I was on a major cleaning streak and I was listening to a best female voices playlist on my magical headphones that use blue teeth. Mary J Blige’s song Family Affair came on. I was scrubbing my stove like a stay at home Mom with no kids on cocaine, and started singing along to the song. I thought how cool is it that she is singing about Francophones being the life of the party. A bit random but probably true. If you are in a club and one side is English and the other is French, I think probably more fun and crazy things are happening on the party en Francaise. Many adult women in Quebec have blue or purple hair (maybe this is just Gatineau) but it explains everything. Let’s get it Francophonie all night long up in this dancery. I mean listen to the song. I have no idea how it is anything but these words, until of course I googled it. No Francophones were sung about by Mary J unfortunately, not one.

Things I have yelled to my significant other while flipping through Facebook…
I need to go to Thailand, it’s a MUST.
It’s imperative I have a baby goat.
OMG its a clumsy pug!
I have to go to Iceland. Feminism in action!
Yikes do I ever need a scone right now. Those look delightful.
I need to stop eating scones altogether
My face looks thin! Oh no, now it doesn’t.

I was at work when a rather cute young man asked me a question. I felt he was definitely flirting. As I walked away, chuffed by the interaction, my coworker walks over and says that I have cheese in my hair as she pulls a little chunk of it out. Hot.

My brother and I were out for dinner. I remember he went to see a movie recently with my sister. Hey Ben – how was that movie about the Black Panthers? I totally want to see it. Ben explains it’s not about the Black Panthers and I am very confused because that is actually the name of it. He explains it a bit more and I think, wow, that’s very different, imagine if I had gone to see it and the whole time been like, I am so very confused right now.

It was at this same dinner where, after choking on a piece of rice for 20 minutes I vowed never to eat anything so light and small and obviously inhalable ever again. It’s just asking for trouble.

Went to see OLP (Our Lady Peace) and MGB (Matt Good Band), acronyms only 90s kids can understand. I did something a little crazy here. When they first announced the concert, the only floor seats available were between $250-$300. Now, I am confident that all of the members of these bands have day jobs to keep themselves afloat, but for some reason, they were charging legendary rock bands prices for little Canadian 90s pips. I wasn’t going to pay that but I also wasn’t going unless I was on the floor, front and centre. I have decided this is what being in your mid thirties is all about. Drawing lines between things you will do and won’t do, things you like and don’t like and how to shape your day to day experience to enjoy it as much as possible. Sitting at concerts is a real buzz kill for me and I won’t do it. So, everyday, for close to 2 months, I checked back on the website to wait for the day they realized they could not sell the tickets and would open them up at a cheaper price. Then, 4 days before the concert, I was panicking as I couldn’t believe I was not going, it happened. The Platinum seating option faded away and then $100 floor seats were introduced and within a couple of high intenseity minutes, they were mine. That was an extremely proud moment for me. I called my brother to tell him we were going and he said he had been waiting for this call because he knew I’d figure out how to get the good seats.

So we went. What a mixed bag of people at the concert. I loved the dudes that had never left the nineties, with the cargo jeans and Vans sweaters. I thought – keep on living it man. There were many people much older than me which I was surprised to see, as I pictured my Dad there being totally out of his element.

And then it happened, my high school rock hero came onto the stage. The same band I had listened to everyday on the school bus to my miserable, goth, emo high school experience. Matt Good came out with a football polo shirt on so wrinkled, I assumed he had spent the last hour having a Dad nap on the tour bus to prepare for staying up past 9. His face was rounded and his crowd conversation was nothing but a Forrest Gump reference but it was still magical. They struck the first chord of a song I listened to while wondering what my life would like as an adult, if I ever made it out of high school alive and I started to tear up. Emo baby returns. Ben pointed out that the drummer had 2 snare drums and that, as a drummer himself, it was blowing his mind. I told to Ben to look at the drummer, he was quite possibly in his eighties and might need a second one in case he forgets where the first one is. The bassist for the next band, OLP, was also definitely someone’s grandfather. We named him James Taylor and we thought he was the most fun to watch in the show. There were a lot of thumbs up that we appreciated from that guy. At one point both bands came on stage to sing a Matt Good classic and I had a Canadian Music nerd meltdown. I was crazy dancing, I was screaming the words, I even threw up some vintage devil horns and after it was done I had to put my hands on my knees to catch my breathe for the next 5 minutes because I had totally forgotten to breathe. We had tons of fun. Ben and I together are a pretty fun, non stop action comedy troupe with elaborate commentary and endless laughs. At one point I made a joke on his behalf and the girl next to him told him I was a keeper and he yelled at her angrily saying I was his sister. She looked horrified and Ben was almost crying. Good times.

The last few times I have been to the gym, there has been a Maserati SUV there. I am not a car expert but I imagine that car costs more money than I will ever have at my disposal in this lifetime. So I was extremely curious to see who drove it. Each time I was there, I would set up on the elliptical in front of the window, watching Drag Race on my phone while quietly stalking the car. Then one day I wondered if people were doing the same thing to me. The whole gym is windows that looks at the parking lot. Maybe people were quietly waiting to see who drove the extremely dirty, key scratched, clown car with receipts papering most of the floor area. Maybe people were just as curious about my little hobo vehicle. Anyways, I finally saw the guy who owned the SUV. He looked rich aka his hair was unnaturally not grey and had been plugged back in but it was not as exciting as I hoped. To all those people wondering who drove the dirty, orange nub on wheels, I imagine I was a giant let down too.

A few days until vacation…with my MOM! We sat down to Easter dinner and got a bottle of wine out, knowing full well no one else was drinking it. Mom looked at my and said, well we might as well start practising for the vacation. Damn Ma, we are going to rock this trip.