OCD

Mydangblog and the Blustery Day

For most of this week, I’ve had a song stuck in my head. I get that a lot and sometimes for more than a week, thanks to my particular brand of OCD, where a random song will start to loop and I can’t stop it, to the point where I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s still playing. I wrote about this previously (check out It’s Toxic for more), and it usually happens when I’m very stressed. And what is the song, you ask? It’s The Rain, Rain, Rain, Came Down, Down, Down from the Disney feature Winnie The Pooh and the Blustery Day. In the story, it rains so much that Piglet and Pooh are flooded out of their homes, and I don’t know why anyone would think that was adorable and totally appropriate for small children. I remember watching it as a small child myself and being very afraid for Piglet. Of course, back then I couldn’t swim, so I assumed anyone surrounded by water would just drown.

And why do you have that particular song stuck in your head, you ask? Because last week, I was beset—nay, besieged, by torrential rain wherever I went. It started last Sunday when I did a book fair at a town not far from here. It was an outdoor event, so Ken and I loaded up the table, chairs, and the canopy/tent we’d gotten cheap off Facebook Marketplace. It was a sweltering day and we were both exhausted by the time we got the tent up, having forgotten how it all went together and taking extra long in the full sun for the debacle. No sooner had the event started, and people arrived, when the skies took an ominous turn. Ken had left by this point, wanting to go home and mow the lawn, and he called me to say that he was halfway home and it was teeming down. Then the thunder started. Then the downpour came. I threw tarps over everything then spent the next hour hanging on to my cheap-ass tent for dear life as the wind threatened to turn it into a parasail. I got soaked to the skin and only sold one book the entire afternoon.

Then, on Monday, as we kept getting shower after shower, I got worried about the basement. It’s a partial basement and crawlspace and it’s always a little damp but we have a dehumidifier that keeps things under control. On Tuesday morning though, the skies opened and we got rain like we’ve never seen rain before. I didn’t think much of it until I heard the sump pump running endlessly. So I opened the basement door to take a peek. There was a small river running across the basement floor, and I just about lost my mind:

Me: Ken! There’s water everywhere!
Ken: It’ll be ok. The sump pump isn’t broken this time.
Me: What if the power goes off?!
Ken: Then we’re screwed.
Me: OMG, the house is going to collapse!
Ken: The house has been standing for almost 120 years. It will be fine. We just need to—

And that’s when the song started. It’s been playing in my head as we mopped, as we shopvac’d, as I fretted, and as Ken put down hydraulic cement.

Luckily, the hydraulic cement seems to have done the trick for the time being, until we can get someone in to take a proper look. But they’re all busy right now because a lot of other people got a lot more water in than we did and sustained a heck of a lot more damage, one of the advantages of us having a creepy basement that I’m pretty sure is haunted so we don’t keep anything down there that a ghost would like. And the upside? I’ve been singing the rain song wrong all these years, as I found out when I watched the YouTube video just now, so now my brain can do it right. And the rain, rain, rain, came down, down, down…

From Every Angle

A while back, I took out a subscription to a particular country decorating magazine, mostly because they kept emailing me with better and better deals until it finally came out to about $3 an issue—and yes, I mean actual paper magazines, not the online kind. So they started coming in the mail a few months ago, and I’d forgotten how ubiquitous each one of these things can be: every issue features a young couple who hired a designer, a gay couple who didn’t need to hire a designer, recipes I will NEVER make, and the latest in weird decorating trends. I’ve made my peace with the all-white rooms and all-white furniture, the people who never wear shoes, and the copious overuse of figs, but this month’s issue made my skin crawl. Was it full of earwigs? (Fun Fact: When I was very young, my grandmother let me watch an episode of The Twilight Zone—the old black and white version—where a man had an earwig crawl into his ear and it ate through to his brain. I was terrified of earwigs for years, even after I discovered that they’re called earwigs NOT because they crawl into people’s ears, which they never do, but because they infest ears of corn. Still.)  Were all the recipes based on beets and peas? No. It was the newest trend alert: hanging all the artwork on your walls askew. Aside from being the stupidest trend I could possibly think of, even worse than the faux leather wall covering debacle of 2006, I was immediately overcome by intense panic at the mere sight of it. You may remember, particularly because I mention it often and it took up almost a whole chapter of my new book (shameless plug: it’s called What Any Normal Person Would Do, available on Amazon), I have something called Extreme Symmetry Disorder, which normally applies to rugs, but also, in this case, to the artwork on my walls. And while it might seem strange to you, I regularly patrol my house, straightening not only the rugs on my floors but also the artwork on my walls, because while Atlas manages to knock the rugs sideway several times a day, the vibrations of his bounding around also shift the frames of both paintings and photographs, which I am compelled to restore to their proper positions.

And then I had to read this magazine, which featured several different walls of artwork, two of them very much like my own photography-filled breakfast room wall, but instead of them being all delightfully level and perfectly perpendicular to each other, THESE PICTURES HAD BEEN DELIBERATELY KNOCKED ASKEW AS A FASHION STATEMENT.

Who DOES this?! I mean, I can’t be the only person who would go into a house where the pictures are all tilting off into oblivion and have an overwhelming desire to straighten them. Seriously—is this not scraping the bottom of the barrel of decorating trends or what? And what’s next? Should all our rugs be scattered haphazardly around our rooms? Should our objets d’art be randomly grouped in fours and sixes instead of the much more stress-relieving threes and fives? Should the cords on all our lamps face the front where we can SEE THEM?! AM I IN HELL?

