Humour

My Week 243: An Evening of Fun and Debauchery

This week’s offering is inspired by Kim at I Tripped Over A Stone. Every week, she posts 3 Quick Questions for people to answer, and last week Question 3 was: “Have you ever been to a Tupperware party?” I responded that yes, I’d been to a Tupperware party, but that I’d also hosted a lingerie party. She wanted to know more, and I said that was a story for another time. Now is that time. It’s time to tell you about one of the most bizarre and embarrassing things that ever happened to me.

Years ago, Ken and I lived in a different small town in a neighbourhood full of young couples like ourselves (we were both 26 at the time). I’ve never been one to embrace the social scene, but the women in the neighbourhood were constantly hosting different sales-type parties: Tupperware, jewellery, candles, you name it, where I would be invited and then would feel obligated to buy a giant plastic tub, or a cheap bracelet. I didn’t mind the candles though—if you know anything about me, you know that I have a large collection of jar candles in case of the apocalypse. I should also mention that this small town was also heavily Modern Mennonite. Now, if you don’t know anything about Mennonites, let me explain. The hardcore Mennonites are like the Amish. They dress all in black from their heads to their toes, the men wear wide-brimmed hats and the women wear big bonnets. They refuse to use any modern technology or electricity and they drive buggies pulled by horses. They live in their own isolated communities and they are all farmers. Then there are the “conservative” Mennonites, who are almost hardcore, but can drive cars and use cellphones. Apparently, the car has to be black and any metal trim/adornments have to be pulled off, and the cellphone has to be with Rogers (sorry—that’s an in-joke because Bell is so much better). There’s also a group called the David Martin Mennonites, who are just like the regular ones except that the guys wear straw hats and suspenders and the girls wear handkerchiefs instead of bonnets. Mexican Mennonites are the most interesting group—they aren’t actually Mexican—they’re a splinter group that went down to Mexico years ago to do mission work, and came back to Canada at some point. They are VERY different from your run-of-the-mill gang of Mennos in that the men wear plaid shirts and ball caps and the women love dresses with flowers all over them, and they drive and use electricity and whatnot. The biggest difference is that they’re all blond and walk around town looking like Abercrombie and Fitch models. The other Mennonites look down on them, but I think they’re just jealous that the Mexican Mennonites had a larger gene pool so none of them have to wear glasses, which most other Mennonites have to do because they have terrible eyesight. Finally, there are the Modern Mennonites, who made up the majority of my neighbours. There was nothing remarkable about them except that they went to big, modern Mennonite churches on Sunday. And they were very proper and modest.

Anyway, so after a few months of enjoying the party circuit, eating other people’s appetizers, drinking other people’s wine, buying the bare minimum in party sh*t, and pretending that I was not extremely uncomfortable in situations like this, it became patently obvious that it was MY turn to host something. The pressure was on. What kind of crap could I get my neighbours to buy that would be exciting and new? Then, call it kismet, or universal forces at work, I saw an ad for a woman who did LINGERIE PARTIES! What an amazing idea! I would be the talk of the neighbourhood for months to come. I could picture my neighbours ooh-ing and ah-ing over delicate lace and finery, buying flannel nightgowns, or perhaps the more daring among them purchasing satin negligees as they giggled in delight. There would be fancy h’ors d’oeuvres and wine, and once I had hosted the party to end all parties, I would NEVER have to go to another one again, which was really my ultimate goal! So I called the woman, whose name was Donna:

Me: Hi there! I’m interested in hosting a lingerie party!
Donna: Super. They’re so much fun! I assume your guests will be open to just about anything?
Me: Oh sure—lace, flannel, satin…
Donna: Rubber?
Me: Pardon?
Donna: Did I mention the hostess gets a 10% discount?
Me: Oh cool! Can I book for next Saturday?

I invited all the neighbour ladies and everyone was super-excited at the thought of my Lingerie Party; one of the women even invited her mother, who was a little less Modern and wore a white net cap over the bun in her hair and a dress with an apron, but still, I thought it would be fun for her to hang out with us. I envisioned Donna arriving with racks of nighties in all the colours of the rainbow, and maybe some cheeky bra and panty sets that would make my Mennonite friends blush a wee bit, and there would be a shopping frenzy the likes of which no one had ever seen, allowing me to receive the ‘surprise bonus gift’ that Donna had mentioned.

