Monday: You can’t tell some people anything—especially people on Buy and Sell sites.

As you all know, I am a member of several Buy and Sell sites. I often get a kick out of the way that these people abuse each other for no particular reason, but normally I stay out of any comment thread and just use the sites to buy cool stuff like random pillars for the corner of my office or extra hoses for our central vacuum cleaner. Buy and Sell sites are like a microcosm of humanity—the part of humanity that is very stubborn and single-minded, even when faced with empirical evidence that they are wrong. And when you tell them they are wrong, they get a little pissy. Here are two examples:

1) On Sunday, I read a post from a woman who was selling a pair of black Pumas which she claimed were brand new, and size 9. I really liked them, so I contacted her, and made arrangements to try them on. When I got to her house, I was greeted by two dogs, a pug, which bit my hand, and a skittish collie cross which stood and growled at me the entire time I was there. “Don’t worry,” said the woman. “She won’t bite you.” I was having significant trouble believing this, as the dog kept advancing towards me menacingly, then backing away when I held out my hand for it to sniff. I couldn’t help but wonder at that point why anyone would have a dog that acted like that towards visitors that you had WELCOMED into your house. It seems simultaneously counter-intuitive and inhospitable. At any rate, I’m not afraid of dogs, so the woman brought out the shoes. I went to put one shoe on (having to bend over and have my head so close to both a bouncing pug and a growling collie was a feat of bravery in itself) and it became immediately apparent that there was no way in hell that shoe was going over my toes, let alone onto my foot.

Me: I can’t get in on my foot. Are you sure it’s a size 9?
Woman: Yes, it’s a size 9, that’s what my sister told me. I’m selling them for her.
Me (looking at the tag): The tag says size 6.
Woman: No, they’re a size 9. They must just fit small.
Me: Well. I take a size 9, and there’s no way they’ll go on my foot. Umm…are you sure you’re not looking at the tag upside down?
Woman (huffy): No, they’re definitely a size 9.
Me (putting my own shoe back on while avoiding being bitten by the still snarling colie): Ok, well thanks anyway.

2) On Monday, I was reading a post on a Buy and Sell site from someone who wanted a custom made sign for her house. Someone else replied that there was a wonderful local company who made one for her, and she posted a picture of it. It said “The Power’s”. Now, anyone with a working knowledge of punctuation knows this is wrong, so I stupidly posted the following comment: “If you get one made for you, make sure the apostrophe is in the right place.” Then someone else asked why The Power’s was wrong and I posted an explanation, thusly, “If it’s to indicate that more than one person named Power lives in the residence, then it’s plural and should say The Powers. If it’s to indicate that the residence belongs to a family named Power, then it’s plural possessive and should say The Powers’. You would only put the apostrophe before the s if there’s only 1 Power, but it wouldn’t make sense to refer to one person as The Power. Unless he was, like, a superhero or something.” Ok, I know it was longwinded, and in retrospect, probably a little superior, but I was trying to be HELPFUL. Well, within 10 minutes, there were a series of nasty comments directed at me, that I should mind my own business, that she LIKED the sign, that maybe they WANTED it that way, and a random comment that it was Power, not Powers. So I replied that it was a nice sign, and that I didn’t invent the rules of grammar. Then I remembered some of the other ‘debates’ that I had seen (and laughed at) on this Buy and Sell site, and realized that it wouldn’t be long before someone called me a slut, or commented on the quality of my lady parts. So I did the sensible thing, and deleted ALL my comments. What I really wanted to say was “If you want to pay good money for a sign which tells the world that you’re functionally illiterate, that’s your business.” But I didn’t do that, because like I said, you really can’t tell some people anything. Plus it was Monday, and after what happened LAST Monday, I didn’t want to take any chances.

Thursday: I get really tired and Titus goes missing.

On Thursday afternoon, I finally got Ken to take our dog into the vet to get weighed. After being away in Toronto during the week, I would come home on the weekends, and it was becoming very apparent that Titus was gaining weight. Ken didn’t notice, of course, because he sees Titus every day, but I was worried that there might be something wrong with him. The dog, not Ken. I was driving home from Toronto when Ken called me from the parking lot to say that yes, he had gained weight but it was only 5 pounds so the vet figured it was from fewer walks in the winter and that he would be fine once he started getting more exercise and stopped eating random things around the house. The dog, not Ken. Then I picked K up from school, and we talked about a lot of things, including Titus being at the vet. A few minutes later, the phone rang, and it was my mother. Here’s how I know that I was really tired:

Mom: Honey, I don’t want to worry you, but we just came in to drop off the turkey for Easter dinner and… WE CAN’T FIND TITUS!
Me: What?! What do you mean, you can’t find Titus?!
Mom: We’ve looked all over the house, and he’s not in here! We looked around the yard and we can’t find him!
Me (freaking): Oh my god! Where could he be? Are you sure he’s not upstairs? Did you look behind the workshop? He’s got to be there somewhere!!
Mom: Try not to panic—I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. Is there any chance that Ken came home and took him somewhere?!
Me: (long pause): Sorry– Ken took him to the vet—I forget about that for a minute.
Mom (cheerfully): Well, that’s all right then. We’ll see you tomorrow.

When I told Ken, he got mad and said, “That’s a really mean trick to play on your mother, teasing her like that.” And then I had to admit that I genuinely forgot that he had Titus in the car, even though I had just talked to him 5 minutes before she called. Ken, not the dog.

Last week, one of my colleagues asked if I wanted to pop down the street with her to look at shoes. I needed a distraction, and she needed a companion, because the store she wanted to go to was what I would diplomatically refer to as “sketchy”. There were always a lot of strange men hanging around outside, there were shirts featuring marijuana leaves in the window, and rap music was playing at full volume. But they sold a lot of popular styles of basketball shoes that she wanted to look at for her son. When we got there, it was raining a bit, so no strange men. It seemed like a good omen, and we went in. The ‘customer service representative’ was wearing a huge bomber jacket, and the place was freezing. It was already a little weird, but then I happened to comment on how much I liked camouflage pants, and the next thing I knew, the guy was going through stacks, saying, “Is this your size? Is this your size?” I told him I was a 6, and he pulled a pair out of the pile and handed them to me:

Me: Why does the tag say ‘15’? Is that some kind of foreign sizing system?
Guy: Too big, lady?
Me: A little. Like I said, size 6.
Guy: What about these?
Me: Um, maybe a little small—they say ‘3’.
Guy: You like shorts?
Me: No, not really.
Guy: These ones are ‘5’. You try them on?
Me: Uh…

So he directs me to the front of the store, where the ‘change rooms’ are. I put that in quotation marks, because it was just pipes with curtains hanging from them. When I got there, a very large teenage boy was going in at the same time, but the guy says, “There’s two rooms”, and I wanted to get it over with, so I suddenly found myself in the most gross change room I’d ever seen, with only a thin curtain separating me from a teenage boy, and only a piece of cardboard separating my half-clad self from Yonge Street behind me, because the back wall of the change room was actually a broken window that had been covered up. It was freezing cold. I could have just pretended to try on the pants, but I DO have a penchant for camouflage, and I decided that I had come this far, so I might as well try to fulfill my pants destiny. My colleague, thankfully, had decided to stand guard outside, which made me feel a little safer. Unfortunately, the pants, while they fit in the waist, required a much bigger butt than I currently possess, and they were way too baggy. I whipped them back off, handed them to the guy, and we hightailed it out of there, giggling like teenage girls all the way back to the office. When we told everyone where we had been, they were all, “You went IN there? Oh my god, you’re so brave! What was it like?!” So we regaled them with our tale, and they got to live vicariously through us, which made it seem like we had performed a valuable service instead of being scared sh*tless.