At any rate, this issue, according to the latest email exhortation I received, is to be my last, since I have no interest in renewing a subscription to something so ludicrous. I will never cook with beets, I will never decorate in all white, and I especially will NEVER tiltshift my artwork. To quote Captain Jean-Luc Picard, when he was yet again faced with the Borg: “The line must be drawn here!”

In other news, the new literary press is going very well. I have a lot of submissions and I’ve already signed three authors—don’t ask who, because it’s a surprise, at least until I’ve finished editing. But all three are awesome, and their books will be coming out under the DarkWinter Press imprint before the end of the fall. I’m currently in the process of reading more manuscripts to decide on the catalogue for Spring 2024, so if you want to be considered, I’d love to see your work—at least before the end of August, when submissions will be closed until January.

(And now I’m having a mild panic attack because I just realized that one of the candlesticks isn’t straight!)

At A Certain Angle

I was very excited this week, well, for a little bit anyway. My publisher had arranged for me to do a virtual author event at a very big conference. There haven’t been many opportunities to do ANY kind of promotions thanks to stupid COVID and the never-ending lockdown, so I was pretty pumped, and had what I thought was a great time slot. Then, yesterday morning, I was scrolling through Facebook and found an article about a TV show based on a book that had just been cancelled due to some major controversy about the show’s director. But the name of the author who had written the book in question seemed familiar…and sure enough, it was the writer who was doing a virtual session in the SAME TIME SLOT AS ME and no one will be coming to my event now if they have to choose between a well-known writer embroiled in controversy and a little-known writer who just says F*ck a lot. My heart sank faster than—well, I was going to say the Titanic but people died when that ship sank and I’m just sad—so let’s just say ‘faster than a really heavy rock’. But the rock was VERY heavy and I was VERY sad, so I did what any normal person would do—I bought a clock. And if you know anything about me at all, you’ll know I love clocks and that I have, currently, 45 clocks of which 16 actually work.  I didn’t actually NEED another clock, but this one was so pretty and such a good price that I couldn’t resist. I’ll resell it as soon as the antique market where Ken and I have a booth reopens (it’s also currently shut down thanks to stupid COVID and the never-ending lockdown), but for now, I have it by my desk where I can admire it.

My Week 179: Keynotes, Plants Vs. Babies, and Dog Olympics

This past week, I went to an educational conference. Overall, it was pretty good, but there were a couple of things that stood out. First, the opening keynote speaker was a Canadian actress who is fairly well-known here as a TV personality. But she’d just written a book, so the conference organizers must have thought that she would have the appropriate gravitas for such an occasion. Apparently, no one vetted her speech ahead of time, and frankly, it was bizarre. I’ve never actually been to a conference of any kind where the keynote said “F*ck”, “pussy”, or “blowjob”, let alone had to sit through a 5 minute rant about Donald Trump, the relevance of which, at a conference for Canadian professionals at 8:30 in the morning seemed a tad out of place. But she DID come up with some creative new nicknames for the American president, aside from the “Pussy Grabber in Chief”, including “Cheeto Benito” and “Orangini Mussolini”. Then things got REALLY uncomfortable when she started referencing the “goddamned patriarchy”, the #MeToo movement, and how badly men oppress women, like the younger man she was dating who broke up with her because she was losing her eyesight. It was pretty intense—half the audience was guys, and I’m sure most of them were looking around like “I didn’t sign up for this, but if I walk out now, someone might lob a stiletto at me”. It really was the strangest experience, and had virtually nothing to do with the topic of the conference. Luckily, the luncheon keynote on the last day was Indigenous activist/broadcaster/author, Candy Palmater, who was incredibly inspiring, and didn’t reference either Trump OR blowjobs.

Second, there were a LOT of people at the conference, and while that might seem self-evident, the trouble was that many of them had no idea of either personal space or how to navigate any space at all. People would stop suddenly in the middle of hallways, stand in huddled groups in the centre of doorways, and walk like snowplows on the highway. If you know me at all, you are aware that I am just a titch OCD. And when I say “just a titch”, I’m understating it just a titch. And while I’m not sure what a “titch” actually is, it must be a real word because Spellcheck is not underlining it in that passive/aggressive way that Spellcheck has. Anyway, I don’t like being touched by strangers in the same way that other people don’t like being punched in the face, so in the line-up for lunch, I thought I was going to lose my sh*t, thanks to the number of people who bumped into me because space was so tight.

Third, while waiting for a session to start, I was stuck behind a woman who was the most melodramatic person I’ve ever eavesdropped on. She was freaking out about several things, including her new house (“It’s SOOO unfair that we have to put all our money into the house when we could be spending it on other things”), her hair (“I just don’t know what to DOOO! Should I let it grow or cut it short?!”), and finally, this gem:

Dramatic Lady: Babies are TERRIFYING!!
 Sympathetic Companion: *makes soothing noises*
Dramatic Lady: I mean, I’m TERRIFIED of having a baby! It’s not a plant or a dog—it’s a CHILD! You give birth to it, and then you’re expected to TAKE CARE of it!! And NOBODY tells you how to DO THAT!!

