would laugh and clap, and I would hope to god that I’d said “Happy New Year!” and not “These chickens are green!”.

Anyway, things were going pretty well, what with them asking questions and me answering them, until suddenly one of the women said, “Can you hold the book up for us so that everyone can see it?” and I did, but I had no idea where to look, so I’m sure that when the show is broadcast, it will feature me looking around wildly at some point and then just closing my eyes and hoping for the best.

Tuesday: On the way back to Toronto, my seatmate slept all the way there. With her mouth hanging open.

Friday: One of my new colleagues takes the train home sometimes, so we swapped seats with other people and sat together. It was nice. We drank wine and chatted. Also, she’s tiny, so there was no encroaching over the gap between the seats. She’s the perfect seat partner.

 

My Week 173: Sewage, Spiders, Sundogs, and Stuff

 

Sign of the apocalypse?

Well, it’s been one of those weeks. I’d finally recovered from our trip to Montreal—the actual Montreal part was wonderful, but the train trip there and back was a total sh*tshow. We’d taken K and her girlfriend, the lovely V, but we couldn’t get seats together. “Don’t worry,” the VIA rep told me when I called. “The service manager has been notified and will help rearrange your seats once on board.” When we finally GOT on board the train, which was already 40 minutes late, the service manager very professionally shrugged and said, “I dunno. Ask someone to swap with you.” The train continued to be delayed at each stop with people getting on with duplicate seat assignments and the staff trying to figure out where to put them. It was a total comedy of errors with one lady finally saying, “Oh, I can just stand, I guess.” The three days in Montreal were great, but then we had to make our way back home, and it was even worse. We left on time, then at the first stop, the train literally shut down. Everything went dark. Car attendants started running frantically up and down the aisles whispering into walkie talkies. Once the train was fixed, 90 minutes later, it was clear we weren’t going to make our connection in Toronto, but no one would tell us what we should do. This, of course, made me super-stressed, because I always need to have a plan. Ken, on the other hand, just sat there unconcerned, making excuses for the train people, and telling me to “calm down”, which, as we all know, is THE BEST WAY to get someone with anxiety to stop freaking out. I got really mad, but then I realized later that it’s just the way Ken is. I realized this as we were watching TV the next night, and a commercial for septic tank cleaner came on featuring a man mowing his lawn and walking right through a puddle of sewage:

Me: That doesn’t make any sense. How could he not see that giant puddle of toilet spew?!
 Ken: He was concentrating on mowing the lawn.
Me: Concentrating? He was going in a diagonal line across the lawn. No one mows like that. It’s like he purposely walked straight into it.
Ken: Don’t blame him. It’s not his fault that his septic tank was clogged.
Me: Well, who else clogged it, Ken?!
Ken: Calm down. See? He used CLR and now he can mow his lawn safely.

For the record, I sent VIA a sternly worded email, and they apologized and gave me all the points back that I’d used for the trip, so I won’t have to boycott the only train that takes me to and from Toronto, where I arrived on Sunday night.

Monday:

I saw my family doctor because I was having some pains, which turned out to be mostly from overenthusiastic abdominal crunches. He did, however, considering my age and lack of a uterus, suggest that I start taking estrogen. “Let’s try it,” he said as he wrote out the prescription, “Every day for 2 weeks, then twice a week after that.” When I went to the pharmacy to pick it up, things became very confusing. The pharmacist, who was a very young and good-looking fellow, said, “Have you ever used this before?” and when I said “No”, he pulled out the package and opened it to show me. Inside were cellpacks of long plungers. Each one had a small pill in the end. They looked like the thing you use to give your cat medication—you know, the long stick you shove down its throat and then pop the pill out. But I’m pretty good at taking pills—why would I need to use a cat plunger? Then the pharmacist said, “I highly recommend doing this right before bed. So the tablet doesn’t fall out.”

Me: Fall out?
 Pharmacist (slightly embarrassed): Um, yes. You want to keep it in there. So better if you’re lying down for a while…
Me: OH!!! (hysterical laughter as it dawns on me where the pill actually goes) Because it would be awkward if that happened at work, right?!
Pharmacist: Um…
Me: Gotcha. Sorry—I thought at first I was supposed to swallow it.
Pharmacist: No, you—
Me: Say no more.

Wednesday/Thursday

As it turned out, the medication made me extremely sick, so I stopped taking it after three days, but not before the nausea had completely ruined my overwhelming joy at having to attend a two-day workshop on “Evidence-Based Decision Making”. The highlight of the two days was a pseudo-Jeopardy game that we played in teams. The CEO of the agency was sitting right next to me, so I had to bite my tongue and NOT object to the fact that NO ONE was answering in the form of a question. But at least I didn’t have to worry about jumping up excitedly if we won, and having a pill drop out of me. My team had the lowest amount of pretend money, but we were promised Final Jeopardy on the second day. We calculated and plotted carefully, so that we had a chance of winning if the other teams got the question wrong. But then the person running the slide deck put up the question AND the answer simultaneously by mistake. To appease the crowd, who were out for blood, she just gave everyone what they had bet, and I was like, “Oh, come on, Team Two! We all know you had no idea the answer was ‘What is a logic model’! You wouldn’t know a logic model if you tripped over it, Becky!”