Monday: One of my worst nightmares comes true. And yes, it’s still only Monday

On Monday night, after a particularly exhausting day, as you can see from all of the above, I decided to tidy up, then have a bath, and go to bed. The sink in my condo is especially deep, and it takes a while to fill, so I started it going, then went to run a nice, hot bath. The bath was luxurious; I felt all the day’s chip and dip tension slowly slipping away, and I had a good, long soak. When I got out of the bath, around 20 minutes later, I was about to wash my face, when I looked in the mirror and saw something moving behind me on the floor. I turned around and almost literally fainted when I realized what it was. Yes, I had left the sink faucet on FULL BLAST and then had forgotten all about it. For over TWENTY F-ING MINUTES! Do you have any idea how much water can fill a 600 square foot condo in TWENTY MINUTES??!! A LOT of water, that’s how much, and it was all over the place! I splashed over to the sink as fast as I could, and turned off the tap, then I stood there, hyperventilating, not knowing what to do next. So, I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken.

Me: OH MY F-ING GOD, KEN! That nightmare I had a couple of weeks ago just came true!!
Ken: Which one?
Me: The one where I flooded my condo! Only the water isn’t anywhere near the balcony door, so I can’t open it and let the water drain out, like I did in the dream!
Ken: You actually flooded your condo? How did you DO that?
Me: I left the sink running while I had a bath. There’s water EVERYWHERE! What do I do?
Ken: (calmly) Get every towel and sheet you have, and start soaking it up.
Me: I don’t think I have enough sheets and towels. It’s gone right through to the bedrooms and the carpets are soaked too!
Ken: Then you’ll just have to keep ringing the towels out. It might take a while, but you can do it.
Me: (still hyperventilating) I’m naked and I’m standing in front of an open window.
Ken: Then get dressed first. It’ll be OK.
Me: I’ll call you when I’m finished.

Two hours later, I had a bathtub full of wet towels and bedsheets and a relatively dry condo, but any benefits I might have felt from my earlier bath had gone down the drain. Literally. When I finally called Ken, I was exhausted. After we finished talking, I looked at the clock and it was after 11 pm, which meant one wonderful thing—this day was just about done. The rest of the week could only be uphill from here–and it was.

Wednesday: Things that there should be etiquette manuals for:

This week, a new sign appeared in the elevator in my building. There are always signs—the last one was announcing the presence of a massage therapist in the “sister building” next door, which ticked me off a little, because the “sister building” also has the swimming pool and hot tub. My building has the PET SPA. I’m not really seeing any equity here. I can USE the swimming pool, but that means having to carry all my stuff either outside across the courtyard, or down through the parking garage, and then change in the change room instead of sauntering downstairs with a swimsuit and cover-up on. Although I would never do that anyway because it’s not in my nature to either saunter, or walk around in public half-naked. Anyway, the new sign said this: “Please do not throw cigarette butts off your balcony.” It went on to explain WHY cigarette butts should not be thrown off balconies—they can land on other people’s balconies and set fire to things, they disturb people’s enjoyment of their outdoor space, they could land on a pedestrian below, and it was a contravention of the Condo Act, etc. My source of amazement was that anyone should have to EXPLAIN why cigarette butts shouldn’t be thrown off balconies. And then backing that truck up just a little bit more, what kind of idiot would throw a cigarette butt off a balcony in the first place? But there must be several people doing it, because it was a professionally made sign and all, not one of those cardboard jobs handwritten with a Sharpie, like when I put a TV at the side of the road in Port Burwell (I’ve done this with a few items there actually—I have a special sign that I made out of a cereal box that says, “I’m free and I work. Take me home”. This can be applied to almost anything, and I’ve gotten rid of a lot of junk that way.) The sign continued on to ask others in the building to report it if they saw someone throwing something off a balcony. Or someone, I assume. So it occurred to me that throwing garbage on the ground is a human behaviour that I really just don’t understand. I could no more toss a coffee cup on the ground than I could bark at someone on the street. (And there are actually people who do that too, if you read this blog regularly). But Toronto is the cigarette butt capital of the known world, from what I can see as the snow continues to melt. Some businesses actually hire people to sweep up the cigarette butts and garbage off the sidewalks in front of their buildings in an effort to keep the city looking clean, but it’s a losing battle because there are way more people who litter than there are people who sweep up after them. Yesterday, outside of Shopper’s Drug Mart, a worker was sweeping garbage into a dustpan, and this guy who had just finished his cigarette said “Here you go,” and threw his still-lit butt into the dustpan, like he was doing the world a favour. Maybe it’s just the way people behave in large cities where they don’t really feel any responsibility towards other people or ownership of their shared space, but people do things in large cities that they would never do in a friend’s backyard. For example, if you were at a party at a friend’s house, would you throw a cigarette butt out the second story window onto your friends below? Well, if you did, you can pretty much guarantee you’re never getting another party invitation. But aside from the whole cigarette butt mystery here are some other things that I really feel there should be etiquette guides for.

1) Revolving doors: You all know how much I hate revolving doors. I actually agree with them in principle—they help keep in the heat in very cold weather (which apparently has become ALL YEAR in Canada) and they allow more people to go in and out of a building more easily. IN PRINCIPLE. The trouble is, there are seemingly no rules regarding their use, no common understanding of HOW one should use a revolving door. There are a lot of very self-absorbed people out there who honestly believe they are the only people who exist, and approach revolving doors as if they’ve just reached the finish line of a 100 metre dash—one more last push and there’s a medal waiting on the other side. Regardless of who else is already in the door. The other day I saw an elderly woman almost thrown to the ground when a young guy in a business suit, talking on his cell phone, pushed through like he was Usain Bolt and there was a Nike ad campaign at stake. Using a revolving door properly should be fairly straightforward: 1) Wait until it’s safe to enter. 2) Don’t push so hard that you make the people ahead of you fall down.

2) Escalators. Escalators are one of my favourite things in the world. Stairs that do the walking for you. Whoever invented this brilliant method of travel deserves the medal that people think is waiting for them on the other side of revolving doors. But again, there’s no apparent general understanding of HOW to use escalators if other people are on them. If you’re alone, do whatever the hell you want. Same goes for revolving doors, and a lot of other things too probably. But if there are other people on the escalator, don’t walk up the moving stairs until you’re right behind them and then sigh loudly and impatiently. If you want to walk on your own, TAKE THE STAIRS. The grocery store where I do a lot of shopping has an up escalator, a down escalator, and an actual staircase in the middle. It never ceases to surprise me how many people will try to push past you on the escalator instead of using the stairs, which are there expressly for people who WANT TO WALK. Leave the escalator to us slow and lazy people. I got really thrown for a loop the other day when I tried to go down the escalator at Marshall’s and it wasn’t working. I wasn’t sure how to navigate it initially and became very disoriented about halfway down. It felt kind of like when you’re on vacation and you wake up in the middle of the night not sure where you are. Except when THAT happens, there aren’t any people trying to shove past you because you’re “going too slow”. Here’s the rule for using an escalator: 1) Get on a step. 2) Stand on the step until you get to the top or the bottom. Easy peasy. It’s 10 seconds on the escalator or 11.3 seconds if you push past people to walk up the escalator while it’s already moving you towards your destination. You’re not saving time–you’re just increasing the odds of getting elbowed hard.