I actually snickered out loud, but she was so caught up in her own hysteria that she didn’t hear me. But I was like, Seriously? Thank GOD babies aren’t plants, because I’ve killed so many plants over the years it’s not even funny. I even killed a cactus once (I overwatered it). But I did pretty OK with the baby I had. And if you can take care of a dog, you can take care of a baby—it’s not much different. Well, the underlying philosophy of love, nutrition, and hygiene is comparable. Also, we teach dogs to do tricks, and we do the same thing with our kids. Like teaching your dog how to give a high five isn’t technically much different from saying, “Oh look, Grandma—we taught the baby how to clap!” But the icing on the self-absorption cake was really when she finished with, “I just THANK GOD that my husband was in foster care for so many years. He’s diapered so many babies that he’s not worried about it AT ALL!” And then she got up, and I realized that she was pregnant. I wish I’d gotten her name so that I could send her a plant to practice on.

Luckily, I’m better with babies.

The Olympics

Titus (leaping onto the bed): Watcha watching?
 Me: The Olympics.
Titus: Oh yeah, we have those too.
Me: You mean, like agility trials or something?
Titus: Ha! No—agility trials are like the Commonwealth Games of the canine world. No, I mean Dog Olympics.
Me: What are some of the events?
Titus: Well, there’s the Barking—
Me: Dogs bark all the time. How is THAT an Olympic event?
Titus: People WALK all the time, but you still have medals for it. Besides, there’s a real technique to barking. You’re judged on volume, pitch, and sustained howling. There was a huge scandal last year when the Borzois were caught doping with Vick’s VapoDrops.
Me: Wow. OK, what are some other events?
Titus: Well, there’s Staying Upright on Ice, Find the Toy, The Butt-Sniffing Challenge, and my favourite, Moguls.
Me: Dogs can ski?!
Titus: Well, technically it’s just dogs falling down hills. But it’s fun to watch.
Me: Are there any team events?
Titus: There’s the Steeplechase. I wouldn’t want to be THAT cat. Oh, and there’s Curling, but the rocks are made out of Milkbones so the games don’t last long.
Me: That’s an improvement. High five! Ow—you hit me in the face.
Titus: Sorry. You should have taught me to clap.

Getting psyched for Barking.

 

Driverless Cars

Last week, I was crossing the street at Yonge and College, trying simultaneously to avoid the taxi that wanted to run over my toes and the screaming man in the pink mini-kilt with the pigtails, when I heard a loud voice behind me say, “You know, I feel really sorry for kids these days.”

“Why’s that?” his companion replied.

I looked behind me. They were two guys in their mid-30s, wearing business suits. I braced myself for the usual bullsh*t about how today’s youth have a) no work ethic b) no social skills c) are entitled b) don’t respect their elders and so on, and got ready to roll my eyes hard enough to make that taxi back off. But I had totally misjudged the savvy pundit, who continued with “It’s a shame that, with the invention of driverless cars, most young kids today will never know the real pleasure of driving.” He continued on, reminiscing about his first car and the thrill of getting his licence until we had parted ways, me into the Tim Horton’s across the corner, he into parts unknown (but probably a very tall office tower).

I thought about it for a minute, and I was like, “Yeah, he’s so right.” Kids who are born today will never know the joy of being the ‘captain of their own ships’, in the same way that they will never know a world without the internet, or without the threat of global environmental disaster hanging over their heads in the same way that nuclear disaster hung over mine (although thanks to the assholes who are currently in charge of both the US and North Korea, kids today have to worry about THAT too. Well done.) But then I thought about it some more and started to wonder if driverless cars weren’t such a bad thing after all, and that kids really wouldn’t be missing that much. I mean, face facts—driving is a pretty dangerous business. Hurtling along at over 100 kilometres an hour (60 miles an hour for my US readers) inside a thin metal box within a few feet of other people in the same situation, it’s sometimes unbelievable that any of us survive it at all. Airplanes, which are basically flying cars, aren’t allowed to be within 3 miles of each other horizontally, and 1000 feet vertically, but I’ve got some d-bag riding my bumper on the 401 despite the signs telling you to keep at least 2 chevrons between you and the next car. When you actually think about it, driving is scary AF, and the fact that we actively encourage our children to learn how to do it and get their licences is pretty bad parenting, like “Hey Jimmy, it’s that wonderful time for you to learn how to battle the forces of humanity, nature, and fate. Hope you remember how to parallel park!”

Personally, I can’t believe the driverless car wasn’t invented sooner. I mean, cars are a necessity in Canada, where there’s a LOT of land and you have to travel pretty far to find people and jobs, and such, but where there just aren’t enough roads, so we spend A LOT of time trying to calculate the fastest route to go anywhere, and watching Google maps closely for that red line that tells you that you’re not going anywhere anytime soon. I’ve written plenty about the ludicrous nature of driving back and forth to Toronto, and I could totally appreciate being able to read or surf the internet while I was stuck on the four lane parking lot known as the 401,or more affectionately, the “stupid f*cking 401”. But what I really want to know is this: will driverless cars obey the rules of the road, or will you be able to override them so that you can drive as stupidly as you do when you’re actually behind the wheel yourself? Because there’s always going to be that one guy who drives on the shoulder to pass, or cuts you off, or tailgates you, and if he can still do it while he’s watching a Youtube video, then what’s the point?

