Monday: I get a new couch…well, new to me anyway

On Monday, I had to take my recycling downstairs. I don’t have a lot, just cereal boxes and plastic bottles, that sort of thing, but my building has this crazy garbage chute system that doesn’t accept things like that. It has three buttons—one for fine paper, one for “organic waste”, and one for regular trash—and you have to open the door to a tiny, heavily deodorized room, push the right button, then open the chute and toss your bag in. There is no light in this room—there’s a sign that says it’s to save power, which I find ironic, because on the TOP of my building there’s this huge beacon that was designed by some famous artist which is continually lit up in vibrant colours that coordinate with the current temperature. Like, blue for when it’s really cold, red for when it’s hot, green for when it’s foggy—you get the idea. So you can pretty much tell what the weather is like from the beacon colour, except that you have to be OUTSIDE to see the beacon, which means you already KNOW WHAT THE WEATHER IS LIKE. Redundant is what I think, but I’m not a famous beacon designer. Anyway, I digress. When I have actual recycling that can’t go down the actual garbage chute, I have to go down to what I refer to as the big garbage terminal. This is a giant room the size of an actual bus terminal, where the building’s garbage dumpsters are located. This room simultaneously terrifies me and fascinates me. It’s more heavily deodorized than the garbage chute room, but nothing, no matter how powerful, can mask the smell of the garbage. The main access is through the “Pet Spa”, which no one ever uses, and in its dim light, it looks like a creepy operating room. When you actually get to garbage central, it’s always deserted, so you kind of wander around in there, looking for the right dumpster and worrying that someone might be lurking behind it. BUT, the room is also the place where people put stuff at the end of the month when they move out and don’t want to pay to take it with them. When I moved in, I got a great floor lamp for my condo that had been left down there by the previous occupants. So every once in a while, I put myself through the ordeal of the big garbage terminal, just to see if there are any other treasures awaiting. (I should clarify at this point, that these things are not IN the dumpsters, just sitting there on the floor. Ken and I HAVE taken things out of dumpsters before, but that’s another story). And this past week, I struck gold. When I got back on Sunday night, I remembered that I wanted to get rid of my Corn Pops boxes (it’s a healthy AND fun breakfast, y’all), so I wandered downstairs. When I got there, the room was full of all kinds of things, so I spent a good few minutes poking around and checking it out. Then I saw it. A cream-coloured, leather loveseat. I circled around it—there was seemingly nothing wrong with it. “This would be perfect for my condo,” I thought. “But wait…how the hell would I ever get it upstairs?” I stared at it for a few more minutes, but it didn’t leap up and offer to carry itself, so I left the room, giving it several lingering and longing glances.

The next night, I was sitting and watching TV, no make-up, old glasses on. I had been out with a friend, and may or may not have had a few drinks, but I’d been thinking about the loveseat all day, and the unfairness of someone else getting it, or it going to the landfill, and the more I sat there looking at the empty space in my condo, and in my heart, that the loveseat could fill, the more pissed off I got. Until finally, about 10:15, when I said to myself very aggressively, “You go get that goddamn loveseat! Do it now! Before you sober up!” So I got up, threw some clothes over my pajamas, and went storming downstairs to make sure it was still there. Screw the roof beacon—there was my loveseat, still sitting in the garbage terminal, like a beacon of furniture awesomeness. I marched into the lobby and said to the concierge, “There’s a piece of furniture in the garbage room that I want. Please unlock the back of the elevator for me. And by the way, I usually look much prettier than this.”

He laughed and said, “Sure thing. And by the way, so do I.” None of this seemed at all unusual to him, but then he told me on the way to the garbage room that he “was new” and it was his first night shift, so he probably thought that crazed, somewhat boozy women demanding furniture at 10:15 at night was just par for the course. Anyway, he went to unlock the elevator, and it was my job to get the loveseat into it, judging by the way he didn’t reappear. I gave it a shove with my knee, and it moved a few inches. This was a good sign. But I was done with subtleties. In a Herculean show of sheer strength of will, I leaned down, picked one end up, and started SHOVING. And it started SLIDING. I slid it all the way to the elevator, and discovered the concierge still waiting. Together, we got it into the elevator standing up on one end, and he and I bid each other good night. When I got to my floor, it was no problem to tip it out of the elevator and continue shoving it down the hall to the door of my condo. Then, I was suddenly stymied by logistics. How was I going to actually get it THROUGH THE DOOR? It was too wide to shove through, and I wasn’t strong enough to pick it up and angle it. I stood there, panting from exertion, wondering if I would just have to abandon it in the hallway after all that work, when the door down the hall opened and my neighbour came out. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Oh sure,” I replied. “I’m just trying to figure out how to get this couch into my condo.”
“No problem,” she said. “My husband and his brother can help.”

Yes, just like that. So out they came, picked it up, and put it in place in under 30 seconds. I should just point out that these are the same neighbours whose baby sometimes wakes me up in the night, so I didn’t feel guilty watching them carry the loveseat in. They left, and I was finally alone with my new loveseat. I looked at it, and it looked at me. I walked over and gave it a good sniff. It smelled fine. Then I had a horrible thought. What if it had been abandoned for reasons OTHER than it being too expensive to move? What if there was something living in it? (Does anyone else remember the “Big Bang Theory” episode when Penny finds a chair on the street, and it turns out to be a rat house?) But the only thing I could do at that point was to go to bed and see what happened in the morning. I shut my bedroom door tight against intruders and went to sleep. When I woke up on Tuesday morning, I carefully opened the door, and peeked out. All was quiet. Later that day, I bought leather cleaner, and gave it a thorough going over with that, and soapy water as well, just to make sure. I was having a friend over for dinner, so this would be the true test. It might seem kind of mercenary, but there was NO WAY I was sitting on it until someone else had tried it out first. When she arrived, I poured her a glass of wine and directed her to make herself at home. She sank into the loveseat, tucked up her feet, and said, “Ahh–what a comfortable couch!” I smiled—and breathed a sigh of relief.

Thursday: I have encounters with several strange people.

It’s kind of ironic that I’m writing on this topic when I imagine that the concierge of my building AND my neighbours probably thought that they’d had their own encounter with a strange person on Monday night. But I came across some weird people myself last week, and the top three deserve to be given the attention they’re due.

1) On Tuesday, I was in Starbucks. I wasn’t GETTING anything, because I don’t drink coffee and their hot chocolate sucks, so I was waiting for a couple of colleagues. I was just standing there, and a guy came over to put sugar in his coffee. He stirred it, then turned, looked at me right in the eyes, took a deep sip while still staring at me, and said, very enthusiastically, “Yummmmm!!” Then he rolled his eyes back in a swoon-y kind of way. It was super strange, so I just gave him a little half-smile, and turned away. Now, I’ve been known to do the same kind of thing with wine, but only to people I actually KNOW. Then another woman came along and he started talking to her as I scuttled away from his coffee creepiness. It occurred to me later that maybe he thought I was his wife or something—you know how you’re in the grocery store or something and you see someone out of the corner of your eye and start talking to them about cauliflower and it turns out NOT to be your husband but another random guy? Anyway, that’s what I’m HOPING it was all about.

2) On Wednesday, I was shopping at the Metro, and I passed by a woman who gives me the total creeps. I’ve seen her before, and I still can’t figure this one out. Before I get into details, let me clarify that she is NOT wearing a hijab or a niqab, and she dresses in very low-cut tops so I don’t think she’s Muslim. She walks around the underground mall wearing a tartan scarf tied OVER HER ENTIRE FACE. It’s knotted at the back of her head, and her entire face, INCLUDING her eyes, is covered by this black, red, and white wool tartan scarf. But her hair is visible. Not only does she look like something out of a horror movie, I don’t know how the hell she sees anything. I tried it at home with one of my own wool scarves, and I was bumping into furniture and whatnot. But I’ve seen her a few times, and I just don’t get it.