The evening came and Donna arrived. But instead of racks of nighties, she had stacks of boxes. I was confused but the guests started to appear and I got distracted by pouring out the wine and passing around trays of cheese and crackers, and pumpernickel bread with spinach dip (these types of appetizers were de rigeur at sales parties). After about 20 minutes, Donna announced that she was all set up, and we gathered in the living room in anticipation. Then my jaw dropped as I realized what she had unpacked from all her boxes. Dildos. It was a sea of DILDOS. There was no lingerie to be seen, and I don’t think I could ever emphasize enough exactly HOW MANY DILDOS there were on display. Then Donna, oblivious to the looks of shock on our faces, introduced herself and began to showcase each of the sex toys, describing its material, shape, function, colour and size. “Here!” she said cheerfully. “Pass this one around. Feel the quality, ladies!” My guests’ eyes were wide with terror as they passed the fake phalluses to each other gingerly, holding them between their thumbs and index fingers and refusing to make eye contact with anyone. At one point, the little Mennonite mother who had been innocently brought along whispered to her daughter, “What..what is this?” and her daughter whispered back, “It’s a dingaling!” Finally, after the fifth dildo had made its rounds (“This one is called ‘Double Trouble’, ladies!!”), I cleared my throat and spoke:

Me: Is there any lingerie? I think my guests might like to see some of that now.
Donna: Lingerie? Oh sure! I have some crotchless—
Me: NEVER MIND!

Needless to say, none of my Mennonite guests bought anything. One of the other women picked up some edible undies as a joke but it wasn’t enough to get me that special bonus gift. And although it was difficult to show my face around the neighbourhood for a while, my phallic fiasco turned out to be the party to end all parties after all. Or at least I stopped getting invited to them, so I considered that a win anyway.

As a side note, the company that Donna worked for is still in business. Back when I was 26, there was no internet, but if it was the same situation today, I could have gone to their website and found out ahead of time that my guests and I were in for “an exciting night of fun and debauchery”. Only one of those things turned out to be true.

My Week 242: Swearing an Oath

Recently, the secret agency took on a group of summer students. They’re a delightful bunch, young, enthusiastic and eager to learn. I like to check in on them every so often to make sure they’re doing ok, and last week one of them said to me, “Yes, it’s been great so far. But it was so weird–did you know, I had to swear an oath to the Queen?” And I was like, “Oh yeah–we all did that. It’s no biggie–it just means that if she needs you, you have to fly over to England. Sometimes she gets lonely. A couple of years ago, I got the call and when I got there, all she wanted was someone to listen to her gripe about Philip. Apparently he snores and spends WAY too long in the bathroom.” The girl looked at me in shock so I had to explain that I was kidding. But it reminded of me of how I reacted when I first hired at the secret agency and took the oath myself…

Because I just saw Avengers’ Endgame.

Before I started the job, I 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—although we’re a secret agency, you’re technically a public servant, so 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.) Actually, I HAD just taken an oath recently, because that 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, but more like sauntering through it—honestly, 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 by nature a red-light runner. So I went to traffic court, where they give you the option of swearing to tell the truth by either putting your hand on a bible, or by 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, 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 felt like he kind of stole my thunder, but I was in no position to complain. Then I had to go in front of the judge and plead guilty, but I qualified it thusly, “Guilty, your honour, but I didn’t mean to do it.” And the judge dismissed the case “with costs” and I wondered if that would also work for more serious crimes, like “Yes, your honour, I stole the puppy from the pet store, but I didn’t mean to do it. Look, he’s so snuggly” and the judge would be like “I completely understand. Give me one hundred dollars. So what are you going to call him?” But that would lead to anarchy, with people stealing puppies everywhere and whatnot, and also I would call him Alistair.

Anyway, so there I was, wondering what kind of oath the Human Resources person 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 what kind of person 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 queen like Guinevere or Latifah, or the band Queen, or even a Disney 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 didn’t know what the ramifications of all this might be. What exactly are my responsibilities? If she commands my presence in England 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 Twitter war 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 all those 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.

I picked out that hat.

My Week 240: Moving On

I’m exhausted. I just spent the last week packing up for my move back home. If you didn’t already know this, 4 years ago I was offered a temporary position with the secret agency, but it was a very long way from the small town where Ken and I have lived for over 15 years. They were willing to pay for a condo, so I moved to Toronto for what I thought would be a very short time, which turned into a permanent position (where they no longer paid for the condo and I had to pay for it myself–the monthly rent was twice the cost of my mortgage) and a very LONG time. Every Sunday night, I took the train into Toronto, and every Friday afternoon, I took the train home. It was yucky. Finally this Christmas, and after discovering a morning train that could get me to work in under an hour and a half, Ken and I decided I should commute every day instead of living in a neighbourhood that I like to call “the last place that God made”. I had to wait until the end of April though, because I’d committed to taking on a co-op student, a lovely girl who had already lived with me twice, and it didn’t seem fair to make her find some random weirdo to live with for her last work term (and yes, perhaps I am also a random weirdo, but I’m HER random weirdo).

*Side Note: Here are two reasons I’m sad about moving. First, not more than a week after I posted about that weird-ass ladder on the roof next door, I looked out the window and saw this:

Where’s the damn ladder?

And now I will never know what the ultimate plan is. Second, the two guys across the hall just got a Golden Retriever, and I will never get to babysit him.