Friday

I was finally feeling better and back onsite. I walked into my office, and felt something weird brush against my face. I wiped my forehead and my hand came away with a long string of spider web with the spider dangling from the end of it. The strand was also still attached to my head. I shook my hand furiously and the spider dropped to the floor, but in my panic, I threw off my coat, scarf and started doing a dance which involved hopping up and down, swatting at my hair, and screaming “Ah! Ah!” When I was finally done, I looked up and realized that the nice gentleman in the cubicle across from my office had been watching. “Whatever it was,” he said, “I think you killed it.”

Saturday

Ken and I were driving into town to have dinner with my parents. I was looking up the ballistic missile report in Hawaii that morning, and was telling Ken about how it was 38 minutes before they knew it was a false alarm when he suddenly said, “Look! There’s a sun dog!” So I looked directly at the sun.

Me: WTF! Why did you make me do that? Now I can’t see anything but sunspots!
 Ken: Why did you look directly at the sun? You’re not supposed to do that.
Me: I wanted to see the dog.
Ken: A sun dog is a like a rainbow.
Me: Everyone knows you can’t see a rainbow if you’re facing the sun!
Ken: This is different. If it’s north of the sun, there’s a storm coming. If it’s south of the sun–
Me: How do I know what side of the f*cking sun it’s on, if I can’t look at the sun!

Then K, who hasn’t been to church since she was very little and has only been to one very secular wedding, started messaging me that she was at a wedding with V and she didn’t understand what was going on. It was hard to read because of the spots in front of my eyes, but the gist, in her own words, was this: a dude kissed the bible, raised up a cracker and another dude rang a bell. Then the first dude downed a glass of wine. I responded, “Did they try to make you eat the cracker?” and she said, “Don’t worry—I spirit blocked them”. I was reading all this and laughing when Ken said, “So what would YOU do in that half hour?”

Me: Meh, I’d just sit and think. That’s what I do when I’m bored—I think of something to write and then plan it out in my head. I do that all the time in meetings.
 Ken: You’d be bored?
Me: Well sure. Plus I’m not really into religion.
Ken: You wouldn’t be scared?
Me: Well, they can’t MAKE you eat the cracker.
Ken: Cracker? It was a ballistic missile!

Then I realized that we were talking about two different things, because I forgot that I hadn’t yet shared K’s wedding experience with Ken. He, of course, was talking about Hawaii.

Sunday

I have to spend the rest of today creating a logic model for what I would do if a ballistic missile was heading towards Ontario and I had 38 minutes. Luckily, I just went to a workshop…

 

 

My Week 171: New Year’s Eve

Well, another year is almost over. And yes, I’m aware that 2017 was NOT the kind of year that many people will look back on fondly. Personally, it was kind of a good year for me, all things considered. I still remember New Year’s Eve 1999, or “Y2K” as it was nicknamed, when we were all told that because of some computer glitch, at the stroke of midnight, the world just might come to an end. Apparently computer scientists are either not as smart as we give them credit for, or are incredibly pessimistic because rumour was that there wasn’t enough room in their computers for the extra zero in the year 2000. It was probably MUCH more complicated than that, but we didn’t have Twitter back then so that celebrities could explain it to us. Being the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios, I made Ken buy lots of bottled water, canned meat, and wood for the wood stove, just in case. Of course nothing actually happened, except that one minute after midnight, neighbours down the street screamed, “We’re still alive!” and we screamed back, “So are we!” Then the next morning, we went skating on our pond without coats on, because it was over 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees for my Imperial readers) which was VERY warm for that time of year here in Ontario. Of course, climate change was just a glimmer in its daddy’s eye 18 years ago, and now it can drink. And like most teenagers, it doesn’t handle its liquor well.

Anyway, we just got back from Montreal, Quebec, and while the three days we spent there were lovely, the train trip there AND the train trip back were the worse sh*t shows in the history of rail travel. But I’m going to leave that for another day, because I have to write a sternly worded email to Via Rail based on the tweet I sent them last night, to which they responded asking for more details.

But even though we had a great time in La Belle Province, for some reason, I woke up each morning wracked with anxiety, the source of which I couldn’t put my finger on. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know that I have a hair trigger for weird stress—maybe it’s just the thought that another year is done and I’m another year older. Maybe it’s that I have no idea what’s going to happen in 2018 and I would really like to hammer this sh*t out ahead of time, but I can’t and it makes me nervous. Or maybe it’s squirrels. Who the hell knows?

Happy New Year to all my wonderful followers. May your 2018 be filled with joy. And if you ever get stressed about something small, and it makes you feel super-anxious and silly and alone, just remember that you now know someone who freaked out about chip dip.

My Week 170: It’s Coming From Inside the House

Last week, I started my holidays early. I had banked some time off for the end of the year so that I could have at least five days to write while Ken was still at work. I’m writing a second novel, and my plan was to get Chapters 16 to 20 finished before January. It’s been going well, despite the constant interruptions which are mostly me surfing the internet and going Christmas shopping. But I decided that I needed to be more disciplined, so on Wednesday, I sat down at 9:00 am to hammer out Chapter 18.