3) I went to the Dundas theatre on Thursday with my brother to see the new MAD MAX movie. It was in the VIP theatre, which has amazing reclining lounge seats and bar service. After the movie, which was amazing, I went into the bathroom. There was a girl in there who was doing “sexy poses” in front of the mirror. I totally get this—there’s nothing wrong with being caught pretending to be a porn star. But she kept doing it, even after it was obvious that I saw her. The whole time I was washing and drying my hands, she was making sexy, pouty faces into the mirror, and swivelling her hips provocatively, like I wasn’t there. I tried really hard NOT to snicker, because she wasn’t very good at it. As I left, she was still performing for her imaginary strip club audience.

Honourable Mention: The honourable mention for weirdness goes to the girl in my condo building who quite often gets on the elevator at the same time as me, eating a giant hot dog. Perhaps you don’t think that’s so very weird, but when I say “the same time”, I mean 7 o’clock in the morning. It’s a footlong in a bun, covered with ketchup, and all the way down, in this very small elevator, standing very close to me, she just gnaws away at it. It’s kind of nauseating, actually. Give me my Corn Pops any day.

Funny Anecdote of the Week: Yesterday, I went with my sister-in-law to pick up my 5 year-old nephew from school. When we got there, we peeked in the door. He didn’t see us, but one of his little friends did. “Hey,” he called out, “your mom’s here…..AND your grandma!” Just for the record, I’m only a couple of years older than my sister-in-law, but it HAD been a long week.

Sunday: Mighty Mouse Versus Mickey Mouse

Ken and I were driving back from the cottage and we had been talking about comic books, and what could be done with old ones (eg: using them to decoupage the drawers of dressers, which is one of my new, crazy ideas that I may or may not ever do) and I started thinking for some weird reason about Mighty Mouse.

Me: Do you think the Disney people sued the people who created Mighty Mouse?
Ken: I don’t think you can copyright a mouse. There are only so many different ways to draw a mouse.
Me: Yes, but why a mouse at all? He could have been a different type of vermin altogether.
Ken: I guess because it’s alliterative.
Me: Well, they could have made him a rat. Raunchy Rat. Rambunctious Rat.
Ken: Really Fast Rat.
Me: Sure honey—that’s the spirit. Racy Rat. See, there are all kinds of superhero names for rats, and they don’t infringe on copyright. Even if rats ARE really gross.
Ken: All I know is, I used to come home every day from Kindergarten and watch Mighty Mouse while I ate lunch. It never occurred to me that he was a rip-off of Mickey Mouse.
Me: Well, all I know is, the only difference between Mickey and Mighty is that one of them has a cape.

But then I did some research and it turns out that Mighty Mouse is WAY more awesome than Mickey Mouse. For one, it’s not just a cape—it’s an OPERA cape. Because Mighty Mouse doesn’t just speak—he sings operatic arias in a very deep, non-mouse-like baritone. TO THE NAZIS. When did Mickey Mouse ever battle the SS? There was the “Barnyard Battle” but that was World War ONE soldiers NOT the Nazis. And there was no singing. Just little Mickey squeaking away at the bad army guys. The Nazis were so intimidated by Mighty Mouse that they named a tank after him. It was a sh*tty tank by all accounts but it’s not Mighty Mouse’s fault that the Nazis were crap tank builders… I think it’s pretty apparent at this point that historical accuracy is NOT my forte. But I’m sticking with my original premise—Mighty Mouse is like Mickey to the power of 5. I’m not great with math either, but I think that’s a lot. So take THAT, Disney Corporation.

Wednesday: I consider whether being a woman or man is more awesome

Ken and I were talking about Caitlyn Jenner, and I said, in a kind of grumpy way, that it was OK for HER, because she got to be a woman after all the hard stuff was done, and that being a woman wasn’t as simple as putting on lip gloss and deciding what colour corset to wear for your Vanity Fair cover shoot. But Ken said that I was being judge-y, that Caitlyn Jenner probably knew that, and that it wasn’t easy being a man either. I agreed, after snickering just a little, that being a man was probably hard too. But I said I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be a man because being a woman is amazing, despite everything, and it was no wonder Bruce Jenner spent all of his life wanting to join our club. Then Ken said, Wait, that’s not fair, being a man is amazing too, so I challenged him to tell me three things about being a man that are better than being a woman. He didn’t even have to think—right away he gave me this list: Peeing outside, taking your shirt off, and not worrying about ANYTHING. And I said, Gosh, I can’t imagine WHY Caitlyn Jenner would have wanted to give all that wonderful stuff up. Then I reminded him of the following: I can pee outside, but it’s just icky and hard on the quad muscles. I can take my shirt off legally, but why the hell would I want to? Frankly, most men shouldn’t either. Last summer, I drove by a 90 year-old man on a riding lawnmower. He was shirtless and bouncing along the grass. You know how there are certain things you wish you could “unsee” but you just can’t erase it from your mind? That was one of them. And finally, yes, Ken doesn’t worry about anything. That’s because he has a wife who WORRIES ABOUT EVERYTHING!! How the hell does he think anything ever gets done in our house?*

(*Obviously, this is satirical. I couldn’t manage without Ken, who does more than his fair share of hard work around here. Although it’s true that he never worries about anything because I do all that FOR him.)

Friday: Raven gets her due.

I got home and Friday afternoon and Raven was sitting in the living room. She had her back to me, and refused to look at me.

Me: What’s wrong? I haven’t seen you all week and this is how you greet me?
Raven: I read your last blog.
Me: So? Didn’t you think it was funny?
Raven: Funny? FUNNY!? That’s like the 4th time you’ve written extensively about that oaf Titus. You know what I get? POO. Every goddamn time, you talk about my poo. I’m fed up with it.
Me: Well, you poo a LOT. But I take your point.

So I feel compelled to write a little something about Raven. Which is hard, because, aside from the pooing and her keen literary analysis skills, she doesn’t actually do much (sorry, Raven, but you know it’s true. For example, you just spent 11 hours lying on the back of the chair in the living room). But she DOES have some tricks and little quirks that endear her to us:

She comes when you call her. Most of the time. Other times, she just looks at you like, “What?”

She will meow at you until you follow her, then she will lead you to the bathroom and let you know what she needs with a series of glances. The other day, she beckoned me forth, and when we arrived, she sat down in front of the litter box. She looked at me, then looked at the box dolefully. I looked at her. Then she looked at the box again and I realized it needed to be cleaned. Which I did, resulting in her promptly using it again WHILE I WAS IN THE ROOM. No sense of dignity, that one. (And notice I didn’t mention the poo). She also does the same thing with the water bowl and the food bowl.

She will jump up onto your lap if you pat your knee, then jump down when you stand up. You don’t even have to say anything—she just GETS the force of gravity.

She likes to play this game where, when you walk behind her, she starts to run away from you like she thinks you’re chasing her. Even when you say, “I’m not chasing you—calm down!”, she still keeps playing.

She waits until you stand up from your chair then jumps into the warm spot. Then when you try to sit back down, she won’t move. You pretty much have to sit AROUND her, or perch on the edge of the seat to avoid squashing her.

She refuses to go outside. You know how some cats lurk by the door and try to dart out any chance they get? Not Raven. Once, she accidentally wandered out onto the front porch when the door was left open. When I saw her, she was just sitting there looking confused and scared. Then she saw me and ran back INTO the house. Yep, definitely not a nature lover.

I think her best trick, though, is that when she’s really happy to see you, not only does she purr, but she leans up and gives you little kisses on your face. I don’t mean licking—I mean little pecks with her muzzle that let you know that she loves you. And we love you too, you crazy, poopy cat.