The only real requirement I have for a driverless car, aside from obeying the rules of the road, is something I like to call “Roadkill Alert”. The car should be able to sense whether there’s an animal about to cross the road in front of you and stop you, or shoot out a firecracker or something as warning. Last year, K left the house about 10 pm to drive back to her university residence. Less than five minutes later, she called the house. I answered the phone to hear her say, “I just got hit by a deer.” Her voice was shaking. Ken had just taken Titus out for a walk, so I stood on the porch and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Ken! Come home! K’s had an accident!” From a few blocks over, I heard him yell, “I’m coming!” and he was back at the house in under 30 seconds. K was only a couple of kilometres away, but it felt like forever until we got there. When we arrived, there were two pickups trucks who had stopped to help, and the police were already there. I grabbed K and hugged her—thank god she wasn’t hurt—but there was a deer shaped dent in her buckled hood, and the deer itself was lying at the side of the road. It was a buck with huge horns, and all I could think was 6 inches higher and it would have gone through the windshield. I won’t go into details, but the police took care of the situation, and the local guys offered to take it away. The car was a write-off, but whatever—it’s only a thing.

Bottom line, the deer came hurtling out of the dark and K couldn’t avoid it. So yeah—make sure those driverless cars have long-range sensors on them. And I don’t want to hear any of that sh*t about “When I was a kid, we drove into deer all the time and LIKED it. These kids today are just sheltered wussies.” Personally, I’m waiting for someone to finally invent the Star Trek transporter. Then we can say, “These poor kids today will never know the real pleasure of travelling at warp speed…”

My Weeks 150/151: Travelling Dangerously on the Queen Mary 2

I’m on a boat!

Well, I WAS on a boat. Then in a car, then on a plane, and now I’m back. I hope you didn’t miss me too much—it’s the first time in years that I haven’t made my weekly journey into the absurd. Even when I had surgery last year, I wrote something ahead of time, and had Ken post it for me. This past week though, anyone who could have figured out my computer and hit “upload” was actually with me. Plus, I didn’t have anything new to tell you until I got back. Which is now. So fasten your seatbelts and secure the overhead bins—things are going to get slightly humorous.

So, as you know, I like to live life on the edge. And while maybe it’s usually the edge of sanity, or reason, the fact is that I’m pretty much a daredevil when it comes to travel, which I will get to in a minute. As you may or may not know, I’ve been away the last two weeks, having taken the Queen Mary 2 over to the United Kingdom with my whole family, parents, siblings, and children included. Then we all split up and went our separate ways, with me, Ken, and K going first to Wales and then to Scotland. It was an excellent trip—let me break it down for you. First, the boat (which my dad keeps telling me is a “ship” not a “boat”, so if you’re extremely old and extremely rich, the Queen Mary is definitely the “ship” for you. Unfortunately, I am NEITHER, so it was an interesting experience to be on that particular BOAT, DAD, haha.)

Things I liked about the Queen Mary 2:
a) Like most cruise ships, it was decorated like an upscale brothel, which made me feel very risqué.
b) The beds were comfortable and you could stay in them all day if you wanted to.
c) You could get breakfast brought to your cabin instead of having to get dressed, and it didn’t cost anything extra.
d) The food was OK. There was always bacon, and I mean real bacon, not those weird-ass slabs of pan-fried ham that the Brits think is bacon. Silly Brits.
e) There were two guys who played the piano and told jokes, and they were so funny that I saw them twice.

Things I didn’t like about the Queen Mary 2:
a) You could stay in your bed all day because there was literally nothing much else to do that was interesting or didn’t cost you a lot of extra money. The lectures were either on war, politics, or Broadway musicals, and the other “seminars” were sponsored by the Spa, as in ‘Come to our session on Botox and hear an expert talk about why it’s so great and then you can get a discount on a costly Botox treatment’, or by the Art Gallery, as in ‘Come to our session on this unknown artist and then you can buy his extremely expensive painting of emoji-faced lollipops for a significant discount’. The other activities all had costs associated with them, like the red wine tasting entitled, “Syrah, Shiraz? What’s the difference? Find out for a nominal fee of $120”. 120 bucks for a flight of 6 small glasses of wine? For that price, I can wait until I get home, buy 10 full bottles and find out for myself, so Que Syrah Shiraz to you. There were also art classes for a fee, and a variety of other things you could do that all cost extra. Why is that a problem? Because whenever there was any activity for free, it was a MOB SCENE. For example, there was a free rum tasting at the duty-free liquor shop one day, and people were rioting like it was the only Red Cross water truck in the middle of the desert. And yes, obviously I was there because it was FREE RUM. Just as I was about to get my tiny plastic cup, a guy beside me whined that he’d been waiting for twenty minutes and still hadn’t gotten any. I was like, “Here’s the line-up, mate. Try standing in it.” Because I’m CANADIAN, and we are extremely OCD about line-up protocols, which a lot of other countries aren’t and it makes me crazy. I firmly believe that the inherent understanding of how to line up in an orderly fashion is what makes a culture civilized, and the Fall of the Roman Empire can be directly traced back to their inability to queue properly.
b) The ship’s House Band was a group known as “Purple Haze.” Mostly because they covered the whole ship with a fog of Motown and cover songs. They weren’t actually bad if you like a reggae version of Justin Beiber’s ‘Love Yourself’—they were just EVERYWHERE. In the lounge after breakfast—Purple Haze. Poolside at lunch—Purple Haze. In the ballroom during afternoon tea—Purple Haze. In the very sad little disco that no one ever went to because most of the passengers went to bed at 10 pm—Purple Haze. I swear if the ship was ever sinking, it would be to the “fine musical stylings of Purple Haze”.