The house, as always, was extremely quiet. We live in a small town, and the house itself is not only on a large property, but it’s set well back from the road. I normally don’t worry about being alone here, since I have Titus, who’s very loud and intimidating when he needs to be. I also have, to a lesser extent, Raven, who is neither loud nor intimidating, but she WILL react to strange noises by lifting up her head and then placing it back down again. Recently though, there has been a spate of car break-ins, and someone outside of town had their house robbed. Plus, three weeks ago, Ken was away at a conference in Montreal, leaving me by myself for three nights, which would have been OK except that on the first night, I had a terrible nightmare about being attacked by intruders, and it set me on edge for the rest of the week.

But it was broad daylight, and I shouldn’t have had anything to worry about. It was around 11:00 am and I was about three quarters of the way through the chapter and feeling pretty good about where it was going, when suddenly, I heard the sound of something being knocked over in the back of the house. My office is in the front of the house, so I stopped typing and listened intently for a minute. I heard another sound, like a shuffling of some kind. I started to get a little panicky, but I calmed myself down by telling myself it was only Titus. He likes to sleep on the couch in the family room; he probably got up to stretch and knocked something off the coffee table.

I got up from my chair, and made my way to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was Titus, wagging his tail. He walked over to the courtyard door, and I said, “What have you been up to, buddy?” just as something else fell in the family room. I froze. I could hear movement, and the sound of the ornaments in the window being knocked down. There was someone back there.

You know that feeling of utter terror that you used to get when you were little and lying in bed, imagining that there was something in your closet? Or as an adult, when you almost have a car accident? That was me in that moment, as I listened to the sounds of someone moving around my house. I was wearing my housecoat and slippers, waiting until I’d finished writing to get dressed. Now, I felt really vulnerable. Titus didn’t seem to be bothered by the noise, which was unusual, but I turned away from him and took a step forward. The floor creaked under my slipper and I stopped, contemplating whether I should continue on bare-footed. I decided against it in case I had to flee the house—there was a lot of snow, and the last thing I needed was frostbite on top of everything else.

I moved quietly into the kitchen. The noises continued in the back, as if someone was rummaging around, tossing things aside that weren’t worth stealing. I reached out and silently slid the largest knife we had out of the butcher block. Then I went to the door of the kitchen and peeked around the corner, knife held out before me, almost faint with fear.

“Holy F*CK!!” I screamed. There, on the window ledge of the back room, was a huge, black squirrel. It took one look at me and tried to climb the wall, then it fell back down, hit the floor, and ran towards me.

I let loose another string of excellent swear words, including references to mothers, lady parts, and things that a squirrel might do to itself, as I grabbed the baby gate we use to keep Titus out of the kitchen and shoved it against the entrance to the room. The squirrel stopped, ran back to the window, and leapt up onto the window sill with one swift jump, making me realize that the baby gate, which was only about 2 feet off the ground, was virtually useless as a means of keeping the squirrel from attacking me. It didn’t seem too bothered by the knife either, so I put it down.

I was in an absolute panic—at the sound of the baby gate, Titus had come running and was now barking his head off and trying to get past the gate into the back room. And as satisfying as that might have been, the last thing I wanted was a massacre on my hands. Titus OR the squirrel—it could have gone either way at this point, the squirrel was so freaked out. Finally it ran out of the family room and into the back room where it ran around in circles and tried to climb up the back patio door.

I stayed behind the baby gate for a minute, thinking and silently swearing to myself, then I climbed over the gate carefully, keeping the squirrel in clear view. It was more concerned with the back door, and it occurred to me that it was probably just as scared as I was. So I opened the kitchen door and held the screen wide.

“Here, squirrel,” I shouted, trying to get its attention. “Here, Mr. Squirrel—the nice door is open. Come on, let’s go!” It just stopped and stared at me, like there was no way it was coming near me, even if I was holding the door open. I patted my leg, hoping to convince it that I was gentle and kind. No dice. Finally, I went outside (thank god I’d kept the slippers on—there’s an advantage to being the Queen of Worst Case Scenarios), and held the screen door from the outside where it couldn’t see me. Within about ten seconds, the damned thing shot through the family room, straight out the door, and up the nearest tree, where it sat chittering at me like a small demon.

Demon-spawn

I ran back into the house, slammed the screen door shut and screamed, “F*CK YOU, TREE RAT!!”

Then I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken:

Ken: What’s up? Why are you hyperventilating? Is this a “sexy call”?
Me: I just pulled a knife on a tree rat.
Ken: What?!
Me: I thought it was a burglar.
Ken: You pulled a knife on a burglar??!!
Me: No, a squirrel. There was a squirrel in the house. Oh my god, I’m dying here. I was so scared. How the f*ck did it get in the house?!
Ken: Probably came in through that old chimney in the back room. Check it and see.
Me: No f*cking way! What if there’s another one? I can only do this once!
Ken: I can’t believe Titus didn’t freak out when it was running around the family room.
Titus (from kitchen):  I THOUGHT IT WAS THE CAT!!

Raven or squirrel?

I spent the rest of the day watching out the window, as the squirrel ran around the yard. It looked like it was plotting another foray into the house, so when Ken came home, I demanded that HE check the old chimney. He got up on the back of the couch and opened the door to the cupboard where the chimney opening was. “Wow,” he said. “Looks like that squirrel had to push through a nest of leaves and sticks to get in here.” And then I was like, “Oh my god, this is reverse Narnia!”