Thursday: We try to teach Titus a new trick

Titus is a great dog. Sure, he has his flaws, like eating anything that’s remotely edible when your back is turned. Last month, our dog sitter came in and discovered that he had eaten most of a bag of loose lavender tea that I’d left on the counter. The week before, he’d opened up a box of Tootsie Roll-flavoured hot chocolate Keurig cups, then tore the foil off each one and ate all the powder inside them. For the next two day, his poo looked metallic and chocolate-y, all at the same time. After the tea incident, which didn’t seem to bother his stomach at all (well, it was organic), we started putting anything remotely food-like on the range hood above the stove. People come into our house and wonder why there’s chicken defrosting up there, or the fruit bowl is sitting on it, but at least it’s all safe. The one thing I’m eternally grateful for, though, is that he never eats his own poo. We had a yellow lab who used to do that, and it was disgusting. And kind of a weird circle of life—you eat what you poop and you poop what you eat? But enough about the poo. Actually there might be a bit more later—wait and see.

Anyway, Titus knows a lot of tricks. He’s pretty smart in his own goofy way–or maybe I should say astute and sneaky, based on some of his behaviour. Here are some examples of his regular, dog-like tricks as well as his more mercenary side:

1) He will sit if you ask him to. The duration of the actual sitting is, however, completely dependent on what else is happening at the time. For example, if someone interesting (OK, it doesn’t even have to be someone interesting, it just has to be SOMEONE) comes into the house, he gets very excited. You can ask him to sit, but his butt will graze the ground then he’s right back to licking the person’s pants. Which is NOT a trick. Just annoying. The same goes for when people are eating, people are drinking, squirrels on the lawn, birds are on the lawn, he’s in the car, he’s in the house, and most other occasions. Ironically, the only time he will sit completely still for as long as you want, is when you put his dinner bowl full of food down. He was trained somewhere along the way that he had to sit patiently until someone told him he could eat HIS OWN food. I make him do this for a second or two just to prove that he actually understands what sitting looks like. I’m sure he’s thinking, “Why am I f-ing sitting here? Yet I can’t seem to help it…” Who knows? But it’s cool that he will actually wait until I put the bowl down and get my hand out of the way of his teeth before he jumps in.

2) He will give you a high five if you ask for one. Technically, he’s “shaking a paw”, but he’s so uncoordinated that he just flails at you, and it actually ends up looking like a very awesome high five. Or it becomes a smack in the face if you’re dumb enough to lean down for it. Seriously, his paws are a menace. He jumped up on the bed the other night really enthusiastically, and punched me in the mouth. I’m pretty sure it was accidental, but then again, it could be his revenge for having to sit and wait to be told to eat his dinner.

3) He will NOT eat poo out of the cat’s litter box if you’re right there and tell him not to. We have two litter boxes—one in my upstairs bathroom and one in Ken’s downstairs bathroom. Why two litter boxes, you ask, when you only have one tiny little cat? Because she’s a total diva. I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but she likes to pee downstairs in Ken’s bathroom and poop upstairs in mine. Is this affection or disdain? At any rate, if you are IN the bathroom, Titus will not eat anything out of the catbox. But he watches and waits for his opportunity. If you leave the bathroom and forget to hook the door closed, he will bide his time, waiting until the coast is clear, then run in for a “kitty treat”. Ken likes to torture him, by letting him “help” when it’s time to clean out the litter box. He stands there, looking so sad and deprived, as Ken scoops up the “treats”, ties them in a bag and puts them in the garbage. I’m sure Titus can’t understand why humans throw perfectly good food away—it must be like a starving person watching a restaurant throw perfectly good left-overs in a dumpster.

4) He has a wide vocabulary. He understands (but doesn’t always follow) commands like “Sit”, “Stay”, “Lie Down. I said LIE DOWN!!”, “Come here”, “Stop sniffing the cat’s bum,” and so on. He also knows dinner, supper, breakfast, treat, cookie, walk, car, up, down, bye-bye, go outside, go pee, and get the ball. In other words, he’s like a 100-pound toddler. He also seems to understand the relevance of “Titus, WTF?!” and “Get off my foot!”

But that brings me to the point of this story. If you say to Titus, “Get the toy”, he will get you a toy. It will, however, be a random toy, whichever is closest. So I’ve been trying to teach him to differentiate BETWEEN his toys, and it’s hard, let me tell you. He has a gigantic stuffed bull which is called “Moosey”, because the people we got him from thought it was a moose. It obviously has completely different horns, but Moosey works better than “Bully”. He also has a smaller stuffed pig, which, surprisingly, we call “Piggy”. I always feel like a character in Lord of the Flies when I tell him to get it, but it doesn’t have spectacles, so that’s OK (yes, a random literary reference, y’all). Finally, he has a sock. We call it “The Sock”. I was actually just telling my aunt about this and here’s the conversation:

Me: I want to teach him the word “sock”.
Aunt: What?
Me: Sock.
Aunt: You want him to learn the word f*ck?
Me: No, sock. SOCK. He already knows f*ck, obviously.

At any rate, I think it’s important that he knows the difference between his toys. Last night I tried SO hard. I kept showing him the sock, and saying the word “sock”, but he wasn’t getting it. But Ken pointed out that it was dinner time and he was super-distracted (Titus, not Ken), so he probably wasn’t paying attention to any of his toys. It just occurred to me now that you might be wondering WHY he has a sock for a toy. Is he a house elf from Harry Potter, you ask? No. It became his toy when his allergies got really bad and we had to tie it onto his paw with a pretty red ribbon to stop him from chewing it. He tore it off almost immediately, but then it became a beloved toy. He likes to carry it around. That makes it a toy. Don’t ask me—it’s dog logic. Plus, you can grab the end and play tug of war with him, which makes him ecstatically happy. So it’s a toy. And one day, he will know its name.

Friday: I have a conversation with a grocery store cashier and realize she is TOTALLY humouring me.

Girl: HI. HOW ARE YOU TODAY?!
Me: I’m fine, thanks. How are you?
Girl: I’M SUPER!! GOSH, CAN YOUBELIEVE THIS WEATHER?!
Me: No, it’s raining so hard right now, and I forgot an umbrella.
Girl: GOSH! THAT’S SO BAD!! IT’S RAINING SOOOO HARD!!
Me: Do you sell umbrellas here?
Girl: I WISH! I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS RAIN!!
Me: I know. My husband’s at a soccer game in Toronto—I hope he doesn’t get soaked.
Girl: ME TOO! POOR GUY! DO YOU HAVE AN AIRMILES CARD?
Me: I do. Here you are.
Girl: THANKS! DO YOU NEED A BAG???!!!
Me: Um…sure…one would be fine. (At this point, it dawns on me that she’s not actually as sincere as she seems. It could be because of the capital letters and exclamation marks.)
Girl: OK THEN!! HAVE A GREAT DAY!!

Afterwards, I remembered when I was that age and working at a pretty mundane job. The only way to get through the day sometimes was to become a little robotic. And that’s OK. She could have been really nasty or just plain bored or disinterested, I guess. As it was, for a few brief moments, I felt like she truly cared. Thanks, grocery store girl.