Overall, the good outweighed the bad. It was a very relaxing crossing, and the best part was that our whole family was together for the journey. And seeing K all dressed up for dinner was pretty cool.

My Week 141: OCD Much?

Wednesday: OCD much?

Last week, I was looking at Facebook, and someone had posted an article about one of the many Kardashian creatures and her apparent OCD. The Kardashian in question is “Kloe”, and maybe she thinks she has OCD, but I took one look at her refrigerator and freezer, and I was like “No. Just no.” Because her refrigerator and freezer made MY OCD flare up like fireworks on Victoria Day. First, her refrigerator was JAM-PACKED full of stuff. And maybe it was organized by type, but the pickle jars were all squished up against each other (who the hell needs 6 jars of pickles anyway), the salad dressing was nestled up against the mustard, and there was no satisfying equi-distance between ANYTHING. But the worst part was that there were 6 butter sticks which were NOT stacked evenly, and the margarine tubs were on a tippy, nay, haphazard angle. Lady, just because you have six cans of Red Bull lined up in a row doesn’t mean anything other than you’re probably more wired than most people. Also, the sheer amount of stuff in that refrigerator mostly proves you’re some kind of self-indulgent shopaholic with more money than brains. Then I read on about how she takes several boxes of Oreos and tosses them into jars. Jars! You’re taking Oreos out of their neat straight rows and dumping them willy-nilly into glass containers, where the cookie dust gets all over everything. And what if some of them break in the process? Now you can’t even eat them.

So I was irked. My own OCD isn’t even that bad on most days—in fact, you might not even notice it, unless you look around my house and realize that all objects of décor are organized in patterns of fives (and sometimes threes or sevens), or you’ve watched me put groceries on the conveyer belt in a symmetrical fashion according to size and shape and with one inch of space between all items, or you’ve seen me in the bathroom washing my hands simply because doing that fills me with a sense of profound relief, or you’ve noticed that my thumbs are bleeding because my dermatophagia (which thank goodness is limited to my cuticles) is out of control right now and I’m not sure why.

I think a big part of the problem is that I don’t like strangers touching my stuff. This past weekend, Ken and I had a garage sale, so you can only imagine how high my stress level shot up, as stranger after stranger wandered around my yard, picking up things and putting them down in different places than the ones I’d assigned to them. It took all I had not to follow people around, re-arranging behind them, or not yelling, “If you don’t want to buy that, can you please put it back where you found it?!”

Plus I hate how judge-y people are at yard sales:

Woman: Will you do better than $20 dollars for this table?
Me: It’s from the late 1800s, so no, I’m sorry.
Woman: But the legs are a little rickety. Will you go $15?
Me: No, sorry.
Woman: Hmph. Then I’ll pass.
Me: No problem. Can you please put it back where you found it?

Seriously. An antique side table worth 5 times the price and she passed at $20 because the legs were a little “rickety”. What, was she planning to sit on it? Otherwise, it was just fine as a table. But we did sell a lot of stuff, including Frank the stuffed fish whose story you can read about in My Week 34. A woman came very early, and bought a lot of things for exactly the price we were asking and never haggled once. She admired Frank, who we’d pulled out of the shed to put by the side of the road on the grounds that neither of us REALLY wanted a dead fish in the house, so I told her she could have him for free. She loaded all of her purchases into her car, then suddenly she came back to the house. “Here,” she said, holding out a $10 bill. “That’s for the fish. I know he’s worth a lot more.” When we protested that no, she could just have him, she insisted, and tucked the bill into a glass on the table. “Don’t argue,” she laughed, and then drove away.

The other best part of the morning was when my aunts came for a visit. After looking around for a while, one of them asked if she could dig up a little bit of Solomon’s Seal from my garden for hers. They both disappeared for a minute, then my other aunt came around the corner of the house with the plant hanging out of a bag.

“Hey,” I yelled. “That crazy woman is taking plants from the garden!! Lady! Those aren’t for sale!!”

Then I realized that some of my prospective customers were looking at her, as she blithely made her way to the car. “Do you want me to stop her?” one man asked, concerned.

“No,” I laughed. “She’s family. It’s all good.” Because family is ALLOWED to touch my stuff.

Some Stories Should Never Be Told, A Mysterious Visitor

Wednesday: There are some stories you should never tell.

On Thursday afternoon, one of my coworkers came over to my department. “Do you want to hear a funny story?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “I love a good story.”

“OK,” he started. “So I had this graph—“

“I’m stopping you right there,” I said. “There is NO funny story that starts with ‘I had a graph’.”

But he persisted, and it turned out that the story WAS pretty funny, involving him and an editor who disagreed on the information in the graph to the point where my colleague removed the original of the item in question and sent it back to edit. 5 minutes later, the editor came to his desk to ask him if he knew what had happened to the first copy. When he feigned innocence and said, “No”, the editor pointed to the recycling bin under his desk and asked, “Isn’t that it right there?” because he had tossed in the blue box FACE UP. His only resort was to say, in mock surprise, “How did THAT get there?!” I don’t think the editor was fooled for a second—they’re a wily bunch.