1) Instead of a small child hiding in a wardrobe and crawling through coats from a big house into a magical snowy land, a small squirrel from a snowy land hides in a chimney and crawls through leaves into a magical big house.

2) Instead of a small child meeting a giant squirrel wearing a waistcoat, a small squirrel meets a giant woman wearing a housecoat. (Ken says it was actually a beaver, but I’m ignoring him because that doesn’t fit the narrative. Also, “giant beaver”. Snort.)

3) Instead of meeting a talking lion, the squirrel meets a talking dog. Is the dog god? Only time will tell.

Yesterday, I looked outside, and the squirrel was sitting on an old tree stump, staring at the house. And last night, I was half-asleep when Titus wagged his tail, and I jumped out of bed, thinking it was the squirrel back to attack me. Anybody know where I can find a White Witch?

*You might have noticed I’m posting a day early. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and it’s a busy time for mydangblog and the gang, so have yourself a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thanks to all my wonderful followers—let’s hope 2018 is like this:

2016: It can’t get any worse.
2017: Hold my beer.
2018: B*tch, sit back down. We can work this out.

 

My Week 169: Appointment to the Toy Bench, Napanee, Meeting Giggles

Appointment to the Toy Bench

This week, the internet was ablaze with outrage over Donald Trump’s latest appointee to be a district court judge. Anyone that the Human Dumpster Fire appoints to ANYTHING is typically underwhelmingly qualified to even be town dogcatcher, but Matthew Peterson was a spectacular example of a dude who shouldn’t be allowed to go to the corner store alone. What kind of judicial appointee has never taken a deposition by himself, let alone never actually tried a case? Say what you want about Justin Trudeau, but he just had to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice, and the guy he picked, after a lengthy consultation process, is an actual, highly experienced judge and NOT a guy who thinks “getting to bang a gavel would be fun and whatnot”. OK, Peterson didn’t actually say that, but he might as well have, since even HE didn’t seem clear about why he should be appointed. The guy is so dumb that he didn’t even have the courtesy to act embarrassed that he was so blatantly lacking any kind of courtroom experience. But it’s typical of what’s happening in the U.S. these days, and I won’t make my American friends feel any more sh*tty about it by pointing out the other horrors. Instead, I’ve created a scenario fit for the holiday season. It’s called “Appointment to the Toy Bench”.

Santa: I’m not sure what’s going on here. One of the elves retired, and I have to replace him, but I just got told that the American President is demanding that I take some chosen appointee.

Chief Elf: The American President? Why would Hillary Clinton do THAT?

Santa: No, not Hillary—it’s the loudmouth on the naughty list who lost the popular vote. He seems to think that he can run Toyland too…oh dang, here he comes.

Trump: Hello, Santa Claus. I hope you got the message about my appointment to the Toy Bench. I make all the best appointments. My appointments are so awesome—it’s a pretty wild scene.

Santa: Well, I got an email—it took a while to translate it from Russian, but if I understand it correctly, you’re trying to appoint an elf to replace Twinkles, who recently retired. I have to tell you though, we already HAVE a replacement. His name is Tiny.

Trump: You mean “Itty Bitty” Tiny? That guy’s a loser.

Santa: Why are you calling him “Itty Bitty”? He’s Tiny.

Trump: I know, right? I’m giving him one of my fun nicknames, like the way I call Hillary “Crooked” or Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”. I think I’m going to call you “Eskimo Boy”.

Santa: That’s extremely offensive, not only to me but to the Inuit peoples.

Trump: In your what? Stop stalling, Fat Man, and interview my appointee. His name is Frank and he’s a yuuge donor to my campaign.

Santa (under breath): Fine, if it will get you out of here, so I can get back to making toys. (out loud) Bring him in.

Frank: Yo.

Santa: Hello, Frank, is it? You seem a little large for an elf…

Frank: Elf? What the f*ck are you talking about?

Trump: Never mind his size. He’s a close personal friend who has never grabbed anyone’s…”toys” inappropriately and definitely does NOT need to hide out here until the stink wears off.

Santa: Sigh. OK Frank, tell me a little bit about your experience. How long have you been making toys?

Frank: I don’t make toys.

Santa: You’ve never made a toy?

Frank: No.

Santa: Do you—can you put the cigar out? This Pole has been non-smoking even since it turned out that my pipe was making the elves sick.

Trump: You can’t say “Pole”. It’s a forbidden word. So is “polar”—it reminds too many people of dying bears. FAKE NEWS!!

Santa: Anyway, Frank—do you even like children?

Frank: No. Children are stupid.

Santa: Then why do you want to take this job?!

Frank: It’s a lifetime gig with full benefits. Plus, I hear the lady elves are smokin’.

Santa: Enough! I refuse to hire this naughty person. Tiny, the job is yours.

Tiny: Wheeee! Time to make some toys for girls and boys!

Trump (tweeting): “Eskimo Boy Santa REFUSES to hire Qualified Frank and gives an important post to Itty Bitty Tiny who is a FAILING loser. SAD!!! LOSER!!!