Monday: I consider the times that Ken has been right about something

Last weekend, Ken and I had a heated “debate” over whether or not to put our gigantic potted hibiscus outside for the summer. I was sick of looking at its skeletal branches, and the accumulation of dead leaves that never seemed to disappear no matter how many times I swept around it. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a great hibiscus. Ken’s mom gave it to us years ago, and when it blooms in the summer, it’s beautiful. The rest of the year, though, it’s ‘dormant’, which is to say that it looks like it belongs on a compost heap. Anyway, last week, I was super-stressed about how messy the house was, and wanted to do some major spring cleaning, so I asked Ken to take the hibiscus outside to the courtyard, but he said NO, on the grounds that it was still too cold, and the weather was unpredictable. “It’s the middle of May,” I said. “It’s the long weekend. You’re being ridiculous. Put the damn hibiscus outside.” But he continued to refuse, telling me that we “could still get frost” because technically, the long weekend was early this year, blah, blah, blah, until I got very pissed off and announced that he was negating my feelings, to which he replied that I was negating the hibiscus or some nonsense like that. So the hibiscus remained in the house, not because I thought Ken was right but because the damn plant was too heavy for me to carry by myself; otherwise, it would have been out on its ass. Then on Tuesday, the weather network announced that the temperatures were going down, and we were in for frost on Wednesday. So Ken was right after all. He was very gracious about it, only stabbing his fingers triumphantly at me and yelling “HA! HA!” a few times over the course of the day.
This may seem like a strange reaction, but the truth is that sometimes Ken is ‘incorrect’ about things. Case in point: at our last house, we were suddenly invaded by beavers, who started damming up our creek. When I said that I thought we should pull down the dam so they would move on, Ken got really upset. “They’re a beautiful part of the natural world,” he said, and he spent many hours taking pictures of them and marvelling at the industrious way they were taking down our trees. Eventually, however, the dam was 40 feet wide, and the neighbours upstream were getting flooded out of their backyards, so instead of taking down a very small dam until they moved on to somewhere else, we had to hire someone at our own expense to blow it up and trap the beavers, who were quite numerous at this point. The guy we hired was very efficient, AND enthusiastic. He called me one afternoon and this was the conversation:

Beaver Guy: I got some beauties today! A huge one and some babies. You should bring your little girl to see them.
Me: Are they dangerous? Are they in cages or just running around?
Beaver Guy: Heck no! They’re dead!

Apparently, you can’t ‘relocate’ a huge colony of beavers, because the other beaver colonies get mad, and then you have beaver wars and such. Needless to say, I opted NOT to take my 3 year-old to see baby animal corpses. There are many, many other examples of Ken being obstinate and ‘incorrect’ with expensive and disastrous consequences, but I realized after the hibiscus incident, that sometimes he IS actually right about things, so here’s a list.

1) “You shouldn’t wear flip flops while you’re power-washing the bricks in the courtyard with a gas-powered sprayer. Seriously—put on some shoes.”

I scoffed at him when he said this, and assured him that I would be careful. What did he know, wussy that he was in his steel-toed work boots? Then I was in a tight corner, went to turn around, swiped the power wand accidentally over my toes, dropped to the ground and started screaming. Apparently, if it can take the dirt off a patio stone in a fraction of a second, it can also flay the skin off your toes almost down to the bone in the same amount of time. But he didn’t say ‘I told you so’, because he was too busy wiping my tears, gently cleaning the dirt out of my wounds, and reassuring the neighbours that I WASN’T dying.

2) “You don’t need a new car—we’ll just get snow tires.”

I’d never had snow tires in my life, and was a huge skeptic about them, believing that it was just a marketing ploy to make people buy extra tires that they didn’t actually need, as well as ugly rims that would ruin the look of my adorable sports car. But after sliding all over the road one day, and finding out that I could pay a little extra and have snow tires put on my awesome sports rims, I decided to try them. Ken was right. They work. Enough said.

3) “I don’t think the kids in this town are THAT well-supervised.”

This was in reference to the town where we have our cottage. I was going on about how happy the kids in town look, always laughing and playing together on their lawns.
“Their parents must take really good care of them—they seem so well-adjusted,” I remarked to Ken one day.
“Yeah,” he said, “except when they let them go out on the middle of the lake in small rowboats without life jackets and then the boat capsizes.”
“That’s only happened two times. Maybe three,” I said.
Then, I was driving home from the garden centre, and I saw this scene: a little boy, around 3 years old, lying on his stomach in the middle of the lawn, while an older boy, around 7 or 8, drove a full-sized John Deere front-end loader IN CIRCLES AROUND HIM. There were no adults in sight. But the kids WERE laughing in a very well-adjusted way.

4) “You need to slow down with the drinking.”

Ken doesn’t say this to me very often, since I’m pretty good at pacing myself, but when he DOES say it, I’ve learned to listen. Otherwise, I’m challenging people very aggressively to arm-wrestling contests, or calling people to find out if I was still dressed when they left my 40th birthday party.

5) “There are only 3 fish in that pond.”

Ken said this to me a couple of days ago, when I was looking in the pond and could only see three fish.
Me: No, there are four.
Ken: No, there are only three.
Me: Don’t be ridiculous. I told you yesterday that there were four. I saw them with my own eyes, all at the same time, while you were cleaning the pump.
Ken: Nope, just three.
Me: WHAT DID YOU DO?!

It turns out that the day before, when Ken was cleaning the pond pump, he happened to mention that the screen wasn’t on the pump. I told him he needed to find it and put it back on; otherwise, one of the fish could get sucked in and die. “That won’t happen,” said Ken, knowingly. So technically, being wrong about the pump made him right about the fish, which just might result in this one being cancelled out.
At any rate, he was right about the hibiscus, so this past Friday, when he finally took the damn thing outside, I didn’t scoff when he opened our big patio umbrella over the hibiscus, in a very motherly way, to protect it from any future frost or windburn.

Wednesday: I catch a fish

This past week, our town had “Large Item Pick-up”. I refer to this as “Big Junk Day”. It’s one of my favourite days of the year, aside from Christmas and birthdays, because it’s another day where you can give things to people and you can get free stuff yourself. Ken and K are NOT fans of driving around town, looking through piles of other peoples’ junk, but when there’s treasure to be had, I can be pretty manipulative. I convinced K that she needed to practice driving, so I made her take me to the gas station, then insisted that she turn right and go around the block before we went home. It wasn’t until I shouted, “Slow down here!” that she realized she was being played. “Wait a minute!” she said. “You just want me to drive you around so you can look at junk!” But we had already seen a couple of cool things, so when we got home, I convinced Ken to hook up the trailer, and we scored a china cabinet, some 2 x 8s, a vintage galvanized tub, and a garden bench. The next day, I was driving home and I saw ANOTHER china cabinet, so Ken agreed to take me down the road to get it. As we pulled up, a van pulled in behind us, kicking up gravel. Ken grabbed the china cabinet and started loading it, as young guy ran up. “Ahh, that was what I was here for,” he said sadly. You snooze; you lose, in junk-picker land, my friend. But then, he started going through a huge garbage bag and pulled out a stuffed, mounted fish. And it was awesome. I said, “You should take that—they’re very collectible,” but the guy put it back in the bag, and then drove away. Well, I thought about that fish all night, and the next day, on the way to pick up K from school, I saw its fin still sticking out of the bag. So I did what anyone would do—I pulled over and put it in the backseat. Then I was worried, because K has a habit of throwing open the back door and tossing her backpack in, and I didn’t want Frank to get hurt. This meant that as I stopped the car, I locked the door and yelled out the window, “Be careful! There’s a fish in the back!” K was with some of her friends, and they all looked kind of puzzled. Then she opened the car door, jumped back a bit and said, “Mom! What the hell!”

Me: What?
K: Why do you have a stuffed and mounted fish in the back of the car?!
Me: I found it. I’m going to sell it. His name is Frank.
K: NO ONE is going to buy a dead fish.
Me: Sure they will. Lots of people would LOVE to have a stuffed fish over their fireplace mantle.
K: Mom. Let me explain something to you. There are two types of people in this world. People who fish and DON’T hang what they catch over their mantelpiece, and people who fish and hang the fish they PERSONALLY CAUGHT over their mantelpiece. But no man should EVER mount another man’s fish….
Me: *snicker*
K: OK, yes, that sounded weird. But no one will buy it, I’m telling you.