But moving is bullsh*t. Everyone knows that. In fact, I can’t understand why people don’t just live in the same place until they die because moving is so horrible. Even though my condo was under 800 square feet, it was absolutely f*cking amazing to me the sheer quantity of stuff that I’d accumulated over 4 years. And I’d already had to move once already, after I was illegally evicted from my first condo because it was sold and the new owner was “anxious to move in”. So I had to find another place to live and MOVE TO IT. One week after I moved, I was on the local realtor site and I saw my old place for rent again for $250 more a month than I’d been paying. So I called the real estate agent who was leasing it:

Me: Hi there. I’m wondering about the condo you have advertised.
 Agent: Oh so sorry—it just leased.
Me: That’s very interesting, because you just illegally evicted me from there last week.
Agent: Uh…I’m going to have to call you back (*click*).

Long story short, I filed a lawsuit, and they settled out of court. But I still had to move. And now, I was doing it by choice. I decided that it wouldn’t be fair to Ken to make him drive into the heart of downtown Toronto with U-Haul, so I hired movers. There are a lot of moving companies around, and some of them have pretty weird names as we all know. Here are ten:

1) The Burly Boyz
2) The Box Brothers
3) The Happy Haulers
4) My Ninja Movers
5) Rent-A-Son
6) The Rampaging Removers
7) The Shifty Shifters
8) Uncle Bob’s El Cheapo Movers
9) You Pack ‘Em, We Stack ‘Em
10) Your Friend With A Cube Van

Some of those names are actually made up—you have to guess which ones are real moving companies. I think my favourite was ‘In and Out Movers’ because it sounded just a little dirty. At any rate, after looking at review sites, I went with a company called “Two Men and a Truck”, which seemed a fairly self-explanatory and not very creative. But they had a five-star rating so I booked them. In the meantime, I had to start packing all my sh*t up, which sounds easy, except that almost every night last week, I was taken out for a farewell dinner by friends, which involved drinks, and which rendered me not particularly interested in packing. Finally, on Thursday night, I realized I needed to go hard at it because the movers were coming on Friday morning. But I had one problem—there was way too much stuff. Luckily, I had placed an ad on the electronic bulletin board in the elevator of the building. I hadn’t had any takers, when suddenly on Thursday at around 5 pm, I got a text from ‘Joseph’, who was interested in my couch, lamp, and coffee table. He lived two floors up and offered to come down right away. I was a little nervous—what if he was like The Serial Killer Upstairs (whom I had written about a couple of years ago) and instead of wanting my furniture, he wanted to make a lady-suit out of me? The only weapon that I hadn’t packed was a fork that didn’t go with any of my other cutlery (where the hell it came from is one of life’s mysteries, and we all know how we feel about THAT ONE FORK) so I put it in a convenient spot on the counter. I was worried for nothing though, because Joseph was more interested in my furniture than me. He was Swedish, or some kind of young Scandinavian country-type, and he took a few things, telling me that he “loved glassware and lighting”. He also had a roommate who would be home shortly and he would tell ‘Daveed’ about some of the other things I had, and let me know if they were interested. Sure enough, around 9:45, I got a second text telling me that he wanted some more items:

 

I was pretty exhausted, and also a little perplexed about having two strange young men in my condo at 10 o’clock at night, but that concern was outweighed by the feeling that I had badly underestimated the number of boxes I told the movers I would have (“Ten-ish,” I said. “You fool!” you say.), and I really wanted to get rid of some more stuff. Joseph introduced me to ‘Daveed’, who was also apparently Swedish-y. The two of them were setting up an “outdoor space” on their balcony and were delighted by everything they saw (imagine that they are speaking with charming Swedish accents, which I don’t know how to write—I can only do French and Russian):

Joseph: Daveed. Daveed! This will be perfect in the outdoor room!
 Daveed: For plants, yes! And look at this wine rack—I can grow vines around it!
Joseph: Daveed! What do you think of this desk? Could you use it outside?
Daveed: Oh yes! It will be perfect for when I am at the computer!

After a few trips up and down the elevator, they had enough for a good start on the outdoor room, we bid each other goodnight, and I went to bed. Guess what time I woke up in a panic about all the things I still had left to do, and the fact that I was short at least two boxes? If you said 4 a.m., you would be absolutely f*cking correct. But then the movers called around 8:30 and asked, “Do you need any boxes?”
 “Maybe a couple,” I answered casually. In the meantime, Ken messaged for me to call him so that we could discuss how I should tell the movers to pack everything:

Me: What are you talking about?
 Ken: You need to tell them to put everything that goes upstairs in last so they can bring it out first.
Me: You seriously want me to mansplain moving to PROFESSIONAL MOVERS? Hard pass.
Ken: But there are some things that have to go in the front door and some things that have to—
Me: You know what? You can tell them yourself when they get there, but I’m gonna bet they know how to do this, and for the money I’m paying them, I’ll also bet they’ll do whatever you want.