3) Tail-Gating: Tailgaters are jerks at the best of times, but it’s the people who tailgate in really heavy traffic that I don’t get. So we’re all on the 401. Every lane is full and creeping along at about 20 km/hr. Sure enough, there’s that one guy in the “fast lane” (which isn’t any faster right now because it’s a TRAFFIC JAM) who keeps zooming up right to your bumper, flashing his lights, and generally being an a-hole. Here’s the question—where the hell do you think I can go to make way for you? I can’t change lanes, and I can’t get the 50 million cars ahead of me to move for me either, so back off. Here’s the best way to function in heavy traffic. 1) Realize that the world will not turn any faster no matter how much you will it to. 2) Put on some great music and dance in your seat. It works for me.

I experience make-up awkwardness that is eerily like the novel Life of Pi

The other day, I was talking about the novel Life of Pi with someone, and the scene where the main character, who has joined three different religions, accidentally bumps into his priest, imam, and Buddhist pandit at the same time. None of them know that he’s a member of the other’s faith, and they all start arguing over him. Well, the exact same thing happened to me not too long ago with my 3 Lancome and Estee Lauder ladies. OK, it doesn’t exactly have the spiritual impact and importance of Pi’s experience, but it was still a humbling experience. I’ve been buying make-up from Wilma, Betty, and Veronica (no, those are not actually their real names, but wouldn’t it be awesome if they were?), for many years individually, with none of them aware of the other’s existence. I used to alternate between The Bay/Wilma and Sears/Betty, buying something from each one. Why would I do that? Because Sears and The Bay also alternate the times that they give away free gifts with the purchase of a product, and I love free stuff. Then Betty got moved to the Estee Lauder counter at Sears and Veronica took over, which made me then obligated to start buying things from Estee Lauder as well as Lancome to keep those free gifts coming. The other day I was in Sears, about to sneak past Betty to get to Veronica, when suddenly I saw Wilma standing by the Lancome counter and she saw me! What the hell was she doing in Sears?! Then the worst thing happened—Betty and Veronica both saw me at the same time and they all converged on me, each one giving the other confused looks as it became apparent that they were all headed for the same target. Clearly, they each believed that I was their exclusive client—how was I going to explain this? So I did what Pi did in the novel. I whispered “Lord, avert their eyes from me”, and then blurted out, “I just want to love make-up!” Then it was all smiles, as they immediately understood why I had been a make-up tramp. Turns out that Wilma and Betty had done their Lancome training together, and Veronica was friends with both of them. They all agreed that as long as I spread the wealth and was fair in my purchases, none of them had an issue with me buying from all of them. Make-up is so much easier than religion.

Wednesday: I make a list of things that I’ve ingested that made me feel like I was dying

I can often succumb to peer pressure, when it’s about something that’s supposed to be good for my health. For example, I haven’t eaten gluten (well, except for the occasional juicy, wheat-y pizza) for almost two years because someone told me it was better for my joints. It was hard at first—gluten-free baked goods, especially tortilla wraps, can taste a lot like cardboard. Also, everything is made of rice. To be honest, I do feel better for it, and I’ve found alternatives that are almost as good as the real thing. But the other day at work, a colleague was extolling the virtues of Oil of Oregano as a cure-all and preventive for almost everything known to humankind. It can cure the common cold, prevent Montezuma’s Revenge, and apparently turn water into wine. A bunch of us decided that, with super-busy days coming up, and it still being flu season and all, we would troop down to the health food store en masse to buy some of this miraculous elixir. Little did I know what I was in for. I like oregano—I grow it in my garden, and I sprinkle it on pizzas, and use it to season pork tenderloin, among other things. How bad could an oil made from oregano be? The man at the health food store said it was a distilled oil and could be “pretty strong”. Well, I have a hardy constitution—I’ve eaten haggis– so what the hell? The directions said to put one drop under the tongue. I did that. My immediate reaction was, “This isn’t so bad. I—OMFG!!” Then I thought I was GOING TO DIE. My tongue went numb for about 20 seconds, but then the sensation came back, and that was worse, because all I wanted to do at that point was jump up and down yelling, “Ugh! Oh God! Blech!!” Perhaps Oil of Oregano was meant to build one’s character as well as one’s immune system, you know, under that old adage “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? I had always previous thought of that as a metaphor for dealing with nasty people, but if Oil of Oregano was a person, then it would be SATAN. Then it occurred to me that I had been here before, doing that same “Kill Me Now!” dance. So I decided to make a list of the top food type things that I had ever ingested that made me also feel like dying.

1) Gorgonzola cheese. Once, Ken and I were overseas, and the person we were staying with, a wonderful host and one of my favourite people, made us dinner. It was gnocchi tossed in melted gorgonzola cheese. I love gnocchi and the whole thing looked fantastic. Then I took a bite. Some people claim that they quite like gorgonzola—I call these people LIARS. Gorgonzola cheese tastes like mold growing on sweaty socks—the black mold that medical dramas always tell you will kill you. I didn’t know what to do because I didn’t want to be offensive, so I choked down as much as I could stomach, then claimed that jet lag had made me too tired to eat. Jet lag is a good excuse for just about anything, especially avoiding food you don’t want to eat. The other really good excuse for that is “I just had those dilating drops put in my eyes at the optometrist and I can’t see what’s on my plate.” I pulled that one out as a kid to avoid eating veal—don’t tell my mom.

2) Barium. Remember, this is about things I’ve “ingested”, not things I’ve eaten. No one in their right mind would ever willingly want to EAT barium (OK, you could say the same about gorgonzola cheese) but still, barium is like a medical thing not an actual food substance. If you ever have stomach problems, you might have to go for a procedure called a barium swallow. Notice that it’s not called “Olive Garden’s Lunch Special” because the expectation is that you will NOT enjoy it—and no one is going to treat you like family while this procedure is happening. Barium is a mineral or something, and according to Wikipedia, “has a low toxicity”, which means it has more than zero toxicity, so only SLIGHTLY poisonous. But still, if you’ve ever had a barium swallow, it feels like you’re being poisoned. I had to have this procedure done once. The nurse handed me a gigantic glass of what looked like pink chalk pureed with a little water. I looked at it dubiously, and she said, “You have to drink the whole thing. Don’t worry—it’s Strawberry Flavour.” Strawberry Flavour, my ass. Next time, flavour it with a little Drambuie—it’ll still be death in a cup, but I’ll feel better about it. After I had choked and gagged the whole thing down, and my eyes were tearing from the effort, it suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea how my body was going to get the stuff back out, and I had this horrible feeling that I would never be able to pee again—that it would sit in my bladder for decades, laughing at me.

3) Deep-fried squid. Deep-fried squid actually tastes really good. I had it once at a restaurant where we were having a “sampling” menu. I love sampling menus, because you can try something, and if you hate it, you don’t have to eat any more of it. So I tried the deep-fried squid, (one little piece because it was a French restaurant where I guess they expect you to smoke so much that you aren’t hungry enough for full portions), which came with spicy peanut sauce. It was delicious. It was also, as I found out later, a member of the mollusc family, and I’m allergic to shellfish. After about 20 minutes, my lips started to swell, and on the ride home, I was feeling dizzy and out of breath. By the next morning, I was extremely ill and the inside of my mouth felt like someone had taken a flamethrower to it. I had no idea what was going on, but Ken did some research, and we discovered that there was a good reason why I felt like I was dying–because I just might have, haha. Thank God for tasting menus with very small portions.