Personally, I think K is wrong. And if you live in a small lake town which is short on taxidermists, you could very well want to mount that fish. (*snicker*)

Friday: I have a chat with an Air Miles representative

Air Miles are stupid. We’ve been collecting them for YEARS and we’ve never been able to go anywhere with them. As of right now, I don’t even have enough for a bus ticket to Kitchener. Then a new grocery store opened in a nearby town, and they give you Air Miles which can be converted into cash for groceries. When I told Ken, he tried to have our existing multitude of Air Miles transferred, but they wouldn’t let us do that. So what do I do with these stupid Air Miles? I went on their website and it was more than useless, other than to tell me that I could buy a Montblanc fountain pen for 5,000 Air miles and $125 dollars cash. Not a great deal. And I couldn’t find anywhere where it said I could get a gift card. I figured that since Rona gives you Air Miles, you MUST be able to get gift cards for there, and I had a plan for a new garden. Then I saw the Live Chat function and figured that would be easier than trying to navigate their equally stupid website. I clicked on Have a Live Chat with an Agent, and waited. Then “Stephen” came on-line.

“Hello Ken. How can I help?” I loved it. This guy thought I was Ken, and he had no way of knowing that I wasn’t. I could do ANYTHING I wanted. I explained my issue about the gift cards to him, and the notification came up that he “was typing.” Then he typed this: “Ken, I hear you.” And it kind of freaked me out. Was Stephen trying to be hip and cool, or like, comfort me or something? Then he told me he had some good news and bad news for me, and proceeded to give me some gobbledy-goop about how they’ve discontinued their gift cards etc., but I really wasn’t paying attention because all I could think about was what if he COULD hear me? What if it wasn’t a platitude, but a WARNING?!

Obviously this was a real concern, and at the end of the chat, I thanked him for the help, then asked, “By the way, can you really hear me? Because I just swore at my cat.” I didn’t really, but it occurred to me that I needed a way to verify his eavesdropping abilities. Plus, he thought I was Ken, so I was in the clear as far as any Humane Society action went. His reply, though, was, “No, I can’t, Ken. Just don’t hurt your cat,” and I had a moment of terrible guilt that I had just implicated Ken in a cat abuse scandal, but then Stephen added a smiley face, which made me feel better, and more secure in the knowledge that the Air Miles people couldn’t ACTUALLY hear what went on in my house. So I responded with “Don’t worry, I won’t. She’s actually very sweet aside from peeing on my bathmat instead of her litter box which is RIGHT BESIDE the bathmat.” This is actually true, and DOES make me swear at her on occasion because it’s just illogical, and shows that she has a perversely malicious streak that no one else knows about. But he just responded with “Okay. Is there anything else I can help with Ken?” because I guess his cat empathy had reached its limit. I typed in “No, but I appreciate the help”, then he said, “Thanks for connecting with me via chat,” only for a second I thought he said via “CAT” and I started to laugh really hard. Air Miles. They might be stupid, but their reps are pretty clever.

Monday: I have a cold and it makes me stupid

Last weekend, I got a cold. Not a terrible cold, just one of those mild head colds that makes you more annoyed than anything. I was congested and my nose felt like someone was rubbing it with sandpaper, but other than that, I felt OK. The problem is that I have different reactions to being sick, depending on the severity of the illness. When I’m really sick, I get extremely grumpy, and have been known to yell at the TV or swear at random items in my medicine cabinet. But that’s OK, because when you’re really sick, you get to stay home in bed, and no one really knows how pissed off at the world you are. But when I’m just a little sick, I become significantly less intelligent than I usually am, and because I’m not sick enough to stay home in bed, EVERYONE knows how dumb I can be. Here are some examples of things that happened on Monday, which prove that colds make me stupid:

First thing on Monday morning, we were having a team meeting because we were going to be spending the next few days at our warehouse. One of my colleagues turned to me and said, “I’d really like to have my laptop with me tomorrow, but I rode my bike to work so I can’t take it home with me. Can I put it in your car?” This seems like a completely straightforward request now, but on Monday, I was having problems with pronouns apparently, because my response was “Um…my car’s a little small. You’ve seen my car—do you really think it will fit?” She looked at me with a mix of confusion and concern, and replied, “I’m pretty sure it will” to which I said, “Does it, like, fold down or something?” And bear in mind, we’re still in a meeting and at this point everyone else is listening to the conversation. When she answered, “Does my laptop fold down?” like she couldn’t believe I’d just asked that, I had a sudden revelation that the “it” in her request did not in fact refer to her bicycle, and that she wanted me to put her laptop in my car, NOT her bicycle. Which makes total sense in retrospect, because why the hell would she want her bicycle at the warehouse? We’re not even allowed to wear open-toed shoes there, so I’m guessing that riding your bike up and down the aisles is off-limits too. Anyway, all I could say was, “Oh wait–I’m so sorry! I thought we were talking about your bike. I’m having kind of a dumb moment. Of course I can put your laptop in my car today and take it to the warehouse for you tomorrow.” Then we all had a good laugh over what I thought was going to be a single occurrence of unintelligentness in a day full of shining smartness. Little did I know that I was going to being owning a lot of dumb moments that day.

Later that morning, my manager asked me if I was able to do something, and I said Yes, and explained what I thought was the process to her (because I’ve only been working there for a couple of months). She said, “Wow—you sound like you’ve worked here for two years already,” and without missing a beat, I said, “That’s because I’m really stuffed up right now.” She looked at me quizzically, smiled and said, “No, I meant that you sounded like you really know what you’re doing.” Then I was like, “Oh, thanks!” because she was complimenting me, but then later I realized that in her second statement she’d said SOUNDED, past tense, and that my bizarre response might very well have cancelled out the first statement.

Things got progressively worse in the afternoon, when we were told to change our voicemail greetings so people who called would know we were out of the office for a while. I’d never actually done this before, mostly because no one ever calls me. The only time my phone has ever rung was when an elderly gentleman pocket-dialed me. We did have a very nice conversation though—apparently this wasn’t the first time he had accidently butt-called someone and he was starting to think he should carry his cellphone in another pocket. Anyway, I asked a co-worker to show me how to change my greeting. I should let you know that I’m not very good at speaking under pressure, so I was already worried about the possibility of screwing up my greeting a couple of times before I got it right, and I needed to be very clear about the steps involved in case I had to do it more than once. We went over to my desk, and we were just about to try the phone when two terrible things happened. I felt an uncontrollable sneeze coming on, so I grabbed for a tissue, but my timing and my aim were off, and instead of sneezing into the Kleenex, I sneezed ON MY CO-WORKER. That was the first terrible thing. The second terrible thing was that, as I started apologizing, I began LAUGHING HYSTERICALLY. And while I WAS sincerely sorry, I think my sincerity was thrown into question by the tears of laughter streaming down my face. My co-worker went to wash off, then like a trooper, came back to help me with my phone. By this time, I had calmed down and realized that my reaction was pretty inappropriate, and that last week, when a random stranger sneezed on me at a conference centre, I didn’t find it very funny at all. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure as the sneez-er, I was laughing at the absurdity of the whole thing (in fact, I’m still snickering about it right now because I’m a terrible, terrible person), but as the sneez-ee, it’s just gross and pretty unfunny, and I totally get that. Luckily, I work with very forgiving people. Then, I tried to record my voicemail greeting, and it went something like this—“You have…This is…oh shit (sound of phone slamming down).” After two more tries, I told my co-worker that I should probably just do it on my own, and I think we were both happy that the ordeal, and the day, was finally over.