The movers were right on time, and there were THREE of them in the truck. The driver explained that I got a bonus man because it was Friday, and if there was ever a more random reason than that, I can’t think of one. But they were super-efficient, wrapping everything in blankets and taping it all up. Then they were gone and I was left with an empty condo. The landlord was coming over at 11:30 to get the keys, so I cleaned up everything until the place was spic and span, and much cleaner than the previous tenants had left it. He arrived, and I proudly said, “I’ve left everything very clean!” at which point, he went over, opened the oven door and looked inside it, the one place I HADN’T CLEANED. Then he looked at me rather pointedly, and I said, “It was like that when I moved in.”

When I finally arrived home on Friday night, SOMEONE was very happy to see me:

Titus: You’re home! This is the best day ever!
Me: Guess what, buddy? I’m going to be home EVERY night from now on!
Titus: WHUUUT?! HOME COOKED MEALS EVERY NIGHT?! Ooh, I think I just peed a little!
Me: Ok, ewww. But what are you talking about? Ken knows how to cook.
Titus: Yeah, if you like ‘Wonder Weiner’ twice a week.
Ken (from the other room): Wonder Weiner is awesome!
Titus: Can you make that steak with the peppercorn cream sauce? I’ll just wait by the oven…

Ah, home sweet home. And now I have to unpack.

My Week 239: Cracked Up, Animal Nicknames

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?

Cracking me up.

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

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.

My Week 238: It’s A Miracle

As I told you last week, I’m working off-site with no days off except for yesterday. I’m really tired and it’s making me a little punchy. I know this, because on Wednesday morning, I turned on my laptop and actually yelled at my computer boyfriend Carlo because once again, he pronounced my last name wrong, and I was like, “SAY MY NAME RIGHT, B*TCH!”. Luckily no one was around to hear me because I arrive at the site incredibly early to avoid rush hour. I normally don’t mind that Carlo says the last part of my surname like ‘Why-Talk’ instead of ‘Whit-ick’, because who would even think that was correct in the first place, but in retrospect, I think he might just be passive-aggressive, because he has no trouble with the part that I own; it’s the part that Ken owns that seems to irk him, so maybe it’s subtle jealousy. 

So I’m irritated, and when I told Ken last night that I was feeling punchy, he looked at me questioningly and I said, “That means I might punch you”, which I did at about 2 am when he wouldn’t stop snoring. Finally, I said, “You know what?! I’m going into the other room and I’m taking Quackers and Brian with me!!” and he said, “GOOD! Then you can’t hit me with them anymore!” (Quackers is a duck and Brian is a shark, in case you’ve forgotten.)

But the one good thing about being away from the office is that I’m almost next to the airport, and watching an airplane take off is something that never gets old for me. The other day, I was walking to the plaza to get lunch. I looked up as a huge jet roared by, and I thought ‘People are so smart. Look at that airplane. A monkey couldn’t invent an airplane. They aren’t even particularly good butlers.’ And I know this because I have done quite a bit of research on the topic “How to Train Your Monkey Butler” and let me tell you, it doesn’t sound very promising. Stupid monkeys.

My Week 237: 3 AM Eternal Revisited

So I’m going through another bout of insomnia, a condition that I like to call “3 AM Eternal”, because I wake up around 3 o’clock in the morning and I think, “That’s OK—I still have a couple of hours until I have to get up”, and then I lie there for a f*cking ETERNITY before I fall back to sleep. And sometimes I DON’T fall back to sleep and then my mind just wanders down any number of bizarre paths. ‘Why don’t you get up and watch TV, or read a book or something?’ I hear you ask. The answer is simple: I love lying down. I mean, I am never so happy as when I am prone, snuggled under warm covers in a soft bed. Maybe it’s because so much of my day right now is spent standing and walking around a giant convention centre (which is also absolutely contributing to the insomnia), but the fact is that I am a horizontal person. And I’m sure that vertical people are very smug and proud of their defiance of gravity and whatnot, but they will never understand the pure and existential delight that I feel when I am flat on my back, glass of wine in hand. Yes, it IS difficult to drink wine while you’re lying down, but it’s a skill that many of us have carefully honed over the years. And if any of the wine happens to spill, Titus is always hovering nearby in the hope of lapping up a few precious drops (speaking of Titus, I’m alone in the house right now and he suddenly raced from the back family room to the front living room, where he leapt onto a chair and stared out the window. I said, “What’s wrong, buddy?” He didn’t answer. I looked out the window too, and saw nothing. A few seconds later, he muttered, “Never mind”, jumped down and ran to the back again. He’s a terrible guard dog.)

There’s nothing there. He’s just being a jerk.

But as I said, whilst I’m enjoying the wide-awake comfort of my bed, my mind tends to stagger from one absurd topic to another:

1) Is one of my co-workers a spy?