4) Eggs that are not scrambled. Eggs are interesting. Essentially, they’re wannabe chickens. I can never understand how people who say they’re vegetarian can eat eggs, but a lot do on the premise that “they were never fertilized”. But aren’t they still animal protein? Anyway, I love scrambled eggs and omelets, anything where the white of the egg and the yellow part are mixed together so you can’t taste either of them separately. Together, they are a heavenly component of the “All Day Breakfast”, one of my favourite meals. Separately, they are like death on a plate. The white part tastes like the sulphurous fires of hell (in other words, like eating a fart), and the yellow part is—well, I don’t know because I’ve never tried the yellow part because its simple appearance is enough to put me off. That liquid-y, slimy thing that some people love to “dip their toast in”. Why the HELL would you dip your toast in a liquid baby chicken? So gross.

5) Extremely sour candies. Isn’t that an oxymoron? What is it with people and extremely sour things? The other day, I was in a store and on the candy display were bags of “Extreme Sour Gummi Bears”. The “i” in gummi was in the shape of a lightning bolt, and the slogan was “Try to eat more than one”. The gummi bears on the bag had FANGS. Where is the pleasure here? Candy is supposed to be a treat, a reward for doing something good, like using the potty. Can you imagine how long kids would be in diapers for if you gave them rewards that made them scream in agony? Depends-Nation. Candy is not supposed to be scary. A couple of months ago, some of my students brought in ‘extreme sour candy’ and challenged me to try one. They were all grimacing and “yuck”ing, but I have more mature taste buds, so I accepted the challenge. Let me tell you, there is no taste in nature like an extreme sour watermelon candy. Within 10 seconds, my extremities went numb and I could no longer feel my face, either inside or out. Very casually though, I plucked it out of my mouth and gently put it in the garbage can. Never let them see you sweat. Or swear.

A Series of Misadventures

This past week has been fraught with incident. Nothing serious, of course, but some bizarre, and at times, embarrassing moments that continue to support my ongoing thesis that life is absurd, and that often, there is no rhyme nor reason to it. Some days, it’s Dr. Suess; other days it’s Kafka.

Saturday: I try to have lunch with a good friend.

I say “try’ because this was the first in the series of meanderings that have plagued my week. My friend and I decided on Del Dente’s in Kitchener. She had looked up the schedule and saw that the place was open at 11. When we got there, the parking lot was surprisingly empty, but I just thought it was our lucky day. We went in, and immediately the girl behind the reception counter said, “Sorry, we’re not open”. Turns out they don’t open until 3 in the afternoon on a Saturday, but don’t feel the need to put that on their website. I guess the restaurant industry must be booming if places can afford to miss the lunch crowd. I was feeling a little snarky, so I said, “If you’re closed, then why is your door open?! It’s counter-intuitive.” She explained that it was so people could come in and buy gift cards. Seriously? You won’t serve people food, but you will sell them cards so they can BUY FOOD LATER? Anyway, we decided to go down the road to Ennio’s. IT didn’t open until noon. The weather was horrible and we were starving, so as a last resort, we went to a burger place in the next plaza, and cheered when we walked in to warmth and the possibility of food. The waiter was a younger man, who was awfully pleased to see us, and treated us like long-lost friends, right down to telling us about how his “brown” roommate cooks for him all the time, so he’s used to spicy food. OK, is it just me, or does it seem a little weird that someone would refer to their “brown roommate” in this context, especially when it had to do with the taste of the food. Do waiters of colour tell customers that their “beige” roommate does all the cooking so they’re used to bland food? Plus, there are a lot of derivations that constitute being brown, and the spices which accompany them are vastly different, so I’ve decided that he was trying to be hip more than helpful. When the food came, the waiter announced grandiosely that I was getting 22 ounces of poutine. Isn’t that like 5 pounds or something? Who the hell can eat 5 pounds of poutine in one sitting? Well, not me, that’s for sure. I finished approximately 1 ounce and had to take the rest home. Ultimately though, it was the fine company that made the difference–it was lovely seeing my friend, and by the time we actually found food, we were both ready to eat.

Sunday: I waste the afternoon looking for boots

On Sunday morning, I had a horrible epiphany. I was supposed to be going on a field visit with the CEO of my new company, and I had left all my dress boots at home. While this might seem like an extremely first-world problem, and it is, I’m still a new employee and this would be my first time meeting the boss. What if he was like some fashionista who would be looking at my outfit with a critical eye and wondering why I was wearing Doc Martens? So I decided to nip over to the mall and grab some boots. Which would have been an easy task if a) my feet were a size five or b) I was willing to pay over $300. I went to every shoe store in the region, and could not find a single pair of black dress boots in my size or price range. It’s f*cking February, and all the stores are full of sandals. It makes perfect sense of course, because this is CANADA. Why WOULDN’T we want to wear sandals in February? What was I thinking, looking for boots when the temperature is a balmy -25 degrees, and the snow banks are up to my ass? After 2 and a half hours of wandering around, I gave up. I had pretty much wasted the whole afternoon on this fruitless mission. Then I got home, and discovered a perfectly good pair of black dress boots in the back of the closet. I would have cried a little bit, but I was too exhausted. Also, it turns out that my boss is the nicest man imaginable, and probably couldn’t have cared less about my footwear.

Monday: I get stared out and it freaks me out

Before I was ready to go back to Toronto on Monday, after my field visit, I had to gas up. The Diva on the corner (that’s the name of the gas station, not the guy who owns it) was superbusy, which means there was one car on each side of the pump. I sat and waited patiently, and just as the person ahead of me was leaving, a car pulled up, cut in ahead of me and stole my pump! I couldn’t believe it. I honked my horn, but the woman ignored me and kept being an asshole. So I decided to go down the street to the new Esso, where they have lots of pumps. They also have people who sit in the window and stare at you while you’re doing it. I got out of my car and put my debit card in the pump, then I realized that there were a couple of elderly people, and the owner of the gas station, all staring at me. I decided I was being paranoid, so I went back to what I was doing. When I looked up again, they were still staring at me. They weren’t even blinking. I started pumping the gas, and they were not only staring at me, but now they were talking at the same time. I got a little freaked so I waved my free hand and mouthed, “What?!” Then the owner came and opened the door.

Me: Is there a problem?
Owner: No….
Me: Then why are you all staring at me?!
Owner: Oh, sorry…

I’m never going back there again. Unless the Diva’s busy.

Tuesday: I smell toilet water. And not the good kind

On Tuesday morning, the bathroom in my condo started to smell a little strange. Yes, I know that bathrooms can do that, but this wasn’t a typical bathroom-type odour. It was more like the smell of a restaurant the sells food that doesn’t smell very good and that you don’t want to eat. I started sniffing everything up close—the new towel I’d just bought, the shower curtain, the hair dryer, the waste paper basket–until the only thing left was—you guessed it—the toilet. Well, I’m no stranger to putting my hand in a toilet, but my nose is another thing. When I finally got up the courage to stick my head in the toilet, I discovered that, sure enough, it was the toilet water. It was fresh and clean-looking, but it smelled rank. I flushed it, and the new water smelled exactly the same. Then it occurred to me that the same water was probably coming out of my tap, and that I had been making tea with it. From now on, I’m buying water. I totally understand the whole ‘landfill’ issue, but if you can’t count on your tap water’s germ-freeness, then blame the city of Toronto and not me.