Thursday: I question people’s eating habits

When I was quite young, my family went overseas to visit my grandparents. We’d just gotten off the plane and we were tired, jet-lagged, and hungry. When my grandmother served us lunch, it looked really weird. I was a very picky kid, so I asked my mother what was on my plate. She gave it a funny look, but said, “Corned beef”. So I started eating it, but it tasted really gross. Turned out that it wasn’t corned beef—it was beef TONGUE. Which leads to the question—of all the parts of a cow that you could actually eat and enjoy, why the hell would you deliberately pick the tongue?! I mean DELIBERATELY? Like, I could see if you were starving and you’d already eaten the rest of the cow, and the only thing left was the tongue, and you were looking at it like, “This is going to kill me but I really don’t have a choice.” THAT I can understand. But to eat it on purpose? I don’t get that. The other night, I was out for dinner with friends to this new restaurant whose claim to fame is that all their food is burned. For example, on the appetizer list was Burnt Ends of Beef Brisket with Dipping Sauce. Hey, for $15 you can come to my house anytime and Ken can do that on the barbeque for you. (Without intending to, of course. He can also burn you a hot dog, a sausage, a steak, a grilled cheese sandwich, or a pizza, depending on what you’re craving. He makes excellent tacos and fajitas though, and he’s a great baker). Anyway, I had ordered the Pit-Fired Pork Tacos, but one of my dinner companions ordered this: Scallops and Veal Tongue. Now, I need to say up front that I am nowhere near being a vegetarian. I totally respect people who are, but personally, I love a diet complete with non-vegetable-y components. My favourite thing to eat is a filet mignon wrapped in bacon. To me, that’s the best of both meat worlds. But I draw the line at baby animals. I think they should at least get a chance to cavort a little in the fields before they end up on someone’s plate. So I don’t eat lamb, and I sure as hell don’t eat veal. And not only was this veal, but it was baby cow TONGUES. When it came, there were three on the plate, but my friend clarified for me that only one baby cow had been killed to make his dinner because it was three slices of the same tongue. Because that made it better. But then, I started to wonder how it came about that we eat certain things. Like, who was the first person who said, “You know guys, I feel like we’re really wasting some good food here by not eating this cow tongue.” Or how many times did someone try to eat rhubarb before people found out that you can eat the stalks but the leaves are poison? That’s what I call trial and error. Then there were the Elizabethans, who believed that tomatoes were poisonous, and they used them to throw at people instead of putting them in salad. Then again, they also believed that women who lived alone had to be witches, and to prove if someone was a witch, they would throw her in a lake. If she sank, she was innocent, and if she floated, she was demonic. So, drowned or burned at the stake, take your pick. But people have all kinds of weird food preferences. Me, I don’t eat gluten for a variety of reasons, and sometimes I get criticized for it, but as I always remind people, Wheat Is Murder. Anyway, the bottom line is this: don’t eat babies, and don’t eat things that lick other things. Words to live by, I’d say.

Friday: I have a very uncoordinated week

I’m not usually a clumsy person—when I was a kid, I hardly ever skinned my knee or fell off things. Up to now, I’ve only broken two small bones: My baby finger, which cracked when I was on our Grade 8 trip to Ottawa and, unchaperoned, we were chasing each other in the halls—I had almost caught a very cute male classmate when he stopped suddenly and I jammed my finger into his back which caused it to snap at the base. It went numb but looked so weird and bendy that I started freaking out. All the teachers had been partying and they basically drew straws to see who had to take me to the hospital, which made me feel very special and loved. The second bone was a toe. One night when K was a baby, she woke up screaming for some reason. I panicked because she wasn’t normally a screamer, so I went running towards the bedroom door WITHOUT my glasses. Unfortunately, I am literally as blind as a bat but without the benefit of sonar, so I slammed into the doorframe foot first. Someone close to me joked that it’s lucky my feet are so big or I would have broken my nose. Ha Ha, Dad. But it’s actually true, and instead of my nose, it was the second toe on my left foot. I ended up in K’s room, crying and bleeding and trying to comfort her while Ken went to get ice and offered to take me to the hospital, which DID make me feel very special and loved, even though I was in a lot of pain.

But lately, I’ve gotten very klutzy. Aside from walking into, or cracking my knee on about 5 different tables, and ending up with brightly coloured bruises on my legs, I’ve also experienced the following acts of uncoordinated-ness:

• Over the course of the week, I dropped 3 hand-held computers, called PDAs, on the concrete floor. We use these devices to input data, and they are currently VITAL to our work. But they are all about 15 years old, with technology that’s fairly obsolete, and batteries that need to be switched on the hour. They really are on their last legs, which is why dropping one makes everyone around you gasp. The first two I dropped out of sheer lack of fine motor skills—you have to turn them one way to scan a barcode, then the other way to input data, and I just can’t seem to master that very basic skill. The third time, I dropped it because a colleague came up behind me and startled me, causing me to jump three feet and toss the PDA into the air, where it landed on the concrete to the horror of all around me. Luckily these things have extremely durable casings, or, as one colleague quipped, I would be personally responsible for the whole system crashing.

• On Tuesday, we brought in lunch from a taco place. The next morning I went to put on my ID badge, and it had a big, gross-looking blotch on it. It also smelled like garlic and spices. When I looked more closely, I realized that there was chunk of tomato wedged in between the front and back of the two pieces of paper. How the hell did I manage to drop a piece of tomato INSIDE my ID badge? God only knows, but I had to take the thing apart, and cut the stain out because it was so nasty-looking. And smelling. I really liked my ID badge, too—I was going to keep it as a souvenir of my very cool new job, but now it’s just a symbol of my slobbiness. Sigh.

• On Thursday, we went to a sushi restaurant for lunch. While I didn’t spill anything on myself, I DID walk headfirst into the neon OPEN sign in the doorway. Technically, this wasn’t my fault. My much tinier colleague went out the wrong door, and I blindly followed, not paying much attention, until WHACK! She had managed to walk under the sign, but me being taller, and oblivious to my surroundings, walked straight into it, headfirst. I didn’t realize what had happened for a minute, until I saw the sign swinging dangerously and flickering, felt my head start to hurt and put two and two together. Luckily, it didn’t break—who knows how much those things cost to replace? More than a PDA, I’ll bet.

• Friday was the ultimate in klutziness. First, I managed to get myself all tangled up in Scotch tape 4 times, while trying to label boxes to go back to our office, until I finally gave up and stapled the labels on. This is why Ken does most of our Christmas wrapping. Anyone who knows me well has had the experience of receiving a gift that looks like it was wrapped by a 5 year-old. It’s not that I don’t care, I just figure the gift inside is more important than the crazy tape job holding the whole thing together. I had a friend once who used to iron tissue paper so that when she re-used it, it still looked crisp and neat. I, on the other hand, have been known to use whatever crumply shreds of tissue paper I can find, stuffed into a gift bag that may or may not represent the occasion (ie a Christmas bag at birthday time). You can very easily convert a Christmas bag into a birthday bag by using a Sharpie to draw strings on the ornaments, thereby turning them into balloons. Huzzah!
The final crazy thing that happened on Friday was in a bathroom stall. I had hung my purse on the hook on the back of the door, which was lucky, because when I went to stand up, I lost my balance and went face first into my purse. I say lucky because I would much rather do a faceplant into a handbag than a hook. Maybe all this clumsiness is a sign that I should exercise more. Or maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t—can you imagine what trouble I’d get into trying to do Zumba?