Santa: Sigh. Get out of here. And just so you know—all you’re getting in your stocking this year is coal!

Trump: Excellent! Coal is the new solar power.

Frank: I got the job, right?

Santa: Fake news.

So long, Frank!

Two Quick Stories:

1) A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to Napanee. Never mind where it is. Just know that it took me three hours to get there by train. When I finally arrived at 8 pm, everyone ran out of the train, got into their cars and left. I looked around. The train station itself was closed, the lights off. The parking lot was deserted. It was minus 10 degrees Celsius. I had the number of a local cab company so I called them. The dispatcher was really pissy, and when I told her I was going to the Hilton, she said, “Hampton. There’s no such thing as the Napanee Hilton,” and I was like, “OK, I guess I’m going to the Hampton.” She replied that the cab would be “at least 20 minutes”. I had no choice, so I said “Fine” but I was wondering exactly how big Napanee was if it took that long for a cab to come to the train station. In the meantime, I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken.

Me: It’s freezing and the train station is closed. I forgot my mittens.
 Ken: You forgot your mittens?! What am I always telling you…
Me: It’s really windy and dark. There’s a bar across the street and it sounds dangerously rowdy.
Ken: Stand in the shadows where no one can see you.
Me: A) I’m not a vampire and B) I don’t want the cab to miss me. Just stay on the line.

At any rate, the cab finally showed up, a little over 20 minutes later. The driver, a jolly older fellow, got out and looked at me:

Driver: What are you doing? Why didn’t you go inside?!
 Me: The station’s closed.
Driver: No, it’s not. Didn’t you read the sign on the door? You go in and the lights are on the left. You just have to remember to turn them off when you leave.
Me: It was too dark to read the sign on the door.
Driver: Well, you’ll know for next time.

The cab ride to the Hampton took under two minutes. He charged me 10 dollars. Napanee, everyone.

2) Over the last three weeks, I have been obliged to attend meetings where I watch a man fill in a very long flow chart. It can be super-suspenseful, because sometimes he has to move one of the boxes in the flow chart, and then we’re all like, “Where will he put it?! What will happen now?!” The other day, I looked up and realized that there was a sign on the door at the back of the room that said, “No Exit”, and I was like “Preach.” But sitting there in silence for hours on end has made me a little giddy, and on Thursday, I was in another meeting, and one of the directors said, referring to a new software app, “Touch this and then it happens” and I almost yelled out, “That’s what SHE said!” I mean, I actually had a moment where I seriously considered saying it and wondered if everyone else would laugh. But I didn’t say it—I just tried not to giggle uncontrollably. As one does.

Merry Christmas from your favourite elf.

My Week 168: June/September Relationships

Saturday: I realize I’m in a June/September relationship

Yesterday, Ken and I were driving back from grocery shopping when he said, “Can we stop at the cemetery?” While this might sound ominous to some people, I was actually really excited because someone in town has been playing a practical joke for weeks now, whereby they move the sign directing people to a new property development/subdivision in our small town to the outskirts, where it points right at the cemetery. The first time it happened, it was funny enough, but the person is nothing if not determined; despite the best efforts of the subdivision developer, the sign keeps magically reappearing across from the graveyard. I think it’s fairly obvious what kind of message the sign-thief is trying to send—that Drumbo is so boring that it might as well be a cemetery—but the big question is who? Is it a disgruntled teen, longing for the lights and action of the big city? Is it the previous developer, who wasn’t able to sell most of the lots and had to give the land up? (Also, it’s worthwhile to note that the previous development was called Aspen Hills, which is the most ironic name I could think of for a subdivision on completely flat land—luckily the new owners have called it “Oxford Meadows”, which makes more sense considering most of the lots are currently overgrown with weeds and wildflowers).

Anyway, it’s been giving us a bit of a chuckle, and yesterday, Ken wanted to get a picture of the whole scenario. So we stopped and Ken got out of the car, camera in hand. Ken takes a camera with him wherever he goes, “just in case”. He has a very popular Flickr account, and sometimes he gets over 8000 views in one day, so I cut him a little slack when he leans over and tries to shoot an interesting cloud through the windshield when I’m driving.

He got back into the car, having taken several photos of the sign and the cemetery, and then the fun began, as he tried to post the picture to Facebook. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, as he pressed buttons and muttered to himself:

Me: What’s going on?
Ken: Oh, nothing. I just have to—hmmm. Or maybe…
Me: Just use the image icon.
Ken: I will, after I write the post.
Me: You’re not done yet?
Ken: No, I’m trying to find Facebook.
Me: Maybe the problem is that you have a Blackberry. You know how the “interwebs” works, right? “I just can’t keep up with you kids and your newfangled gadgets and the Twitters. What ever happened to the good old days when people used typewriters?!” Oh wait, you ARE using a typewriter. Look at the keyboard on your phone.
Ken: Blackberries are great phones.
Me: Yeah, if you’re 75 years old. “I like to feel the keys go down when I press them, just like they did in the 1950s.” Also, could your screen be any smaller? No wonder you can’t find “the Facebook”.
Ken: Ha. Posted. So there. Oh wait, not yet—it’s a little laggy…by the way, Sheila has a flip phone with an ANTENNAE, so go make fun of her.