Wednesday: I am so embarrassed

On Tuesday, I went for lunch with a colleague and another co-worker that I didn’t know very well. We went to a great little Korean place, and I couldn’t finish my lunch, so I took the rest back to the office in a Styrofoam container wrapped in a plastic bag. I put it in the company refrigerator, then forgot to take it home, which was OK, because then I could have it for lunch on Wednesday. So I got it out of the fridge at lunchtime, heated it up, and started eating it. It looked a little different than it had the day before, but I put that down to the kimchee sauce making the rice go a little orange-y. I was halfway done when suddenly I saw a piece of broccoli. There was no broccoli in my bulgogi. Also, apparently what I thought were crunchy pieces of cabbage were actually pieces of carrot. My blood went cold. I was eating SOMEONE ELSE’S LUNCH. And it belonged to the coworker I had just met the day before. I don’t think I’ve ever been so embarrassed as I was when I had to tell her. She was extremely nice about it, and said that she would eat my leftovers instead of her own, but I can only imagine what she was thinking. Actually I can’t imagine it, because she’s Romanian and speaks French, and I don’t know what “big loser who steals other people’s lunches” is in either language. Then I went back to my desk, pulled out my office chair, and the handle came off in my hand. I was done at that point, and just stood there in defeat, with someone else’s lunch in one hand and a chair arm in the other.

Thursday: People in Toronto are even weirder than I thought

On Thursday, I went to the grocery store across the street after work. In the space of time it took to leave the grocery store and get back to my building, these things had happened: An elderly Asian man with a long pony tail barked at me on the escalator. And he sounded exactly like a dog, which was impressive and frightening all at the same time. A man riding a racing bike, wearing full racing gear—shorts, t-shirt, and helmet in the minus 25 degree weather, rode past me yelling F- you, you bunch of a- holes at the traffic around him. Then just outside my building, another elderly man wearing a balaclava asked me several questions in a foreign language. I finally got to the safety of my condo, and I wasn’t inside for more than 5 minutes when suddenly my door began to jiggle like someone was trying to break in. I froze in a panic because I realized I didn’t have a baseball bat OR Ken to protect me. Finally, an envelope was creepily pushed through the crack in the side of my door—a piece of mail belonging to the previous tenant. I spent the rest of the night checking the deadbolt and looking under the bed, just in case.

Friday: I break the office hole punch

I put too many pieces of paper in it, and they all got stuck. I had to ask for help to dismantle it and get the papers out. Enough said. The embarrassment continues.

Saturday: Finally things go back to normal.

I got home in good time on Friday night and decided to take a chance on shopping for some mittens on Saturday. Not only did I find the ones I wanted, but they were the last pair and were on super-sale. Then I saw my favourite Lancome Lady, Olga, and she gave me an extra gift with the cream I bought. Maybe all is right with the world again.

Wednesday: I think of new worst case scenarios

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I always plan for worst case scenarios. In fact, if you’ll remember, in an earlier blog I talked about buying K a book called The Little Book of Worst Case Scenarios so that even she, as a young child, could start to plan for disasters. After years of careful consideration and planning, I felt ready for almost anything, even escaping from a burning bus. For example, I have a hammer in the cupboard in my bathroom, which prompted Ken to ask, “Why do you have a hammer in the bathroom?” Answer: in case there’s a fire and I have to smash the bathroom window, crawl out onto the porch roof and smash K’s window from the outside to help him escape (don’t worry about Ken—in this scenario, he’s helping rescue the dog and cat, and will make it out safely with them. And maybe even the fish, if he has time). Here’s another example–there’s a wheelbarrow over the pond so that Titus doesn’t fall through the snow into the frigid water. This happened to our previous dog, prompting a very heated argument which had followed this earlier argument:

Ken: I’m going to dig a 3-foot deep pond.
Me: Don’t be ridiculous. Someone will fall in and drown.
Ken: No one is going to fall in. You’re worrying for no reason. It needs to be deep so the fish can survive the winter.
Me: I’m serious. Please, I’m begging you, don’t make it so deep.
Ken: I’m totally disregarding your emotions and I’m going to do what I want. Screw you. (OK, he didn’t actually say any of THAT, but by continuing to dig a 3 foot deep pond despite my objections, it seemed like that was what he was telling me).

6 months later, we let the dogs out into the back yard. The pond was covered by a healthy layer of snow, and about ten minutes later, we realized that we couldn’t see one of the dogs, the really old one with bad arthritis. Yes, she had fallen into the pond, and it was too deep for her to climb out. Ken rushed outside and rescued her, prompting this heated argument, which I will sum up in one sentence:

Me: OMFG!! I TOLD you this would happen!! And the fish are all DEAD!!

Hence the wheel barrow which straddles the pond all winter.

So you see, I have everything carefully planned. Until now. Just when I thought I finally had it all figured out, I started living in a high rise building on the 27th floor during the week, which has led to a whole new set of worst case scenarios. For example, I now have a balcony. Everyone was like, Awesome, you have a balcony—I’ll bet you can’t wait until it’s nice enough to sit out there. Are you f-ing kidding me? Do you think there’s ANY way I will EVER sit out on a precipice that is over 300 feet from the ground? And here’s why. It occurred to me that the balcony figures prominently in several worst case scenarios, which I am slowly working my way through. Here’s the one I solved on Wednesday night, as I lay awake listening to the baby next door screaming like it was being throttled (it wasn’t, of course; when I politely inquired after its health in the morning, the mother told me they were “sleep training” him, and he was very unhappy about it. Oh yeah? I’ll bet he wasn’t as unhappy as me.) Anyway, I suddenly had this horrible thought that, say, I did take someone’s advice and try to grow pots of basil on the balcony. I go out there to water my plants, and somehow the door closes and locks behind me. I don’t know how that would actually happen, but say that it did. What now? I’m stuck on a 27th floor balcony, wearing only pajamas (because that’s what I was wearing when I started trying to solve this problem).

Option A: Scream for help. No, because I’m 27 floors up. No one on the ground can hear me, and the neighbours’ eardrums have been damaged by their ‘unhappy’ child.

Option B: Take off an article of clothing to wave around and attract attention. Well, I’m only wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt—which one do I use? I guess I have to decide HOW MUCH attention I actually want. But who will see me that high up anyway?

Option C: Start tossing the basil pots down to the ground until someone looks up and sees me (either topless or pantless) and calls the cops. This solution is unlikely because my experience with Torontonians so far is that most of them are completely self-absorbed and oblivious to the world around them (we’ll get to that later).

No, the only sure thing is Option D: Keep an extra hammer out on the balcony. Then I can smash the glass in the patio door and get back into my condo. The hammer people must love me. Not only do I have several scattered around my house, now I’ll have to buy some for Toronto as well. I should probably put one in my desk drawer at work too, just in case. Next up, how do I survive having a giant crane smash into my building? I saw this on an episode of ‘House’—it COULD happen in real life, and it’s always better to have a plan, am I right? *