The other day, I was talking about motion sensor lights with a colleague and he said, “Oh, I have those. I also have security cameras all around the outside of my house.” “Ooh,” I said, “are you a spy?” and he laughed and said no, but kind of like, “Ha ha ha. NO.” And now I’m not sure, because isn’t that exactly what a spy WOULD say? Then he showed me his phone with four different screens displaying the view from each of his exterior cameras, and all I could think was what I would see if I mounted cameras all around the outside of MY house and was able to watch remotely: several tree rats doing sexy squirrel stuff (because it’s spring and tree rats are super-slutty), Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing the bell and then looking sad as they stuff The WatchTower between my doors, the meter reader trampling through my privet hedge to get to the gas meter, that one possum…frankly, it wouldn’t make for very scintillating viewing. Also, I had to google whether or not possums are nocturnal—the jury is out on that, but apparently people are very interested in possum trivia.

Possums are fascinating, I guess.

2) How much German do I know?

I took German for three years in high school. It’s remarkable how much I can remember at 3:30 in the morning. Ich gehe—I go. Ich spreche —I speak. Ich liebe—I love. Ich sehe—I see. I could conjugate German verbs all night. Ironically, I can’t remember the German word for ‘sleep’. My favourite German saying is “Das Mädchen hat Toilettenpapier auf ihrem Arsch“. If you want to know why, go back to My Week 146. My second favourite German saying is “Fritz fing fünf frische Fische” which is a tongue-twister that my high school German teacher used to make us say. It means “Fritz caught five fresh fish”. When I was in high school, I was pretty snarky (‘Just in high school?!’ I hear you say), and I used to mutter under my breath “F*ck Fritz and his five fresh fish” but now I have a lot of sympathy for Fritz, having to spend all day fishing just to feed his family, and I’m grateful that the fish are fresh and not frozen, because that would be frustrating for Fritz.

3) How hard would it be to learn to drive a forklift?

I don’t think it would be very hard. It looks like a golf cart with arms, and I can totally drive a golf cart—in fact, being able to drive the golf cart is the ONLY reason I ever go golfing. How fast does a forklift go? Could I drive around town with it? If Ken got one too, could we have Transformer-style battles? So many questions. But you know what would be even better? Remember in Aliens how Sigourney Weaver wore that human forklift suit? That. That’s what I want. I haven’t gotten a Hamacher Schlepper catalogue for a while but maybe they’re selling them next to their insanely priced life-size fake robot. And now I know what I want to do when I retire—being a human forklift would be the best job ever and it wouldn’t affect my pension like working at a private school would. Also, not as dangerous as planning warehouse heists.

My retirement plan

4) Here’s a poem I wrote at around 4:30 am when sleep became a hopeless desire and I had a panic attack at the thought of being so tired that I might fall asleep driving:

Are you afraid
When you see the clock move
Forward
Marking out the remainder
Of your life
In incremental pieces?

5) It’s fifteen minutes before my alarm goes o….why are there dozens of Asian children doing some kind of line dance in this parking lot to a Gary Numan song?! Why is it my job to bring them individually wrapped chocolates every time the music stops?! Why are the children I don’t get to in time disappearing into oblivion?! Why can’t I just dream about puppies? Sigh.

By the way, if you’re reading my blog and you see an ad for the “Gut Doctor”, I can save you the 45 minutes it takes to find out what his three superfoods are. They are chicory root, probiotic TCPs, and Vitamin B Complex. He never actually tells you what vegetable to throw out, FYI. And I don’t make a single cent off any of his sh*t.

My Week 236: Highway to Hell, Dancing in the Closet

So starting this past Thursday, I am once again working off-site, which means that my morning commute has changed quite a bit. Instead of leaving my condo, going down in one elevator, crossing the street, and going up to my office in another elevator, I now have to drive on the world’s worst highway for an hour and a half. This is an estimate—the time can change depending on the stupidity of other drivers and something that traffic reporters insist on calling “volume”, which is just a nice way of saying there are way too many f*cking cars on the road. I won’t bore you with the details—I’ve written plenty about the Highway of Hell in the past. But Saturday morning’s commute was the worst thing I’ve ever had to do.

It was pouring rain, and it was 6:00 am, so also pitch black out thanks to Daylight Savings Time. I had thought initially about taking the back way, but Ken was listening to the traffic report and there was an accident on one of those roads. It involved a cattle truck. There were cows on the road. Literal cows. Of the Holstein variety. So I had no choice but to take the highway. I knew I was going to have problems about ten minutes into the drive to GET to the highway when it was raining so hard that I couldn’t see the lines on the road, but I thought I would be OK. I was wrong. I pulled onto the on-ramp and was immediately hit by the spray of a truck barreling past. I don’t know how HE could see anything, but he was going like a bat out of hell—a blind bat to be exact. I started driving and thought, “I need to get off this highway now” but I couldn’t see well enough to even figure out where any exits were, and in a horrifying twist of fate, I had left my cell phone at home in the charger, so I couldn’t even do what any normal person would do, which would be to call Ken. So I carried on, hunched over the wheel, terrified that at any moment, I would either go off the road or be hit by a transport truck. I did this for over an hour. In the pouring rain. In the dark.