And then I was like, man, I really AM married to a senior citizen, because the thought had occurred to me earlier when we were in the grocery store, and all these old people kept greeting us.

Me: Who was that?
Ken: Oh, that’s Sheila. We’re on the Historical Society together.

Me: Who’s that?
Ken: That’s Bob. He curls at the same club as I do.

Then, 5 minutes later, we got stopped by an elderly couple:

Man: Oh hi, Ken!
Ken: Hey Gary. How are things?
Man: Good. We’re just here picking up some groceries for the Lion’s Club dinner on Wednesday.
Woman: Yes, it’s my turn to cook!
Ken: Ooh, I can’t wait!
Woman: See you both then!
Me: Oh, sorry, I won’t be there–I’m in Toronto that night. Darn.

You see, Ken recently became a Lion, which means he does civic duty type things like helping decorate the Lions Park trees with Christmas lights, or taking cookies to the Historical Society Sunday Tea (which I just had to wake him up from a nap to remind him to do). It’s probably quite telling that most of the members of these clubs refer to him as “the youngster” or “fresh blood”. In order to be initiated into the Lions, he had to learn the Lions Club roar, which is not as cool as the Mason’s secret handshake, and simply involves bending over at the waist, making your hands into little lions’ paws, then straightening up as you roar and reach your paws to the sky. He’s obliged me with a couple of demonstrations, and it’s kind of cute if you ignore the fact that a grown man is doing it.

In the long run, I’m glad that Ken is involved in so many community activities. It keeps him busy during the week when I’m not here, and the interaction with other people will keep him away from the Bingo Hall. But the dude needs a phone without an actual keyboard. Luckily, Christmas is coming. But now I’m getting worried that Ken is rubbing off on me, because last night at dinner, I dropped the F bomb in front of K and her girlfriend, and I put my hand over my mouth, apologized, and corrected it to “gosh darn”. Then I read back this post and realized that there isn’t a single epithet in it. My god—I’m an old f*cking woman!

My Week 167: My Book, Titus Learns Some Shocking News, Beelzebub’s Elevator

Two Worlds Collide

Last week I mentioned that I’d just had my first novel published in my other, non-blogging life. In THAT life, I write Young Adult fiction and it’s very different from what I write here. I normally keep those two worlds separate, but I’ve had several people message me wanting to know more about the book. I’ve never been very comfortable with self-promotion (I was actually at Chapters Indigo yesterday to talk to them about an upcoming book signing, and I was super-nervous just to do that), but I’m going to put it out here. And please, if you’re really not interested in this, skip down to the next bit, where Titus and I have a revealing conversation. Anyway, this is my book. It’s called Smile.

Here’s the synopsis from the back of the book:

“Cassandra Wilson’s life isn’t easy. She’s spent most of her teenage years taking care of her much younger brother, working to support her widowed mother, coping with high school and its pressures, and still grieving over the death of her beloved father. The smile on her face has become an easy way of disguising her true feelings and the fact that she really isn’t sure who she is anymore. Her life suddenly begins to change when she learns that her mother has been secretly dating a co-worker for months and plans to introduce him to the family. Feeling betrayed, and fearing that her mother’s new boyfriend will try to take the place of her father, Cassandra decides it’s time to start living a little herself. That impulsive decision marks the beginning of a series of suspenseful twists, turns, and revelations involving a strange cast of characters who may just help her find what she’s looking for—a real reason to smile.”

The target audience is teens 12 to 18, although my twenty-year-old roommate in Toronto read it and said she loved it (so did my Mom and Dad, haha). I finished writing it about 5 years ago, and I sent it to a couple of publishers, who rejected it. Then I sent it out again last year, and it got picked up right away by a publishing house called Bookland Press, who apparently believe in me, which is very nice of them. One of the key points in the plot is that my main character, who’s 16 years old,  starts getting harassed by a guy at her school after she rebuffs his advances, and considering what’s happening in the world right now, it’s become more timely that I ever would have thought. Of course, that’s only ONE of the things she has to deal with, but I don’t want to give away too much. It’s available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Chapters Indigo (in-store and on-line). If you buy it, cool. If you don’t buy it, also cool. If you like it and leave a review on any of the above websites, I will buy you a drink if you ever come to Toronto. But no pressure, obviously. I’d still buy you a drink if you came to Toronto. And now back to our regular (or irregular) programming…

Titus Learns the Shocking Truth

Titus: Hey. Congratulations on that Liebster award.
Me: Thanks.
Titus: I was just offered an award too. National Dog Magazine called and said I’d PROBABLY win Biggest Stud of the Year, but they wanted dick pics so I was like “I’ll consider it.”
Me: Did you actually just say “dick pics”?!
Titus: Well, technically you did…
Me: What?
Titus (under breath): Fourth wall baby, fourth wall.
Me: Anyway, you CAN’T be Stud of the Year.
Titus: Why the hell not? I’m super-sexy.
Me: For a very obvious reason. Or should I say, TWO very obvious reasons.
Titus: I’m not seeing your point.
Me: Because…how should I put this delicately? Because you don’t have any balls.
Titus: What do you mean, I don’t have any balls?! I have balls! I have balls all over this house!
Me: I’m not talking about the kind of balls you play with—don’t give me that look, smartass. I mean you’re lacking a vital part of the anatomy necessary for “studding”.
Titus: But the ladies love me!
Me: I’m sure they do. Listen, I know it’s a difficult thing to hear. All I can tell you is that they were removed long before you came to live with us.
Titus: You know, I’ve always felt like part of me was missing. Especially every time I lick my—
Me: Stop. I don’t need to know.
Titus: Well, I hope National Dog Magazine likes the pictures I sent them. Check this out! I might not have balls but I certainly make up for it in other areas!
Me: Classy.
Titus: That’s my middle name.