Thursday: I buy a chair, Toronto style

On Wednesday, I decided that I needed a comfy chair for my condo. I have a loveseat and two kitchen chairs, but people come over and they need somewhere soft to sit too (which is not to say I’m a bad hostess and hog the loveseat—I always say, “There’s room on here for two”, but most people want their own space). I went to Marshall’s and saw something that was decent, but I didn’t know how to get it back to my condo. I decided on Thursday though, to go back and find out what their delivery policy was. It was a brutally cold day, so I went through the labyrinth of indoor and underground malls that can take you from where I live almost to the Eaton Centre. There just happened to be a Brick in the first building, and I thought, what the heck, let’s see what they have. Well, weren’t they having a fantastic sale?! I found a chair that I really liked and the best part was that it was a clearance floor model—half the price of the one at Marshall’s. So I said to the sales guy, an East Indian man in his late 50s, “I really like this chair, but I don’t know how to get it back to my condo.” He asked me where I lived, and when I told him, “About 300 feet down the street and around the corner”, he said, “No problem—I can call you a taxi van.” I was like What? But he assured me that this was all perfectly acceptable. He called a cab company, told them we needed a van to move some ‘cargo’ and they said they’d be there in 15 minutes, but that it would be a $10 charge. I was like “Hells, yeah.” So in about ten minutes, his phone rings—it’s the cab driver calling to say that the side of the street in front of the Brick in closed for repairs so he’ll have to park on the other side of the street. The sales guy says sure, then looks at me and says, and I kid you not, “We have to take the chair across the street. It’s not heavy but it’s a bit awkward so I need you to help me carry it.” So we get it down a flight of stairs, out the door, and the next thing I know, I am racing across 4 lanes of traffic, me and the sales guy holding this chair aloft to keep it out of the slush. When I realize that I’m less than 200 feet from the back door of my building, he says, “Too bad we called the taxi—we could have just carried it there ourselves.” But then the taxi came, and he and the driver loaded it in. We shook hands, and he thanked me for my business. I love this guy and would totally buy more furniture from him. But then I got to my building, and I realized that not everyone is as nice as the sales guy from the Brick. The taxi driver helped me get it through the door into the lobby, where I said to the concierge, “Is it OK if I take this into the elevator without having it booked first? He said no problem, then went back to his newspaper. So there I was, in my lobby, by myself, with a big-ass chair. I looked around—there were two people sitting in the lobby chairs waiting for rides. No one looked up. I started to drag the chair across the lobby. No one looked up. The concierge kept reading his newspaper. I opened the security door and tried to hold it open while I struggled to get the chair through. No one looked up, not even the woman sitting right next to the door who I ‘accidentally’ whacked with my purse. I finally got the chair through the door and dragged it onto the elevator. When I got up to my floor, thank god there was carpeting so it was easier to drag it down the hall. I put it in place, stood back and admired it, and the fact that I had gotten it up there all by myself. And if my building ever WAS hit by a giant crane, I would make sure that the chair escaped with me. We’ve been through too much together for me to leave it behind.

*Congratulations to my cousin, who just had a baby. And after talking to my aunt a few minutes ago, I think I need a plan in case someone has a baby in my car, because that almost happened to them on Thursday—they got to the hospital with 22 minutes to spare. I’m thinking blankets, a blow-up mattress, a container of wet wipes—yeah, I better do some research.

Thursday : I find ways to amuse myself when I’m stuck in traffic.

Now that I live in Toronto during the week, I have the best commute of my life. I go down one elevator, cross a street, and go up another elevator. It’s 2 minutes, if the walk light is green. I don’t have to get up at 6’oclock anymore, and even though it’s absolutely frigid outside (Toronto keeps having “extreme cold weather warnings”), I’m never outside long enough to care. I worry about the homeless though, which a lot of Torontonians don’t seem to understand. I told someone the other day that there are no homeless people in the town where I live and she was shocked. Well, there are only 500 people in town and they all know each other—if anyone didn’t have a home, someone else would take them in, or they could stay at the pub. Or my house, but the food’s better at the pub.

Anyway, my commute during the week is amazing, but I come home on weekends. I’ve only been there for two weeks so far, and both my commutes home have been a nightmare. Last weekend, it was three hours, for no apparent reason. There was a LOT of traffic, and when I got to a certain spot on the highway, two cars and a tow truck were at the side of the road. After everyone had a good look, it was smooth sailing, but it still took an hour and a half longer than it should. Then, last night, I headed for home around 4:10. Things were congested and slow, but once I left the Toronto area and hit the 401, I was flying. Until I got another 40 kilometers down the road, at which point everything got slow again, Like 20 km/hour. Then, as I got close to Guelph, I thought I should turn on the news, and I caught the tail end of the traffic reporter say, “If you can, get off at Guelph Line NOW before you hit the shut-down.” Which would have been fantastic, but I’d JUST PASSED Guelph Line and the traffic stopped dead. Do you know why? Because there was a bus on fire on the side of the road. I called Ken:

Me: I’m going to be really late.
Ken: Why, what’s going on?
Me: There’s a bus on fire and the 401 is closed.
Ken: What?
Me: A BUS. A F*CKING BUS ON FIRE. I’m not joking. The universe hates me.

We agreed that I would call once the traffic started moving again. After ten minutes of sitting in a three lane parking lot, I put the Sonic in “park”, and began to amuse myself. So here, for your reading pleasure, are the top 5 ways I am able to entertain myself when I’m stuck on a highway and can’t get home to my family.

1) I contemplated the exact procedure for evacuating a burning bus. Now, I haven’t taken a bus in probably 20 years, but it can’t be that different. So I thought, if I’m on a bus that’s on fire, what should I do? My first thought was, obviously, get off the f*cking bus. I would climb over anyone, I mean ANYONE, to get off a burning bus. But wait—how did the bus set on fire in the first place? Was it that guy at the back with the creepy smile and minimal luggage, smoking on the bus? What an a-hole! Or did the under-qualified mechanic at the bus place (Ken says it’s called a “depot”, but whatever) put in the wrong spark plug because his student loan had run out and he had to go to cheap-ass bus school instead of college? Is that why I’m on a burning bus?! Was it like “Speed” with Keanu Reeves, where an insane bomber hijacks a bus and all the passengers sneak out before it goes below 55 miles an hour (or in Canada, a gazillion kilometres an hour (I’m not sure of the exchange rate on that)?) My best idea was to always wear steel-toed shoes on any bus, and then kick out the window for an easy exit. I’m going to buy some today, just in case—you know me and worst-case scenarios. But it will probably be a useless purchase, because after reading this over, I have definitively decided to NEVER travel by bus.

2) I told myself stories. I have a lot of stories in my head, so here is one that I was thinking about whilst stuck in traffic. It’s about the time I was a DJ at this sh-thole in Waterloo called “Shooters”. One night, the manager, who was fairly Neanderthalic, decided to have a “wet T-shirt contest”. I was supposed to play “sexy music” for said event. Eventually, however, the girls became very drunk and very desperate for the prize money, which was $100, and began taking their shirts OFF. At this point, it occurred to me that not only was I participating in something that was probably illegal, but obviously immoral, and these poor girls were being egged on by the crowd to do something they would regret. So I stopped the music and told the skeezy manager that if he wanted me to start playing again, he needed to end the contest. Boy, was he pissed. The girls, on the other hand, seemed kind of relieved, and the crowd was too drunk to notice that the music had stopped anyway. But that was the end of my career as a DJ at Shooters, which closed down not long after. I worked for a DJ service called Doctor Music. My boss was a really nice man who paid me cash under the table and, as it turned out, was a cross-dresser. I have no problem with that, but he was 6 foot 5 inches tall and about 300 pounds, so I often wondered what he wore aside from muumuus. He met a tragic end, but this is a humourous blog, so there’s no place for that here. I have many stories about that job, but the best thing is that I used to put on an “extended version” of whatever song I could, so that I could go to the bathroom. It’s amazing what 8 minutes of Milli Vanilli will allow you to do.

3) I made up 5 new sweary insults.

4) I used them all in a grumbly voice, directing them at the cars around me, the stupid bus, and the universal misfortune of having driven by the only exit that could have helped me escape from this highway of hell. Three of them involved variations on the word “anus”, which, if you’ve read my earlier blogs, is a favourite term, thanks to Sherlock Holmes. My favourite right now is “ani-faced dilettante”. (Wow, spellcheck didn’t even FLINCH at that one).