I can’t even describe how I felt—the closest feeling would be the time that my gas fireplace started making a loud grinding sound and black smoke started pouring out of it, and I thought the house was going to blow up. My knuckles were white, my shoulders were screaming with tension, and I couldn’t even cry because I knew if I did, the visibility would only get worse.

Finally, I got to the convention centre’s access road, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. I pulled into the parking lot, put the car into park, and then, just as I thought my ordeal was finally over, a GIANT F*CKING SPIDER chose that exact moment to swing down from my visor. My reaction was to scream, and then I became convinced that I actually HAD died on the road and I was now in hell. Let me clarify that I don’t normally have a fear of spiders but I was really stressed out and this one was black and hairy and the size of a quarter and I didn’t have any Kleenex to catch it with because at a stoplight 5 minutes prior, I had used the only tissue in my possession, then I rolled down the window and surreptitiously tossed it out onto the road on the grounds that paper is essentially wood fibre and natural and whatnot, and NOT litter, but now I was obviously being punished by the environmental gods. So I grabbed my wallet and tried to whack the giant spider out the window but I missed and it fell off its creepy webstring and seemed to disappear perhaps into my boot, which caused me to scream again and jump out of the car, stomping my feet vigorously because as you all know, if a spider is in your boot, the most appropriate thing to do is crush it into your sock, because why the f*ck wouldn’t I want a spider corpse in my boot all day? But when I took my boot off, there was no spider, which means it’s still hiding somewhere in my car.

So to make a long story short, I need to buy another car.

And now, to relieve the tension, here’s something a little more funny. As I was getting dressed this morning in the dark, I tried to turn on my closet light, but I was too tired to do the dance properly. I hit the closet light with a pair of underwear to activate the motion sensor, and remembered something I wrote a long time ago, which will explain what I mean by ‘dance’:

One Friday night, I came home from Toronto. I went into the walk-in closet to get changed, reached up to pull the chain on the light to turn it on, but couldn’t find it.

Ken: The chain broke this week.
Me: How do I get the light on then?
Ken: I installed a motion detector light bulb.
Me: But I’m IN the closet. Why hasn’t it come on?
Ken:  You have to come out of the closet. Now walk to the right, along the side of the bed. Now walk to the left and move towards the bathroom door. Take two steps forward, then hop one step back on kind of an angle.
Me: What?
Ken: You did it wrong that time. Try it again. This time, make it more of a 30 degree angle instead of a 45 degree angle.
Me: Can’t you just get another chain?
Ken: No, this is much better. Oh, by the way, when you’re finished, you have to shut the closet door. If Titus walks past, he triggers the light and it will wake you up.
Me: I didn’t realize Titus could do Country Line Dancing.
Titus: Pivot, Turn, and Quick-Ball Change! Yeehaw!
Ken: You’ll get used to it.

Ken was right. Now, if I want the closet light on, I just hum “Achy, Breaky Heart”, the magic takes over, and it’s all good.

My Week 235: Home Alone

For the past few days, Ken was at a conference in one of our western provinces, and I had to come home early to take care of Titus, which meant being in the house by myself, something I despise. Even in Toronto, I have a roommate because I hate being alone at night (also, the rent is outrageous and I couldn’t afford to live there without her). When I first moved to Toronto, my condo was paid for by my company because I was on temporary contract, so I didn’t have a roommate, and it was awful. I came home from work every night and literally searched the entire condo, which didn’t take long because it was only 600 square feet. Still, I would call Ken while I looked in the closets, under the bed, and behind the giant column in the corner where only a very thin robber could squeeze. I don’t know what I thought would happen if I actually DID find someone—put Ken on speakerphone and have him sternly order the intruder out? Say “You’ll be sorry when my husband gets here–in two hours”?

It’s even harder at home because we have a very large, late 1800s Victorian house with a full walk-up attic, and searching it would take a really long time. There are 6 doors leading to the outside on the main floor alone, and a balcony door upstairs, although I doubt a burglar would bother climbing up to the porch roof when there are SO MANY DAMNED ACCESS POINTS ALREADY. Before I go to bed, I make sure ALL of them are locked, and that all the outside lights are on. And then I’m locked IN the house, which creaks and makes weird sounds. Oh, it’s not haunted though—I used to live in a house that was haunted and this one definitely isn’t, which is one good thing at least, and if you’re interested in the haunted house, you can read all about it in My Week 69: Ghost Stories.