(*This came up in a different font–I don’t know why and I can’t change it–weird.)

“Lifting” Experiences

I hate elevators. I have hated them irrationally ever since I can remember, yet despite that, it’s been my fate to have lived or worked in many buildings where an elevator is mandatory. I would LOVE to be one of those people who can’t wait to get in their extra “steps” by climbing the stairs, but a) I have arthritis in my feet and b) even if I didn’t, I hate stairs because they make me wheezy. My condo in Toronto is on the 34th floor and my worst nightmare is having the fire alarm go off in the middle of the night, and instead of the concierge saying, “Please wait for further instructions”, he screams wildly, “Abandon ship! Fire in the hole!” and then we all have to go down 34 flights of stairs in our pajamas. OK, dying in a fire might be worse, but stairs also suck.

Elevators, on the other hand, are the devil spawn of convenience and ease, but for some reason, they scare me silly. You know how, when you’re really stressed out, you dream about certain things? Well, I always know when my stress level is getting high because I’ll start having nightmares about out-of-control elevators, like the cable has snapped and the elevator I’m in is plummeting to the ground, or it flies out of the top of the building launching me into space, or other terrifying dream scenarios. I don’t know where this deep-seated subconscious fear comes from, since I don’t remember ever having an early childhood experience with a rogue elevator, but even as a rational (well, semi-rational) middle-aged woman, I WILL get out of an elevator if it even makes a weird noise.

As a quick side note, the elevators in my building have cameras in them, which I discovered one day when I was talking to the concierge. I realized that there was a little bank of tv screens behind his desk and 3 of the screens had interior shots of the elevators:

Me: You can see what people are doing in the elevators?
 Concierge (laughs): Yep.
Me: So if, for example, I was alone on the elevator, and I happened to be dancing, you could see that?
Concierge: Yep.
Me: Oh.
Concierge: Don’t worry–I don’t judge. But you might want to get a couple of new moves.

Anyway, I’m not like some people, who can’t stand elevators because they have a fear of enclosed spaces, or hate being in close quarters with other people—in fact, I’m always happier when I’m NOT alone on an elevator, because I figure if something bad happens, the other person will know what to do. Case in point: Last week, I got on the elevator at work. We have 6 of them, and there’s always one that’s out of order, or acts wobbly, or makes screechy sounds, but I can always take another one that seems relatively normal. On the day in question, I finished work late, and got on the first elevator to arrive. The doors closed. I went to push the ‘L’ button (‘L’ for lobby), but instead, I accidentally hit the button next to it, which said ‘B’, which I assume, based on what happened next, stands for ‘Beelzebub’. The ‘B’ started flashing, and I realized I’d pushed the wrong button, so I pushed ‘L’. The ‘L’ light came on, then just as quickly blinked off. The ‘B’ was still flashing. Nothing was happening. I stabbed the ‘L’ button again—same thing. It lit up then went off. I realized that we weren’t moving, and that the ‘B’ button was still flashing at which point, I got super-panicky. Suddenly, the elevator gave a shudder and started moving and, I kid you not, I actually yelled out loud in anguish, “I don’t want to go to the basement!! Not the basement!!” just as the doors opened on a young guy standing in the lobby of the 15th floor.

“This isn’t the basement,” he said.

“Thank god you’re here,” I replied. “I was stuck in the elevator. The ‘B’ light kept blinking.”

“Oh,” he said. “If you want to go to the basement, you need a key as well. You have to be authorized.”

“I didn’t WANT to go to the basement. I hit the wrong button. If you hadn’t been there, who knows how long I would have been stuck. Thank you for saving me.”

“Uh, no problem. See, now we’re in the lobby. It’s all good.”

And it was, although I’m sure the poor guy thought I was overreacting and being super-dramatic, which would not be a lie. But I can tell you this: I will never take Elevator Number 4 and its direct line to the lair of Beelzebub again. I’d rather take the stairs.

 

 

 

 

My Week 166: Ich Liebster dich, Du Liebster mich

 

Well, it’s been a crazy week, which is to say much more crazy than normal. I don’t talk about it much here, since I try to keep my blog life and my ‘other’ life separate, mostly so that the people I work with don’t realize that I’m a LOT weirder and way more swear-y than they think I am, but I actually also write Young Adult Fiction, and my first novel was just published. On Tuesday, I was contacted by a local newspaper for an interview, and on Wednesday, I appeared not only on-line but also on the front page of the hard copy paper, like the WHOLE front page, with my picture literally a foot high. Slow news day, I guess, but my publisher was over the moon. But on top of all that, the ‘blog me’ also had a great week, because I was nominated for a Liebster Award by my blogger friend R.S. Noel, Creative Writer Who Thinks and Dreams in Realism, whose blog can be found here: https://rsnoel.com

R.S. Noel is an outstanding young blogger whose writing is carefully crafted and lovely. He writes fiction and non-fiction, focusing often on philosophy (but never in a boring way like Socrates) or music, or simply the aspects of his own life which have taught him important lessons. You need to read him–he’s honest and insightful.