I realize that you’re probably not laughing as hard as I was when he told me the story, mostly because there’s a lot that gets lost in translation between a story that you try to write down after someone tells it to you. My colleague DOES tell a good story, graphs notwithstanding, unlike other people I’ve known, including myself, who is renowned for being “just not that funny in person” as I am when I’m writing. It put me in mind of the end-of-year staff breakfasts we used to have in my previous workplace, where one of the VPs was always invited up to give his “Top 10 Funniest Moments” of the school year. They were always, without exception, anti-climactic and often lacking any discernible punchline.

VP: So we caught the young couple in the throes of amorous foreplay in the middle of the football field. The girl’s mother, naturally, was furious. So much so that we had to call Child and Family Services. I hope that group home they sent her to was nice…

VP: The young man was so high that he couldn’t stop laughing. At least until the police showed up. Then it was just tears, tears, tears…

tree-of-life

Yep. The guy did NOT know how to tell a story.

But it occurred to me after all the weird storytelling this week, that there are other storystarters that really can’t ever be funny. Here are my top 5 things which, from my personal experience, will never lead to a good laugh:

1) Here’s a funny story—you know the sound a cat makes right before it vomits…?

A long time ago, we had a cat named Chaucer who would puke on an almost daily basis. We had him tested for all kinds of things, but there was nothing discernible wrong with him. Yet almost every day, he would announce the upcoming projectile with an unearthly yowling. Then we had to race around the house looking for him, trying to put something under him before he ruined yet another carpet. We were having a dinner party once, and we were just in the middle of appetizers when the conversation was interrupted by “OWLLLLL, MEOWWWWWLLLLLL, MRONNNNNNGGGGGG !” Everyone looked terrified. Ken leapt up and ran out of the room with his napkin. I took another bite of salad and said, “It’s just the cat. He’s going to throw up. Sigh.” This went on for years, until our dog died (the same dog I wrote about last week who used to leave his food in his bowl all day). After a few weeks, we got another dog who ate every piece of kibble in under 10 seconds, and miraculously, the pukefest stopped. Then one day, we heard Chaucer sounding the alarm and found him next to a piece of dog kibble that had rolled under the counter. Turns out that he had been eating the dog’s food every day for years, and it made him sick every time he did it. Cats are stupid in general, but Chaucer was dumber than most.

2) Here’s a funny story—so there was no wine left…

This is always a tragedy. The only way this story will ever be funny is if it ended with you finding more wine. I was at a wedding yesterday, and there was an open bar, which sounds fantastic, but all they had was hard liquor and tropical coolers. It would have been tragic, but then I realized that there were wine glasses on the table. And at dinner, the servers all came around with multiple bottles of wine and I was overjoyed. But the white wine was a Muscat, which is supersweet and almost undrinkable, and then I was sad again. It was an emotional rollercoaster, let me tell you.

3) Here’s a funny story—it occurred to me when I was reading the Bible…

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never found anything about the Bible, New or Old Testament, remotely funny. Maybe because of all the smiting and death and sh*t. And that’s a total lie, because I can find humour in everything, but people who are very Bible-y don’t have the same light-hearted attitude. I remember once writing about how I saw a billboard that said “Take Jesus on vacation with you”, and I wrote what I thought was a very funny post about what would happen if you DID take Jesus on vacation with you, like to Great Wolf Lodge. But I had a couple of readers who were devout Catholics (like there’s any other kind, haha) who were like “That’s not funny. Jesus would never go down a waterslide.” And I was like, “But all the water would be holy”, and they were like, “Just stop.” Luckily, they unfollowed me BEFORE I wrote about the high diving Jesus on the church door across the road (see My Week 63 for reference—or irreverence).

4) Here’s a funny story—I was looking at the roof and a squirrel came out…

This is the stuff that nightmares are made of. This actually happened to me when we owned a cottage. This entitled squirrel decided that she owned the place and she was super-intimidating. I started calling her “Charles Manson” until Ken pointed out that she had two rows of squirrel boobs, so I changed her name to “Squeaky Fromme”. One day I looked up at the roof, and saw her halfway in and halfway out of a little hole under the eaves. I started screaming, and she took off. Later, Ken and I were sitting on the porch—I had my back to the driveway. Suddenly, I heard a noise, like a demon muttering, and I turned around—Squeaky was actually sneaking up on me. She had taken up residence in our attic, where she had some babies who were also little dicks. We finally live-trapped them all and drove them out to the country (this, unfortunately, is not a euphemism—Ken was all like “Oh, we can’t just kill them…” and normally I would agree, but that squirrel had devil-eyes, to borrow a phrase from the great Tracy Morgan).

I’m sure you all have story starters that will never be funny—I have a lot more but Ken wants to go shopping so I have to wrap this up. As a side note, I asked Ken to think of a story starter that would never be funny:

Ken: Ummm…
Me: You can’t say ‘death’.
Ken: Oh. OK, what about “So I was in the hospital waiting room…”
Me: What did I just say?
Ken: Right.