I was talking to one of my aunts last night, and she hates being alone in the house too.

Aunt: Is everything locked up?
Me: Yes. I double-checked. And I can lock myself in the bedroom now—there’s a hook on the inside of the door.
Aunt: What kind of weaponry are we talking about?
Me: A baseball bat in the bedroom, another one by the toilet in the ensuite, and a hammer on the window ledge.
Aunt:
Me: Too much? I know it sounds crazy.
Aunt: Oh no—I was just wondering why you didn’t mention the pepperspray.
Me: Damn! I left it in Toronto.
Aunt: I keep mine in my bedside table.
Me: Ooh, good thinking.

It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one in the family who is well-armed.

But wait, I hear you say—you’re not BY YOURSELF; you have Titus. Well, let me relieve you of any delusion you may have had that Titus can be counted on in a crisis. If you’ve read this blog for a while, you’ll know that he has no problem with intruders in the house—our doorstep has been crossed by bats, birds, squirrels, raccoons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses and he has batted nary an eyelash. In fact, the last time a squirrel got in the house, I was convinced it was a burglar, and as I was creeping towards our family room with a giant knife in my hand, trembling with fear, he lay on the living room couch and barely lifted his head when I shrieked in horror at the sight of the tree rat climbing my wall. In fact, the only time he DOES lift his head is when we’re lying in bed all locked in and cozy, and suddenly he pretends to hear a noise and jumps off the bed:

Me: What?! Why are your ears up?
Titus: I thought I heard something.
Me: Like what?
Titus: Oh, uh, like a…hey, open the door and I’ll go see.
Me: Don’t lie. I’m not letting you out of here.
Titus: But I’m bored!
Me: It’s 3 o’clock in the morning!! How are you ‘BORED’?! Go the f*ck to sleep like a normal dog.
Titus: OK, ok, I’ll stay in here. Can you at least put Netflix on?
Me: Fine, but no cooking shows—I don’t want you drooling on the bed.
Titus: Is there any wine left?
Me: What do you think?
Titus: Lush.

Who’s the lush?

As you can see, he’s not much use in the watchdog department. For all his formidable size—100 pounds of extra-tall black Lab—and intimidating bark, he’s pretty much a big suck. But I’m sure if there WAS someone in the house, he’d be all over them. Especially if they had wine.

Here’s a quick, funny story for you:

Once, when I was teaching, my class was studying Lysistrata by Aristophanes. The students were seniors and it was an academic class, so the kids decided they wanted to act it out. Authentically. If you know anything about early Greek theatre, all the parts were played by men, and they differentiated between the sexes using masks, and because this was a comedy, the ‘men’ were also identified with exaggerated fake phalluses and the ‘women’ with exaggerated fake boobs. So on the day of the performance, the students all dressed up, with the girls taking the male roles and vice versa, just for fun. So there they were, all wearing togas made out of bedsheets, Hallowe’en masks on their faces, the girls swinging long balloons and pool noodles strapped around their waists and the boys strutting with balloons and basketballs tied to their chests. Just as the largest boy in the class said his line in excellent falsetto, “Indeed, I believe I could—I practice the kick-dancing!” and demonstrated thusly, the classroom door opened and my new principal walked in. She stopped and stared:

Principal:
Me: We’re doing a play.
Principal:
Me: It’s Greek…
Principal: I needed to talk to you about something but it can wait.

She left, and as soon as the door shut, the whole class erupted in laughter. I didn’t know what would happen next, but when I saw her again, her only comment was, “It looked like they were having a good time.” I mention all of this now, because I was reminded of it last week when I yelled the word “Herpes!!” across the aisle to a colleague just as one of the big bosses was walking by. She also stopped and stared, and I explained that it was something I was reading. I showed her and she laughed, kind of like “Ah. Ha ha ha” and walked away. Sigh. At least I didn’t say ‘penis’ again.

My Week 234: Up On The Roof

As many of you know, I’m from a very small town, but I work in Toronto, so during the week, I live downtown in a condo. I’m on the 34th floor. I have a balcony but I never go out there, not because I’m afraid of heights but because I’m afraid of falling FROM them. But the view from my windows is always very interesting, because I can see into other buildings as well as being able to look down on other roofs, and I’ve seen some crazy stuff. One of the buildings opposite had this naked mannequin in the window for the longest time. Once in a while, it sported a jaunty fedora, but it never wore pants. EVER. I’m just glad I had the posterior view because looking at mannequin junk every day would be very disconcerting.

Look at my bum!

 Last week, I was looking out my bedroom window, which overlooks another building. I’ve seen it hundreds of times, but I’ve never actually paid attention to the thing that I suddenly noticed and am now absolutely befuddled by. Take a look at the picture below. It shows the side of a building with a beautiful mural celebrating singers and venues in Toronto. There’s also a rooftop which features a ladder.