Tuesday: I give my chair a stern talking-to

Last week, I got a notice that there would be a company coming around to service the coil fan units in my building (for some bizarre reason, whenever I say it in my head, or try to say it out loud, I say “foil can”—apparently I have HVAC dyslexia). I hate having people come into my condo when I’m not there, because I worry about being judged for cleanliness, aesthetic taste, and how things smell when I’m not there to make excuses like “Sorry, I was cooking with garlic last night”, or “I just moved in—sorry about the mess”. So on Monday night, I made sure not to cook anything too spicy or fishy and lit scented candles. Then on Tuesday morning, I tidied up extensively, emptying all the wastepaper baskets, straightening up the cushions, putting the dishes away, and making sure that everything was either centred or at the right angle (I like to have things on a particular angle–for example, the chairs at my kitchen table face the room at 45 degrees, and the couch cushions are tucked into the corners of the arms to create equilateral triangles. This is what I learned from 3 years of high school math, aside from how to calculate tips, or figure out how many square feet of tile I need for a kitchen backsplash). Everything looked lovely, and hygienic, and correctly angled, so after one last spray of Lavender Vanilla Febreze, I left for work. When I got back later, fully expecting to have had my coil fan unit serviced, I found two notes on the bench by the door. The first note said that the unit had been entered in my absence for the purpose of maintenance. I appreciate this type of note, because the management company also leaves one if they have to come in without any warning, like when Cindy next door flooded her apartment and they came in to check for leaks. Then I know to give the place a really good search instead of just looking under the bed for intruders. But then there was the second note: “Unfortunately, we were unable to service the coil fan unit due to an object in front of the service panel obstructing our access.” WTF? I looked over—the object in question was a small wooden chair, placed on a perfect 45 degree angle to the corner and about a foot away from the service panel. This was the OBSTRUCTION? You’re telling me a grown man couldn’t have slid the chair over a few more inches? I could move it across the f*cking ROOM with one finger. The situation was so ludicrous that the only possible explanation was that the chair had somehow come to life and had refused to cooperate. So here’s the conversation that the chair and I had:

Me: What the hell did you do?
Chair: What? Nothing. What are you talking about?
Me: Did you see this note?
Chair: That note is bullshit. I didn’t do anything.
Me: It says you were obstructing the panel. Care to explain?
Chair: I wasn’t obstructing it—I was PROTECTING it!
Me: From what?! They were here to clean the foil can—I mean, the coil fan unit. What happened?
Chair: They didn’t look like service guys. One of them was carrying a gun. I think they were Mafia hitmen.
Me: A gun? What?!
Chair: No, they were from the Secret Service. I think they were trying to put a spy camera in the vent.
Me: Why would anyone want to put a spy camera in the vent of my condo? That’s ridiculous.
ChaI: No, it’s not. You work for the government, remember? You took an oath of allegiance to the Queen.
Me: What kind of government secrets could I possibly know?
Chair: You could be a sleeper agent and not even realize it. You should be grateful. I saved you from possible torture. You should have seen me—I was all intimidating and wood-y. I was just about to start kung fu-ing them when they got scared and left.
Me: They’re coming back next week. I’m putting you on the other side of the room and I want you to stay there.
Chair: Fine. But don’t blame me if nude surveillance pictures of you start showing up on the darkweb. Also, they were making fun of your decorating. I believe the phrase was “eclectic—but not in that GOOD way.”
Me: You’re such a jerk.

The next day, I re-read the notice in the elevator, and in the fine print, it said that the “HVAC technicians are not allowed to touch personal objects.” Since when is a wooden chair a personal object? I would assume that this statement would apply more to things like not going into your bedroom and fingering your lingerie, or using your toothbrush. So now I have to go through another round of intensive tidying and Febrezing because some service guy can’t move a chair 6 inches. Even if the chair is an obnoxious ass.

Saturday: I need the Red Cross

As I write this, I am currently recovering from food poisoning. It started yesterday, and while I’m no longer feeling sick, I have terrible stomach pains. I called my doctor’s office and the nurse said not to eat anything today, but just to drink a lot of fluids to let my system recover. I hate being sick, mostly because Ken is not the best nursemaid in the world. He tries, but it’s just not his forte. For starters, he keeps suggesting that I eat an apple to make me feel better. I know, right? Then I asked him to go to the store and, as per the nurse’s suggestion, get me some Vitamin Water. Which he did, kind of. And bear in mind, I get extremely grumpy when I’m sick.

Me: Do you remember when I asked you to get me some Vitamin Water, and I specified the flavours Orange, Fruit Punch, or Raspberry? Why did you get me Strawberry-Kiwi, Citrus, and Blueberry-Acai? It’s like you did it deliberately.
Ken: There was a sale. They didn’t have the flavours you wanted. Anyway, strawberry is just like raspberry.
Me: No, it’s not! Do you remember last night when you tried to pawn off those Strawberry-Banana drinking boxes you bought that no one likes—I told you then that I hate anything strawberry-flavoured. And the nurse told me to avoid anything acidic, like CITRUS. And Blueberry-Acai—what is that, anyway? I can’t even pronounce it! It sounds gross! What am I supposed to do now? I need something in my stomach! I’m starving!
Ken: Why don’t you have an apple? Didn’t you say that’s what the nurse told you?
Me: Rice, Ken! She said RICE!

Oh well. He has many other fine qualities, and he DID rub my back until I fell asleep last night. Also, he brought my laptop upstairs and set it up so I could lie in bed and write. The Red Cross would never do all that.

Monday: I come home and almost have a heart attack

So if you read this blog regularly, you know I had a little issue with water in my condo a couple of weeks ago. It seemed like a lot of water at the time—OK, it WAS a lot of water, but in my defense, kitchen sinks SHOULD have an overflow drain. It was pretty traumatic, partly because I was worried about damaging the condo and being sued, and partly because for several minutes while I got hysterical with Ken on the phone, I was completely naked and standing in front of an open window, which led me to worry for several days that there might be someone in the building across from me who could see me through a telescope and was now watching me continually in case I ever did it again (ran around naked that is, not flooded my condo). Then I realized that at my age, who in their right mind would be interested in that kind of show? Also, no one came to my door and accused me of being an irresponsible tenant and turning my condo into a splash pad, so I kind of forgot about the whole thing. Then, I went home last weekend, and left right from home to go to work on Monday morning. So I had been away from my condo for 3 days and 2 nights. On Monday night, I was super-tired and got on the elevator to go to what I like to call “Sky Lab” since I’m up really high and have floor to ceiling windows, which makes you feel kind of like you’re just OUT THERE. When I got to my floor, I could hear this roaring noise, and it got even louder as the elevator doors opened. I couldn’t see anything at first but then I turned the corner and just about passed out. The carpet in front of my condo door was all torn up, there were three industrial fans blowing down the hall, and there were wet/dry shop vacs outside my door. What the hell had I done?!! Was it possible that I could have left a tap running before I left for the weekend and had flooded the entire 27th floor of my building?! My first instinct was to turn around, get back in my car, and go home (where it was dry and there were overflow drains on EVERYTHING). But as I took a step forward in preparation for turning and fleeing the scene, I realized that my neighbour’s door, which is on a 90 degree angle to mine, was open. I peeked in just as a strange guy splashed his way out of her closet on his hands and knees with a section of the baseboard in his hands. I asked him what happened, trying to sound very concerned instead of VERY RELIEVED, but he didn’t really speak English, so all I got was, “Lot of water”. “Gosh, that’s too bad,” I answered, secretly thrilled. Why ‘thrilled’? Because when I went into my own unit, there was a note there to tell me that the property manager had entered my condo to look for water damage, but couldn’t find any. But if they HAD…tee hee. There’s no way I’m getting blamed for anything, now that the flood of the century happened next door. Water damage in the unit under me? Golly, it must have been when Cindy flooded her unit, poor kid (her name’s not Cindy, by the way–I just call her that). And when the industrial fans ran for four solid days right outside my door, making me want to gouge out my own eyes, I comforted myself against the unbearable noise by remembering that I was in my own condo, not paying for a hotel room until her unit was dry, like Cindy. Did I at any point sneak out into the hallway late at night and TURN OFF THE F-ING FAN? I admit to nothing. And I mean NOTHING.