Thursday: Mysterious visitors in my condo

When I came back to Toronto after my extended vacation/recovery from surgery, I found a rolled up piece of tinfoil on my coffeetable. I didn’t know where it had come from, but Ken had been there with me for a couple of days in August, so I asked him if he’d left it there. “Maybe,” he said. “Did it look like a chocolate wrapper?” It kind of did, so I didn’t give it more thought. Then, a couple of weeks ago, when I went back for the week, it was really hot. I’d had the air conditioning on the night before, but I shut it off before I went to work. When I came back, the air conditioning was on full force, and I got a little worried. After searching my condo, which took about 20 seconds since it’s only 600 square feet, I was still worried. But then I realized that I was probably being ridiculous—what kind of intruder waits inside your condo all day for you to come home and at some point is like. “Gosh, it’s hot under this bed—I should turn the air conditioning on while I wait”? When I told Ken, he was like, “Come on—you probably just forgot to turn it off. Don’t worry—just keep the chain lock on when you’re home.”

But then the other night, I got ready for bed. I turned off all the lights and put the fan on. I fell asleep, but a couple of hours later, I woke up like a shot for some reason. Then I realized that the hall light was on, and the FAN WAS OFF. I freaked out and did what any reasonable person would do—I called Ken. But he didn’t answer, being that I thought the clock said 5 minutes to 11, but it really said 5 minutes after 1. I searched the condo again, even more worried because, thanks to Ken, my chain lock WAS on, which meant that I was potentially LOCKED IN with someone nefarious who hated both the dark and cool breezes. So there I was, phone to my ear, ringing and ringing, while I flung open closet doors and threw aside bed skirts. Nothing. Finally, I just went back to sleep, still a little freaked out. Ken messaged me in the morning to ask why I’d tried calling him at 1 in the morning and I answered, “Here’s a funny story—”

My Week 75: Ken is Weirder Than Me, Is That a Light Sabre in Your Pocket…?

Sunday: Ken is weirder than me and I can prove it

I realize that I have my own quirks. I’m sure I do, even though I’ve sat here for several minutes trying to think about what they might be. OK, here’s one—I might be a tad “obsessive”. Two weeks ago, I lost the back of an earring in my bathroom. I looked all over for it and couldn’t find it. It wouldn’t have made much difference except that it was a rather expensive, sterling silver earring back, specially designed to screw onto the earring post instead of just slide onto it. The last time one of them fell off, I stepped on it and crushed it. When I went to the jewelry store for a replacement, the woman asked if I wanted white gold or sterling, and that there was a price difference between the two. I asked how much the gold one might be, and was shocked—Ken and I could have gone to the Keg for that price. So I went with the silver, which cost the equivalent of Swiss Chalet for a family of four. Needless to say, when I heard the earring back drop onto the floor, I had a moment of panic. Which only increased as it became obvious that it had disappeared into some vortex of hopelessness under my bathroom vanity. I got down on my hands and knees, but I have sensitive knees and the wooden floor is hard, so I ended up lying prone, sweeping my arm back and forth under the vanity, hoping that I could feel it. Nope. Then I systematically moved all the furniture in the room and swept underneath everything. Nope. Ken got a flashlight, and looked into the far reaches of the baseboards. Nope. I got my hair dryer and blew it underneath the vanity. All I got for my efforts was dust bunnies. I went back to Toronto that week, very put out, and creating plans in my mind for how to best find the earring back. OK, I realize that this is probably the most “first world” problem that I could possibly have, but imagine if, instead of me, a government employee, and the missing object, an earring back, I was a farmer, and the object was my goat. No one would think twice if I was obsessing over the fact that my goat had mysteriously disappeared from a small, locked room. But I had a clever plan that would surely turn up my goat. When I came home last weekend, I got the vacuum cleaner out, and put the toe of a pair of panty hose on the end of the nozzle. I only have one pair of panty hose, having refused to wear them for the last 18 years on the grounds that they make my legs twitchy, which is maybe like another quirk. These nylons were from a Hallowe’en costume that I’d worn for my birthday party, and they were all glittery. I’d put them on and within 5 minutes, I was regretting having skin. At the end of the party, I may or may not have torn them off, wadded them into a ball, and flung them into the far reaches of the closet, screaming “F*cking panty hose! I hate you! I hope you die!” Anyway, Ken also thought my plan was pretty good, and watched supportively while I sucked up more lint with my clever contraption. Finally, I went to clean the nozzle. “Eureka!” I yelled, my heart soaring as I saw something silver in with all the hair and dust. Ken said, “Did you find your earring back?” “Well,” I answered, heart sinking again, “I found AN earring back. This one looks like it’s been under there for about 20 years.” I have as yet been unable to locate my goat, and Ken is now convinced that it must have fallen down the hole around the sink pipe. Now though, every time I go into the bathroom, I look around in hope. Hope which is immediately dashed as I realize that my goat/earring back is gone forever.

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Anyway, back to Ken. I may be obsessive about things, but Ken is weirder than me. This simple trip to the grocery store is my proof.

1) On Sunday after lunch, we decided to get groceries. As we were leaving, he turned the outside lights on. “How long do you think we’re going to be gone for?!” I asked. He claimed it was just force of habit, but I worried that it would attract burglars. “Oh look,” the burglars will say. “Their outdoor lights are on. They must be away from home for a LONG time. Let’s go steal their stuff.” When I told Ken that, he scoffed and said that Titus would scare off any burglars. Titus just laughed and said, “Hey man—this tail wags ITSELF.” And while I have no idea what that means, I now know why our electric bill is so high. (As a side note, while I was writing this, someone came to the door, and Titus barked like crazy then sat in front of me protectively while I talked to the person, so maybe I’m wrong about the whole burglary thing. And I’m baking him special cookies today as a thank you.)