5) After almost an hour, I was faced with a choice. I could swear at the universe (with my new favourite curse words, of course), or I could literally face the music. So that’s what I did. I put on Bohemian Rhapsody, turned it up to 11, opened the windows, and rocked out a la Wayne’s World. When that was finished, I created a playlist for the situation—kind of an “I can’t move and I hate the highway. And fiery buses”– and spent the next half hour dancing in my seat and singing along at the top of my lungs to a variety of kick-ass songs. The guy in the car next to me thought it was very amusing. I hoped it helped him pass the time because it helped me immeasurably.

When I finally got home, I collapsed into Ken and K’s arms. Then we sat down to dinner, and I had recovered sufficiently to make fun of the Shake and Bake Chicken he’d attempted. Seriously dude—it’s Shake and Bake. How can you mess that up? He claimed the coating wouldn’t stick to the chicken. Whatever. It tasted fine, and it was 100 kilometres better than sitting on the 401.

Wednesday: I hate revolving doors.

There’s only one thing that disrupts my awesome commute during the week–my building, and the one I work in, both have revolving doors. What the hell is with Revolving Doors? Who invented these insane death traps? Yes, yes there are regular doors next to the revolving ones, but they all have signs begging people to conserve heat and NOT use them (apparently, that doesn’t apply to the people who stand inside my office building waiting for the bus who sneak in when the concierge isn’t there, which is a lot of the time). So, I’m torn between my need to obey authority, and my sense of self-preservation. Because people in Toronto have no sense of etiquette when it comes to many things, but especially revolving doors. You can be in one, going through at a manageable pace, when some a-hole comes in behind you and pushes the door with all his might, forcing you to stumble out the other side. Why is my access to any building contingent upon someone else’s consideration for my personal well-being??!! And In order to even get IN a revolving door, I have to bide my time, like I’m waiting to jump into a double-dutch skipping rope. Or off a diving board. Revolving doors suck. That’s all I have to say about it.

Tuesday: I pledge my allegiance to the Queen

So, as you know, I took a new job in the big city, working for a government agency. On Tuesday, I started the job, but had to meet first with my Human Resources contact to fill in a lot of paperwork. We were filling in the usual forms—contact information, computer log-ins, keys, and other stuff, when she said, “Oh—because we’re a government agency, and you’re technically a public servant, you have to take an oath of allegiance. She said this kind of matter-of-factly, like I took oaths every day. (This is the beginning of me going off on a very long tangent, so sit back and enjoy, y’all.) Actually, I DID just take an oath recently, because in December, I fought a traffic ticket. I got nailed by a red light camera going through an intersection on the red light. BUT, to be fair, I was only going 40 km/hour, and didn’t think it was right that I had to pay almost $400 for NOT running a red light—I just didn’t see it, which I know is a lousy excuse, but I felt like someone needed to know that I am NOT a red-light runner. So I went to traffic court, where they give you the option of swearing to tell the truth with either your hand on a bible, or just saying it VERY SINCERELY without the bible. I opted for the latter, since I don’t think that anyone’s god particularly cares whether or not I lie in traffic court. Plus, they had a picture of my SUV and my licence plate actually IN the intersection where the light is clearly red, so there would be no point in lying anyway, since I was caught dead to rights. What could I possibly say? “Your Honour, this picture is obviously photoshopped. Your James Bond-ish hightech team is super-clever, but that’s not my truck.”? Long story short, they cut my fine in half, and I was indeed very sincere. It turns out I didn’t even need to be apologetic, because before I got to say anything, the court officer immediately announced, “We’re reducing your fine to $150.” I feel like he kind of stole my thunder, but then I was like “Cool. Thanks.”

Anyway, so there I was, wondering what kind of oath she was talking about. Was it an oath where I promised not to look at porn or run an online dating service on my work computer? Because I have no problem with that kind of oath, since I have no interest in doing either, and can’t imagine the kind of person who WOULD think this is OK to do at work. But wait—it was NOT that kind of oath. It was a pledge of allegiance to the Queen. Not a cool queen, like Guinevere or Latifah, or even the band Queen (by the way, I just googled Disney Queens and one of the search hits was “Why Drag Queens are better role models than Disney Queens”. I am DEFINITELY going back to read that one later.) No, it was THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. Actually, I had a choice—I could either pledge my allegiance to the Queen and all her heirs in the eyes of god, or I could just pledge my allegiance to old Lizzy herself. So I chose the latter, again on the premise that I don’t believe that anyone’s god particularly cares about my relationship with an aging monarch. But the pledge was very vague, and I don’t know what the ramifications of all this are. What exactly are my responsibilities? Do I fly to England if she commands my presence as one of her loyal subjects? Will she pay for the flight, or is that just one of the expenses that go along with being one of her servants? If she gets in a Facebook fight with the Queen of Jordan, do I have to post nice things about her in her defence? Or worse, post mean things about the Queen of Jordan (who seems like a kind of cool queen herself)? Babysit the grandkids? Walk the Corgis? So I guess the next time she`s having trouble picking out a hat for the Queen`s Ball or whatever, I might have to be there to help out. I mean, I took an OATH.

Wednesday: I get TV, in a very weird way.

Having moved to an apartment in Toronto, where I have to live during the week for work, I’ve had to do a variety of things I’ve never done before, or at least haven’t done for about 20 years. One of those things is getting internet and cable. In my building, there was a sign for a company that installs both, so I called the number. The guy who answered seemed really nice, and said that yes, he could come by on Monday night between 6 and 9 pm to put in the internet. That seemed kind of late, but he had business cards, so I figured he must be legit. Sure enough, on Monday night, he texted me to say that he would be over after 8:30. And he was. And he and his friend installed my internet. They were both REALLY young. Like “just out of high school” young. He was having trouble with the installation, because his pants, which were cinched around his upper thighs with a belt, kept sliding down when he bent over. He seemed used to it though (it’s a fashion statement I’ve NEVER understood) and just kept hiking them up nonchalantly. At any rate, they were done pretty quickly and I finally had the internet. I decided then to order a TV box thing that would give me access to most stations, and the guy said sure, that he would order it, and it would be couriered to my building. Then they packed up. I said, “Don’t I have to pay you or something?”, but they said no, I would get a bill eventually.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, he texted me to say that he had the TV box, and he could bring it to my apartment that evening. I said Fine, and I waited. And waited. About 8:45 pm, he texted me this: “Heading over as soon as the raptors are done”. Then a few minutes later, “Brutal performance by the raps, there in 20”. About half an hour later, he showed up with the TV box, still fuming about the Raptors losing their basketball game, but very nice and professional despite the fact that he was still wearing his low-rider pants. He installed the box in no time, and was gone. Again, I didn’t have to pay anything. The next day, I was telling a colleague at work who’s been living in Toronto for a while about the whole experience and how unusually laid back it seemed to me things were in Toronto compared to where I live. “There’s no way a service guy would ever come after 6 o’clock where I’m from, or text me to tell me about the Raptors. Boy, people do things differently in Toronto.” She responded by giving me a weird look: “Do you really think that a service installer TEXTING you about a basketball team and then coming to your apartment after 9:30 at night is normal? That’s not normal ANYWHERE, even in Toronto. Are you sure it’s a legitimate company?!” It left me feeling a little naïve, but I’ve been feeling like that a lot lately. All I know is that I have working internet and cable, and I haven’t had to pay for anything. Yet.

