This blog post is dedicated to a pretty kick-ass lil’ lady I have had the pleasure of hanging out with over the past few months. All the very best to you and your new life in Toronto! And Happy 18th Birthday!

Road trip to Montreal! Ben and I went in one car while everyone else went in another. Ben pumped his tunes and we we participated in some friendly sibling competition. First we had a dance off (yes while one of us drove), then sang, then rapping and finally, as things always end, a hand in the mouth competition. I had my fist three quarters into my mouth when a cop car flew in front of us with it’s lights on. I pictured us getting pulled over, each of us with our hands fully inserted into out mouths. Like we knew the biggest secret ever but we were keeping a lid on it. Like we had a car full of drugs or WMDs and couldn’t trust ourselves not to say anything. Like we had escaped from a mental institution and a hand in mouth competition was just totally normal. The cop ended up pulling the car over in front of us and not us. Thank god, we thought, that would have seriously disrupted the competition.

Road Trip # 2! Because of some extreme staff shortages I volunteered to drive the kid I have been working with, home to Toronto. She was turning 18 and free from group homes forever. I felt honoured to be the one driving her out into the real world. The whole trip was a celebration of a kid becoming an adult, of sweet, sweet freedom and it was wonderful. I even let my kid DJ the event. She told me she was putting on EDM. I asked what that meant. Electronic dance music, duh! But wasn’t all dance music electronic? What a redundant acronym. She shook her head at me like she couldn’t believe I had the brain power to function on a daily basis. After a few songs I realized something was missing. Like this music can’t really be enjoyed without alcohol and or drugs. But I can’t say that to my kid. Then she said it. And I quietly agreed.

Then she switched to uplifting/sad songs. We both cried our faces off listening to Time of Your Life while driving beside a frozen Silver Lake. She wanted me to listen to the lyrics of the saddest rap song she had ever heard too. After a few minutes she asked what I thought of the song, I admitted, like the secret adult I feared I was becoming, that I had no idea what the rapper had been saying the whole time. He spoke fast, had a lisp and was not enunciating to my standard. She found me some old people rap I could recognize like DMX, Eminem, Fifty Cent and the Notorious BIG. She was equally impressed that I had an iPhone loaded with Kanye and Kid Cudi (thanks Ben for telling me about those artists, I never listen to them but they make my music playlist way more badass).

Another alarming thing happened while I was listening to the rap music that I could actually understand…I started making making Mom face whenever the lyrics were sexually explicit or became offensive. I would scrunch up my face and do short side to side head shakes just like my Mom when she had to listen to Ben and I converse with our intense pirate swearing. Me! The same person who initially became friends with her husband because we both knew all the lyrics the Ballad of Chasey Lain, a seriously smutty song by the Bloodhound gang! I got so pissed off with myself for being so lame that I tried not to move my face at all when the next vocal hurdle arrived. I think at that point I started making more constipated face but it was an improvement. I felt like I was one step away from wearing eighties Mom jeans and I was stressed about it. I even made horrendous Mom music mistakes like when she put on PitBull and I asked if it was PitDog? Like, I should know better. We were listening to Justin Timberlake’s Holy Grail and there was a line, which I was positive said “I just can’t get your goat.” She heard it too. I had once had a music teacher yell at me and say “Don’t get my goat!” At the time I looked around wondering where the goat was and how I had attempted to get it but now I realize it’s just a weird, stupid saying. Then she thought it was “I just can’t get your coat” which makes sense because the next line says, “the next day you’re so cold.” We felt confident in that line until we googled it and it turned out to be “I just can’t crack your code.” The coat one made way more sense Justin, please consider consulting us and not Jay-Z before your next album.

I have crazy dance music on my phone from when I lived in England that she just loved. We were dancing so hard the car was shaking. I was driving so my only dance moves were striking a pose, there’s nothing to it, VOGUE & the robot. We were killing it with car moves when we realized a car full of dudes next to us were dancing with us. For the next few kms they tried to hang out with us…on the 401…dancing…while driving 120 km/h. I felt like I was 16 again.

We belted out so many Whitney Houston songs that by the time we got to Toronto my voice was permanently damaged.

Driving home was less exciting. My legs always start to hurt. Mainly because I refuse to use cruise control. I’m already a pretty distracted driver. I can do a million things while driving, so if I don’t even have to pay attention to the gas pedal I fear that I will forget I am driving all together and start reading or napping or something.

I passed the giant apple thing and was shocked to see the apple pies sold count at 8, 783, 294. It ended in 4. This made me want to go in, buy two pies and wait for them to change it to a six. Why were they not rounding? Why did the single pie matter? Who was the OCD go getter that suggested being that accurate? I contemplated this and stressed out about this until the next service station.

Just as I was arriving back into CP my favourite Soundgarden song came on, Outshined. I had never heard this line before but it made me terribly happy, “I’m looking California but feeling Minnesota.” I decided I would use that in a sentence before the end of the week and maybe even mix it up, maybe on a bad hair day I would look Minnesota. SO awesome. I remembered that one time I was in a band for 10 minutes we covered a few Soundgarden songs. I still want to start a Soundgarden, female led, cover band. And also an Aretha Franklin cover band. I think they could be the same band. And I just totally blew your mind.