Ladder to nowhere

 Now think about the ladder. What is the deal with that f*cking ladder? It comes out of a brick wall, goes down and then along the roof, then suddenly stops. It’s not high enough to reach the next level of the roof, and it’s above the door in the brick. If you look closely you can tell that it doesn’t go INTO the brick—it’s just attached to it. It’s either performance art making a statement about the futility of life or a very poorly designed roller coaster.

My Week 233: All The Weird Things

It’s been a strange time lately, a time when all the weird things are happening. If you read The Mystery of the Tip Sheet on the Table, I should tell you that was only the “Tip” of the iceberg, haha, and I apologize for the terrible pun, but I’ve certainly had some experiences in the last three weeks that have been completely outside my wheelhouse, and most of them have to do with the magical world of math. I call it “magical” because there are formulas, and also whenever I see someone solve an equation, I squeal excitedly and exclaim breathlessly with child-like wonder, “How did you do that?!” Here are the 4 strange things that have beset my life recently:

1) I went to empty my blog spam folder, which usually contains about 30 comments about Nike shoes or Viagra, and there were 1, 167 spam comments in there. They were all for CBD oil (derived from marijuana). So I emptied the spam folder, and three days later, there were another 2, 000 messages, again for CBD oil, and all I could think was “Someone REALLY wants me to get high”. But then I did a little research and it turns out that CBD oil isn’t psychoactive, so I’m not sure what’s going on there, but the Viagra people need to step up their game.

2) I had to go by myself to do a presentation (this time on my actual work instead of magic-y math sh*t) to a group of around 60 people. I don’t enjoy standing up in front of people at any given moment—I don’t even say much in meetings when I’m sitting down—but someone had to do it, and I was that someone. I stayed in a hotel the night before because the weather was supposed to be lousy for travelling the next day. I decided to order some Swiss Chalet chicken, and then stay in for the night watching the Oscars. I called up Swiss Chalet and asked for delivery, but when the woman gave me the total, I realize I didn’t have any money so I said, “Oh, I don’t have any cash on me. Will the guy take Visa or is there something else I need to do?” and then I realized to my horror that it sounded like I was offering to instigate a porn scene where the lady doesn’t have money but offers to “take it out in trade” with the nubile young delivery man. Luckily, you can pay for Swiss Chalet over the phone,  and a very sturdy older lady came to my hotel room, so no worries there. But then, incredibly, the hotel TV had 54 channels and not one was showing the Oscars, so I ended up watching porn. No I didn’t. That was a joke. I ended up watching a Flip or Flop Nashville marathon.

The presentation the next day went OK, except for the snarky guy sitting right in front of the podium who kept muttering under his breath and rolling his eyes, which was very distracting. At one point, he raised his hand to angrily complain about how hard it was to use a particular report, and I felt like saying, “Well, toilet training is hard too, but I assume you’ve figured that one out.” Instead I just smiled and said, “Here are some websites you can use to explore your feelings about this issue.”

3) Then I got back to the office and was asked to start supervising, in addition to my own team, another team whose job revolves completely around MATH. My reaction was “Have you even LOOKED at my resume?!” And now not only do I have to try and understand math in English, I also have to try and understand it in FRENCH, because we have two official languages, and math is hard in both of them. At least the people are nice and don’t roll their eyes at me.

4) On Tuesday, I raced to get dinner finished and get ready for bed so that I could be all cozy on the couch in my pajamas in time for my favourite new TV show The Launch (it’s Canadian). I made it with a minute to spare and yelled to my roommate, “Come on, it’s almost starting!” Then I went up and down the guide and couldn’t find it on anywhere. “I don’t understand” I said. “Are they on hiatus already” and my roommate said, “Isn’t The Launch on Wednesdays?” and I said “Yes,” and she said, “Today is Tuesday”, and this is what too much math does to you. So we resigned ourselves to watching The Voice and I was trying to figure out Instagram when I realized my young cousin was starting some ‘live’ video thing so I clicked on it. He and his friend were talking, then suddenly he said, “Hi Suzanne”, and I shrieked and threw the phone down and said to my roommate, “Oh my god, can he SEE me?!” She started laughing hysterically and explained how your name comes up at the bottom so that people know you’re watching, and it reminded me of the first time I tried to send a fax, and panicked when the paper went into the fax machine because there was a phone number on the back of the form that I needed. The secretary at the school also laughed hysterically just like my roommate and explained that the paper would come back out once it had been scanned. “Did you think the fax machine magically transported the actual paper to the person you’re sending it to?” she asked.  “Of course not—that would be ridiculous,” I said, but in my head I was like, “Yes. Yes, I totally f*cking did.” Because faxes are magical. Just like math.

(I just had a short story published in the inaugural issue of a terrific literary magazine called Slippage Lit. It’s called Perfect Food, and if you want to read it, click here: https://www.slippagelit.com/perfectfood)