2) As I got into the SUV, I looked back at the house and realized that there was a large, plastic bag on the roof of the porch. “Hey, Ken,” I said. “There’s a large, plastic bag on the roof of the porch. How the hell did it get up there?”

Ken: It was probably the wind.
Me: What? There’s no way the wind could have blown it up there. Do you know anything about this?
Ken: Um…
Me: What did you do? What’s in the bag?
Ken: Dog poo.
Me: Why in the name of God is there a large bag of dog poo on the porch roof?!
Ken: Well, I was scooping up Titus’s poo in the yard, and I thought I’d try throwing the bag into the garbage can from over by the fire pit. I aimed a little high, I guess.
Me: When was this?
Ken: Thursday.
Me: Why the f*ck is it still up there?!
Ken: The ladder’s all snowy. I was waiting for the weather to get warmer. Don’t worry—it’s not going anywhere.
Me: I can’t even. Get it off there today.

3) Then, as we were on our way to the grocery store, Ken insisted on taking his fancy shortcut, which is intersected by the train yard. Every single time we go that way, we get stopped by the slowest f*cking train in the universe. Sometimes they even just stop on the tracks. I’ve asked Ken why he always wants to take that route, and he claims that it’s “usually faster”, which is what I call “a lie”. If I had a dollar for every time we had to turn around and go a different way, I’d have enough money to buy another earring back.

4) Then we got to the grocery store. Instead of going to the normal, human cashier, Ken always wants to use “self-check-out”. Self-check-out is the single most inefficient thing ever invented, even worse than a salad spinner (because the lettuce is NEVER DRY ENOUGH). We have never once been through the self-check-out where we haven’t had to “call for an attendant” because I didn’t put the item in the bag properly, or the scanner can’t read the bar code, or God forbid, we have a coupon. As usual, this trip was no different because Ken tried to rearrange the items in the old, reusable bags that he makes us use because it’s “better for the environment”, and it freaked the machine out. Then we had to wait for a human cashier to come and reset the scanner. Seriously, let’s cut out the middleman and just use the human. The worst part about the self-check-out is at the end, where the machine has the nerve to say, “Please indicate how many bags you wish to purchase.” I don’t WISH to purchase ANY bags, frankly. But Ken won’t let me lie and say “Zero”, even though I tell him it’s semantics, and that if the machine would simply say, “How many bags are you using?” I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Nah, I still would.

5) We were finally on our way home. Ken decided to take the highway. It’s literally one kilometre (which is like .6 of a mile), but when I looked over, I realized he had the cruise control on. For ONE KILOMETRE. I said, “Really? You can’t keep your foot on the accelerator for two minutes?” But Ken is convinced that cruise control is better for the vehicle—less wear and tear on the engine. This is one of his many “theories about cars” that make me give my head a shake. Like, you can’t have the windows down if you have the air conditioning on. I’m like “Why? It’s not like we’re paying for the air conditioning, and I like the combination of cold air on my feet and warm air on my shoulders.” But Ken insists that it puts “strain on the engine”. I think he’s just making it up, and sometimes just to bug him, I’ll put down the window when he has the air conditioning on. Then, when he turns the air off, I put the window back up. Then he puts the air back on, and I put the window down again. Then…well, you get the idea. I’m fun and annoying all rolled into one little package.

6) I can mock all I want, but Ken’s best quirk is when we finally get home, and it’s really cold, and he says, “You go on ahead and open the door, and I’ll bring the groceries in.” Because he might have some strange affectations, but he’s the greatest husband ever. He does all the heavy lifting, in more ways than one, puts up with my earring back obsessions, and he never complains when I write about him. Of course, he hasn’t read this yet…

Thursday: K gets a light sabre.

I called K’s cell on Thursday night, and she answered on speakerphone:

Me: Where’s your dad?
K (distracted): What? I don’t know…
Me: What are you doing right now? What are those noises?
K: It’s my new, awesome light sabre.
Me: Please. Tell me all about your “new, awesome light sabre”.
K: It’s airplane grade aluminum, polycarbon blades, and LED lights.
Me: How much did it cost?
K: __________ dollars.
Me: What?!! Are you joking?!
K: It’s totally worth it.
Me: Holy sh*t. If you can afford to spend that kind of money on a light sabre, I’d better be getting a really amazing Mother’s Day present.
K: Yeah, for Mother’s Day, I’ll let you touch my light sabre.
Me: Honey, I changed your diaper for two years. Your “light sabre” and I are no strangers.
K: Oh my god, Mom! My light sabre is NOT a euphemism.
Me: No, but it would be a great pick-up line: “Hey baby—want to come back to my place and see my light sabre…”
K: Mom, stop! That’s—oh sh*t, I just hit the dog with it.
Me: Well, as long as you don’t cut off his paw and tell him that you’re his father.
Titus (in background): K’s my father?! Best day ever!!!
Me: Sigh. Tell your dad I called.

I came home last night, and K showed me the light sabre. She wasn’t lying. It is pretty awesome, but I needed to get one thing cleared up:

Me: Why doesn’t it retract?
K: Because it’s not actually a REAL light sabre. Obviously.
Me: So long as we all understand that, I’m good. Use the force, Luke. Find my earring back.