Anyway, I was thrilled when he told me that he’d nominated me for a Liebster Award, and now I have to follow the rules set out whereby I answer the questions he posed. I’ll also be nominating 5 other bloggers that I admire, but you’ll have to read MY sh*t first, because it’s my damn award.

Question 1: Why did you start your own blog?

About 4 years ago, I was going through a hard time. If you’ve read me for a while, you’ll know that I used to work with a group of extremely nasty people. The harassment, especially by two of my male colleagues, was so terrible that I didn’t know what to do. So to save myself and my sanity, I started focusing on the funny things that were happening each week, and started writing them down. I already had a WordPress site that I’d been using professionally, but I completely revamped and reinvented it so that I could share my humour with the world, which also explains why the blog is mydangblog but the domain is educationalmentorship.com–I can’t for the life of me figure out how to change it and I quite often forget that Educationalmentorship is actually me because it sounds way too professional and fancy. But being able to do that, to shove aside the negativity and revel in life’s absurdities, is what drives me to write. Even though I’ve changed jobs and now work with some awesome people, I still write the blog because humour is important to me.

Question 2: If you could travel back in time, what time period would you visit and why?

That’s a tough one. We all romanticize the past to a certain extent, but the truth is that things were pretty smelly before deodorant and sewage treatment plants were invented, and most time periods were extremely violent. I guess if you pushed me, I’d say…I’ll get back to this one. OK, I’ve done all the other questions. I’m still stuck. OK—dinosaurs. I would want to see dinosaurs with my own eyes. Then I could help museums by letting them know whether or not dinosaurs had skin or feathers. I’d be incredibly popular amongst the paleontology set.

Question 3: Favourite food/drink?

Bacon-wrapped filet mignon and white wine. Yeah, I know you’re supposed to drink red wine with red meat, but I’m a rebel. I don’t care what the snooty waiter thinks. I live life MY way, and my way is Chardonnay.

Question 4: Who is the most influential person in your life (famous or not)?

My daughter, K. I’ve become a better person because of her, because I want her to be proud of me.

Question 5: What is your favourite animal?

I have two. I adore dogs, and my favourite dog is Titus, my 100 pound black Labrador. He’s got the sweetest personality on the planet, and he’s a killer with the witty one-liners. I could talk to him all day. My fictional favourite animal is the Zebrasus, which is a cross between a zebra and Pegasus. They smoke cigars and wear Mardi Gras beads because they’re cool and sassy.

Question 6: What is your favourite season and why?

Summer, because I’m always cold, and summer is the only time of the year when I don’t have to put the seat heater on in my car.

Question 7: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

I would want the power to cut off people’s internet permanently when they say stupid things on social media. I can hear someone saying, “But mydangblog, who are you to judge what’s stupid or not?” To which I reply, “That’s stupid. You’re cut off.” I’d be f*cking GREAT at judging that. Think of how much more we would ALL enjoy social media if the racists, sexists, homophobes, and general assholes were relegated back to being the town idiots who sit in local bars, where people are too busy having a good time to pay attention to their drunken musings. Also, I would like invisibility, because that would just be fun.

Question 8: What is your top Bucket-List item? Why?

I would have said “being a published novelist” but that’s just happened, so I’m going to say “moving to a country property with a river or creek, or some type of flowing water”. I want to sit on the bank of a stream in the sunshine, listening to the birds and thinking about how beautiful the world truly is. Ken and I used to have a property like that but we sold it because the house was so close to the road that we couldn’t open our windows without feeling like we were actually on the asphalt. But I miss the water.

Question 9: Who is your favourite musical artist?

Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters. He’s a musical genius and a really good guy. If you want to know more about how I really feel, read My Week 42: Kanye Vs. Dave and Dad. There’s a T-chart, so you know it’s very scientific:

Question 10: What has been your most rewarding moment as a blogger?

Every time I get a new follower, I feel incredibly blessed. If I can make one person laugh a day, then I have fulfilled my purpose and kept good faith with myself.

And now, in no particular order, are the fellow bloggers that I’m nominating for the 2017 Liebster award:

Freethinkers Anonymous

The Problem with Ciara is…

Greater Than Gravity

Spooky Action At A Distance

The Rise and Fall of Harry Hamid

And here are the ten questions that I have for you, my dear nominees:

1) Why do you write?
2) Which of your own blog posts should people read if they want to really know you?
3) Best hybrid animal and why?
4) Flowers or chocolate?
5) What was your favourite childhood toy?
6) What is one thing about your life that you would change?
7) Who is your favourite writer?
8) Are you crafty? (Either ‘cunning’ or ‘able to make crafts’)
9) What movie do you like to watch over and over? Why?
10) What makes you laugh?

Thanks again to R.S. Noel for the nomination, and to all the other bloggers and readers out there who make up this amazing and supportive community!