Thursday: I rent a condo in a high rise building

I live on the ground and park my car on the ground. That’s the way I like it. But as of tomorrow, I will be living in an alternate universe where I live in the sky and park in an underground cavern. Apparently, that’s what happens when you start a job very suddenly in a large metropolis, and your housing options are limited. Luckily, my brother has an “agent” (not the secret kind, unfortunately, because it would be great to see how long he could last with a gigantic wooden spike under his fingernail), who was willing to show me condos. Actually, it ended up being “condo” singular, because downtown properties get snatched up faster than Titus grabbing a dish out of the sink (which he will do the second you’re not looking, then carry it into the breakfast room in his mouth, and lick it clean). So the agent arranged a showing at the one condo left in all of Toronto, and we arrived there at noon. The actual listing showed this pristine, empty apartment, so none of us were prepared when we opened the door and the place was crammed from top to bottom with someone else’s crap. And I mean CRAP. My dad and brother had come with me because Ken had to work, and they were both like “Oh, look at all the light” and “It’s so roomy” (it’s 624 square feet and costs more than the mortgage for my house), at which point the door to the second bedroom opened and a half-dressed woman peeked out. We were all taken aback, and the agent said something like “We have an appointment—is it OK that we look around?” She kind of nodded, then disappeared back into the room and shut the door. You couldn’t really move around to see much—they were getting ready to move out, but it was like that show Hoarders—there were little pathways between all the stuff (use your imagination), and you couldn’t get to the periphery of anything, plus the half-naked lady was in the one bedroom and we had to ask her if we could look at it. She kind of stood to one side, and there was underwear everywhere, and I was having major doubts about the whole thing. Then my brother was like, “Look—what a great balcony—it runs from the living room all the way to the bedroom!”, and then I realized that we were on the 27TH FLOOR, and there was no way I was EVER going out onto that balcony. I don’t have a fear of heights; I just have an intense fear of falling FROM THEM. But it was the only place left in town, and it was right across the street from my office, which meant no commuting, especially if I launched myself off the balcony and parasailed down to the street (which would only happen if I was, in fact, a secret agent trying to elude enemy agents).

The next two days were absolute chaos as I tried to arrange insurance, hydro, first and last month’s rent and a whole lot of other things that I’ve NEVER done before. As is my usual way, I made a fool of myself on more than one occasion through my sheer naiveté:

a) When my insurance agent told me that my contents would be insured for $15 000, I exclaimed “but it’s only a 600 square foot apartment! How am I going to get $15 000 worth of stuff into it?!” to which he very calmly replied, “That’s just the minimum amount of coverage we give you—you don’t have to meet the limit.”

b) I had no idea what a certified cheque was, or how to get one, so I went to the bank, and found my financial advisor in her office. “Zeynep, I’m having a banking emergency!” I said. I must have looked pretty freaked out because right away she was like “Come in—what can I do?!” When I told her I needed a certified cheque, she just about laughed (but she restrained herself because she’s a really nice person), and she got the teller to give me one within the next 10 minutes—it would have been quicker, but I couldn’t remember who it had to be made out to, and it took me a while to find it on my phone. Why? Because it’s a phone, and the screen is so f*cking small, and my eyes are so f*cking bad that the first thing I had to do was find my reading glasses in my purse, which is hard when you can’t see anything up close to begin with, and you need your reading glasses to FIND your reading glasses.

c) Setting up the hydro was really easy, once the customer service rep. explained that there was already hydro in the building and I didn’t have to panic that it was getting close to 5 pm, because it wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to set up an account, and I didn’t have to get some guy to come on Sunday and put in a line or anything.

d) Did you know that in a high rise condo, you have to BOOK the elevator to move your stuff in? I finally got hold of the concierge, and we made an appointment, at which point he told me I would have to provide a $500 cheque for the elevator. I said, “It’s $500 to use the elevator?! No one told me that!” He very kindly explained that it was only a deposit. “So, like if I don’t break the elevator, I get my money back?” He replied, “Yes, that’s why we ask for a cheque—if there’s no damage, we just give it back to you.”

d) I have to meet the property manager at a coffeeshop at the corner of King and Spadina to get the keys. Doesn’t this sound really sketchy? But I need the keys. My biggest worry, actually, is where the hell am I going to park? It’s Toronto–are there parking lots?

So it looks like almost everything is in place. My only worry is, what if I get a really bad splinter and Ken’s 100 km. away? I guess I’ll just have to suffer until I get home—and I have the proof that I can withstand the pain.

Monday: My GPS makes me feel guilty.

Last year for Christmas, Ken bought me a GPS. I don’t mean this past Christmas, I mean Christmas two years ago, technically. I never installed it, because a) I have an innate sense of where I’m going b) I lie about my innate sense of where I’m going, so I use Mapquest a lot, and c) I hate winter, so it was always too cold to put it in my SUV, and I only ever thought about it during the winter. But a few weeks ago, Ken decided that I should have it in my new car, just in case I got a job in Toronto. That sounds like a weird long shot, but it turns out I DID get a job in Toronto, which just goes to show that Ken is prophetic AND practical. Anyway, he installed it, or at least tried to, in my new Chevy Sonic. But there were some significant issues with the Tom-Tom, which is a stupid name anyway, and always makes me think of Jacob Two Two, and his Hooded Fang, because the GPS is just like having a Hooded Fang in the car anyway. The first sign of trouble was when it kept coming un-suctioned from the suction cup attaching it to my console. I’d turn a corner and the whole thing would fly through the air at me like a pissy poltergeist was controlling it. Then we actually tried to use it, and the real problem made itself abundantly clear: its sole purpose was to make me feel sad and guilty, because the voice of my GPS was a very pleasant woman—well, pleasant at first, but don’t cross her, because she can be pretty tyrannical. Everything was going fine for the first little while, with her telling us to turn right, or that there was an intersection coming up, but then we made the fatal mistake of GOING A DIFFERENT WAY. Then she was all like, “Turn right here”, trying to redirect us back to the route SHE had picked, and she started to sound more and more sulky. Then things started to get really dramatic, and we somehow ended up in Ajax instead of Toronto. Well, not really, but according to her, that’s where we were supposed to go , and if we didn’t want her advice, well screw us, we could just rot in Ajax. For the record, I don’t even know where Ajax IS, but if it’s my punishment for defying the GPS, then I don’t WANT to know. Anyway, a couple of days later, I was driving with Kate, and we decided to try the GPS lady again, hoping she had forgiven me for my past cartographical transgressions. We were going into Kitchener, and wanted to practice programming it, and thought we had done everything right, when the whole monitor part went crazy and started flying around the car. The next thing we knew, she was trying to direct us to Stratford, and kept yelling at us about going up some Regional Road every time we came to an intersection. Let me just clarify here that I actually KNEW where I was going, since I drive the same way to work every day, but she was f*cking relentless about us taking a road that looked like it went through some kind of swampland. The more we ignored her, the more insistent she got, until finally, I just yanked the plug out of my cigarette lighter thing-y. Kate calls this “rage-quitting” and I think it’s an accurate description of the way you feel when you get sick of being manipulated by your passive-aggressive GPS. (Ken just told me that he was “fiddling around” with the GPS the other day, which sounds slightly infidelity-ish, and that you can program it to talk with a different voice. I said unless it sounded like Darth Vader, or Bane from Batman, or my mother, there was NO WAY I was taking directions from it. And if it DID sound like my mother, it would keep asking me why I wasn’t wearing a scarf because it’s cold out, you know. Now it’s in his truck. I hope she makes him happy.)