Tuesday: Some people are too rude.

My building has a 24 hour concierge service, which makes me feel fairly secure. I still lock my door even if I’m just going to the garbage chute down the hall, and every night when I’m in, I check under my bed for intruders (because you NEVER KNOW, that’s why). And tonight, I opened my balcony door for the first time and got a little panicky because the screen door has no lock on it. But how could anyone get in through your balcony door, seeing as you’re 3 million feet up in the air, you ask? Parkour, maybe, I don’t know. But that’s not important. What’s important is that the people who work behind the concierge desk are extremely pleasant and helpful. Except for Gus (again, not his actual name—I just call him that). I only ever saw Gus once, right after I moved in, then he went “on leave”, presumably to have that surgery where they insert a wire brush up your ass. Gus is incredibly rude, and I wouldn’t care except that he’s only rude to ME. I tried engaging him in conversation the other day, and he just grunted a response to everything. Then I pleasantly asked him the next day if he knew how long the industrial fans would be running outside my door, and he said, “How would I know? I only work nights.” Which is stupid to begin with, because the fans also do their best work at night. It occurred to me that he might just be an unpleasant person, then on Wednesday morning, I left for work earlier than usual and Gus was still behind the desk. I sat down in the lobby to wait for my ride, and I watched him say a cheery and absolutely heart-warming greeting to everyone who was also going to work. I was baffled. Then a young girl went to the desk, to ask him a question, apparently about the flood on my floor. This was what happened.

Gus: Are you still having problems? Didn’t they fix (unclear) yet? You let me know if no one’s been by tomorrow morning and I’ll talk to them.
Girl: So what happened?
Gus: Oh, you should have seen it—like a fireman’s hose, ha ha, going all day long—so much water!!…blah blah blah….
(At this point, I moved to the concierge desk. Gus was obviously in a happy, chatty mood, and I was dying of curiosity.)
Me: Oh, so was it a burst pipe then?
Gus: Yes. (silence)

End of conversation. Plus, he glared at me. Maybe I remind him of someone who cut him off in traffic once (people in Toronto get really insane about that). In the long run, though, I don’t really care if he doesn’t like me, as long as he does his job and stops the crazy people out on Yonge Street from wandering into the building and making their way to the space under my bed. But I have a sneaking suspicion that he would tell them what unit number I’m in if he had the chance.

And then, later that day, a colleague and I had to drop some things off at a printing company. It was a really big job and they are a pretty small company, so you’d think the manager would be grateful for the business and be all obsequious and sh*t. Think again. He gave us a really hard time, and when I asked him if he had our company’s contact information on file, he said, “That’s not the issue, obviously.” Really? OBVIOUSLY? Cuz I think the issue is that you don’t really understand customer service, which is why you’re a SMALL printing company in a city the size of Uranus. Which is where you can shove your attitude. Then he was even more rude to my co-worker, who is the most professional and polite person ever. I so badly wanted to say, “Hey Summer’s Eve, why don’t you crawl back into the bag you came from”, but I was on company business, plus I would only ever say that in my head. In real life, if he was that rude to me and I was on PRIVATE business, I would have just said something like, “You’re really rude. I’m taking my business elsewhere.” Because in real life, I’m much more Jane Austen than Samuel L. Jackson.

 

Tuesday: The joys, and pitfalls, of speakerphone

The whole concept of the speakerphone is a wonderful thing, but you have to be careful about what you’re doing when you use it. I had, prior to living in Toronto during the week, used speakerphone with our landline once in a while, mostly if I was trying to get dinner ready and I really needed to talk to someone while I was chopping vegetables, or whatever. But our kitchen is too big to use the function effectively—I’d have to lean over the chopping board to get close enough to the phone so that I didn’t sound like I was cooking dinner in a large cavern. I never used the speakerphone function on my iPhone until I moved to Toronto, but my condo is only a little over 600 square feet, so it doesn’t really matter where I am in relation to the phone in order for me to have a pretty lengthy conversation. But I’m getting a little cavalier with the activities I’m doing whilst talking on the phone—it’s not just chopping vegetables anymore. So on Tuesday night, I was talking to Ken. It was pretty late because my brother had been over for dinner, and we had definitely NOT been drinking AT ALL, but after he left, I realized that I needed to do a lot of stuff in a very limited amount of time with a slightly off-kilter sense of equilibrium). I called Ken, because I had promised to do it several hours earlier, and how time flies when you’re NOT drinking. Also, I needed to get ready for bed, and this is a ritual with many steps. So I’m talking to Ken on the phone, and he’s telling me all about his day, which is always highly interesting and usually involves some pretty intense cubicle-sitting (haha, honey—I know you work VERY hard) when he stops abruptly.

Ken: Um, what are you doing right now?
Me: Nothing. Talking to you. What do you mean?
Ken: I thought I heard splashing. Are you having a BATH right now? While we’re talking?

Then I got worried that he might think I had flooded my apartment AGAIN, so I had to admit that yes, I was in the bathtub. But once I had done that, it was a slippery slope to the rest of the bedtime ritual, so we continued the conversation while I washed my face, and talked through brushing my teeth (although I had to repeat myself several times because Ken can’t understand “toothbrush talking”). But Ken is a pretty astute guy, so I refrained from actually flushing the toilet, because if he knew I was in the bathtub, he was for sure going to know that I had been talking to him while I “finished my bedtime routine”. Because let’s face it—using the toilet is like chopping vegetables in that you need both hands to do either. I don’t know if there’s any actual etiquette about using speakerphone, but I’m willing to bet that, aside from simply letting someone know that they are on speakerphone so you don’t say something rude about someone else in the room, NOT using the toilet while you’re talking to someone is considered de rigeur. But what they don’t know (or hear) can’t hurt them, right?

Friday: I almost use my pepper spray

A couple of weeks ago, one of my very dear aunts gave me a gift. It was a small container of “aggressive dog spray”, which is what they call pepper spray so that no one thinks you are actually planning to use it on humans. But let’s face it—how many aggressive dogs are roaming the streets of downtown Toronto? Any dog I’ve seen so far is either a very tiny dog owned by a very well-groomed man, or a very scruffy dog owned by a very nice panhandler. When my aunt gave it to me, she cautioned me: “Use it sparingly,” she said. When I showed it to the women I work with and told them I’d been instructed to use it ‘sparingly’, they laughed and said, “How often are you planning to use it?! Only once, hopefully!” But don’t forget, I live in the heart of downtown Toronto, where people scream uncontrollably, or wear balaclavas and walk down the street moaning. Anyway, yesterday morning, I was walking to work, which is literally 2 minutes on a slow day. I was half a block from my condo when a woman walked up beside me. Bear in mind that the sidewalk is ten feet wide, and it was really early so there was no one else around. The woman spoke in a very hostile voice: “She thinks she’s on a tour. Move faster why don’t you? Fucking get out of the roadway.” (Sorry about not censoring the swearing, but I repeat this verbatim). I could hear her very clearly, and assumed that she must be talking on her cell phone. Then I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She seemed perfectly normal. She was very tall and heavyset, and was wearing a ski jacket and a backpack. As our eyes met, I realized that she had no cellphone. And no ear buds either, so she wasn’t singing along to some bizarre Iggy Azalea song. Nope, she was talking to me. And I was walking almost as fast as her, and was NOT in her way. My hand crept along to my purse where my “aggressive dog spray” resided, because despite her “normal” appearance, she was obviously having one of those Jame Gumb moments from Silence of the Lambs (“It puts the lotion on its skin”, etc. where she was narrating the serial killer thoughts in her head). Then she disappeared into the 7-11 on the corner, and I hightailed it into my secure office building. But I sure wish I could have tried out that pepper spray. Don’t worry—I would have used it sparingly.