On Wednesday, I was driving on the highway for the very last day of off-site work. I had just gotten off the dreaded 401, and was on the delightfully empty 407 toll highway. Finally able to turn off the damn traffic report on the radio, I had my iPod playing ‘Sugar, How You Get So Fly?’ (the Robin Schulz version) and I was cruising at a nice 120 kph, merrily bobbing my head when suddenly, “BANG!!!” I jumped in my seat and looked around wildly, then I realized that my windshield now had a huge, radiating crack on the passenger side. My first thought was, ‘What the absolute f*ck?! I didn’t even see anything coming!’ and my second thought was, ‘This isn’t fair—I’m wearing my favourite underwear and that means it’s supposed to be a good day!’ I’m not going to describe the underwear to you since it’s kind of personal and some things should be kept to oneself, but suffice it to say that whenever I see it, all freshly laundered and ready to go, I smile and quietly say “Yes!”. It’s like the Wordsworth poem, “My heart leaps up when I behold/A rainbow in the sky”, but instead, substitute ‘my favourite underwear’ for ‘rainbow’ and ‘drawer’ for sky’. There is nothing wrong with waxing poetic about your special lady garments by the way, and I’m sure that men feel the same about ties or fancy socks or that special jockstrap or whatnot. But enough about my underwear, because I’m trying to be more discreet about personal things, like on Thursday when I was helping Ken take some donations to a local auction. Someone had donated an antique baby carriage, and one of the old guys there pointed at it and said to me, “Maybe you’ll need one of those soon.” I shook my head and said, “I doubt it” and he replied, “Oh ho, you never know!” And I so BADLY wanted to say, “Well, I don’t have a f*cking uterus, so I think I kind of do,” but instead I winked at him and said, “I guess you need to talk to Ken about that.” Discreet, right?

Anyway, maybe the whole windshield situation was my fault because not even 20 minutes prior, the sun had come up and was blazing into my eyes, causing me to curse the windshield which, despite a recent car detailing, was once again kind of cloudy. I believe my exact words were, “I hate this stupid windshield. Why is it always so dirty? Maybe I should get a new one.” And TA-DA. So I did what any normal person would do—I called Ken.

Ken: Hello?
Me: My windshield just broke!
Ken: What? Are you ok?
Me: Well, it’s just a crack. But it’s big.
Ken: Does it go all the way across?
Me: No. It’s just above the windshield wiper on the passenger side. It looks like half of a spider web. I’m afraid the windshield is going to implode while I’m driving!
Ken: I doubt it. You should be all right unless you go over a really deep pothole or something.
Me: This is Canada in the spring, Ken, so that’s not very comforting!

But I made it to work without any spontaneous shattering, and I called the car dealership. Luckily, I already had an appointment for Thursday to get an oil change and swap out my winter tires, and they said they could do the windshield too. So maybe it was good that I was wearing my favourite underwear after all.

Here’s a link to Sugar, How You Get So Fly. You’re welcome.

Last week, I was talking about tree rats and it occurred to me that I have a lot of strange nicknames for animals that you might see outside in your yard. Here are a few of the more notable:

Squirrel: Tree Rat
Raccoon: Trash Panda
Mouse: Dirt Gerbil
Rabbit: Hoppy F*cker
Canada Goose: Evil Lake Chicken

Swan: Long-Necked Psycho
Pigeon: Hobo Bird
All Other Birds: The Dawn Chorus (except for that one weird bird that I call the ‘Cool Whip Bird’)
Groundhog: Roadkill Hamster
Bat: Flappy Bastard
Skunk: Pepe Le Pew
Dog: Pupperz/Goodboi
Monkey Butler: Ralph Van Wooster (you might see a monkey butler in your yard–you never know)
Rat: I don’t have a name for rats because I’ve never seen one in real life and I doubt their existence. If I ever DID see one, I’d probably just give it a name like Bob. Maybe you’ve actually seen one and have a cool nickname for it–let me know.

So now, if you ever see me outside early in the morning yelling, “Get off my lawn, ya hoppy f*ckers!” you’ll know I’m cursing at the rabbits, not the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who, by the way, literally just appeared while I was writing this as they’ve done the last twice I’ve mentioned them in a post. How do they know? It’s as if I’m conjuring them or something, like in a horror movie but instead of saying “Bloody Mary” three times, you have to say “Business Biblical” and then their well-dressed asses come to steal your immortal soul. Or your favourite underwear.