I’ve become a little bit obsessed with my local Buy Nothing group. The massive plus side of paying higher than average rent for being in an affluent neighbourhood = the best damn freebies I have ever seen. “Someone please take these new MEC children’s snowsuits off of my hands. Worn once — was not feeling the vibe.” Like what??? That is some expensive shit. So because I have had some major scores from this site, I try to give things away equally. We recently upgraded our duvet and duvet cover and I thought I should give away the old cover. Someone showed interest and I left it on my porch for pickup. The woman sent a message back thanking me for the duvet cover and noted that she found a pair of my underwear in the cover itself. Sweet god above, at least I had washed the duvet before handing it off. Clean underwear or not, kind of fucking awkward. Then she offered to come back and put them in my mailbox. Goddd. I was so embarrassed. It totally reminded me of the time my parents were collecting items in the house to take to a church fundraising garage sale: I was in my twenties and had grown out of some earlier fashions and handed my Dad some clothes and several purses. I was pretty sure I had done my good deed of the day. My parents returned and my Dad came down to the basement and quietly told me that when they dropped off the purses they found some pot, condoms and a broken cigarette in them. Maybe something to check before you give purses away. I wanted to die. Ya know… Kind of like how I gave my Glebe neighbour a pair of my fucking undies.

I have also been a bit obsessed with my Fitbit. During the first week, I was so intensely focused on getting in my steps that if I noticed I wasn’t wearing it, walking was meaningless. One time, I realized I wasn’t wearing it and actually sat on the spot thinking about how to get the watch without wasting invisible steps that would not be recorded. When I realized you could do walking competitions with your Fitbit friends shit got real. For weeks I was involved in a competition with my brother and all of his coworkers. I have never met them but dammit I needed to beat those bloody strangers. After that stopped, my significant other bought one. And those competitions got heated and intense. Occasionally he would say he was going out to get something and then would do a sneaky walk around the block to get ahead. I started walking home from work, which took just under an hour, to make myself impossible to beat. Once during a disagreement I started aggressively walking in spot to make sure my steps topped his. Aggression release, competition and fitness all rolled into one neat little package. 

After shopping recently, these were the things that made me feel old:

1. The first floor of Simon’s. Yes, I thought the clothes were cute and trendy and had signs describing them like “fit and flare style, abstract shirtdress.” I have no idea what that is, but it looks like it might drape over my buxom body nicely. When I tried them on…  they did not. When I gave all of them back to the sales associate, she told me I would do better fitting into clothes upstairs. Which is the adult, beige section. Ok, ok I get it. My body doesn’t fit into your fun clothes section. Noted. (And rude!)
2. I went to many, many stores looking for cotton Capri leggings. Why is this so hard? Why is every Capri some kind of sporty, synthetic garbage that is going to give me next level crotch rot because the material doesn’t breathe? COTTON! Whyyy is this so hard!?
3. I was confused by the bathroom signs. I had to triple check to ensure I was not entering a family or male bathroom. When basic signs confuse me I get a vision of my future as a scared, confused older person is right around the corner. It is happening. 

I guess we are in the middle of a pandemic. When I even remotely got a whiff of this my first trip was to the liquor store. I have my priorities. I always knew if we ever got to the apocalypse I would just grab a book, a bottle (ahem, box) of wine and sit on my porch to watch it all happen. If I can’t control it, I can’t stress about it. And by not stressing about it I mean I will be drunk. 

But in the wake of serious panic about the current crisis, I have been surprised by what I have felt has been necessity. Here is my list:

1. Wine – I grabbed 5 bottles at the beginning when there was just even a hint of this. I have since had 3, maybe 4, bought one more, and have purchased an emergency gin. If I need to be stuck in my apartment for weeks I am ok, but I will also be having a party. I can be pretty fun by myself.
2. Cookies – Once in a blue moon do I feel the need to buy cookies and when the panic was hitting and we were grocery shopping, I just kept grabbing all the gf cookies I have always wanted to try or knew I enjoyed. Like when the virus comes for me, don’t worry, I will fight it with my obesity. 
3. Mac and Cheese – The only time I EVER buy mac and cheese is when I am very hormonal or very depressed. There is never a casual purchase of mac and cheese. I am neither of the above, so I guess I am just craving the ultimate comfort food.
4. Expensive water – Like at no point do I have the idea that we are going to have issues with our water supply. But when I went to Healthy Planet and saw they had Flow water on sale, I bought a case. And then went back for another. And don’t worry, I am drank most of them. They are not being kept for the point where water becomes scarce or unclean. I am so into them right now I am not sure I will be able to go back to peasant filtered tap water. 
5. Chips, cereal and crackers – I guess what I did was think comfort foods for the apocalypse, I mean quarantine. And comfort foods for me are carbs. I am going to fight the pandemic with my chub rolls and I don’t care. 
6. Face cream – Now before you judge me… no, it’s okay, go ahead and judge. This is ridiculous. But in fairness, it also lined up with a sale that had been planned and I had set them aside before shit hit the fan. But I definitely walked to Whole Foods the day of the official quarantine to buy $150 worth of my Hauschka moisturizer (that was the price that included two discounts). I had a reality check when I realized I was in the aisle speaking to another woman about the benefits of different moisturizers when I saw a message from my friend saying Trudeau has said not to leave the house. I read it. And then I looked up to this woman and said, “Do you use an eye cream? Should I be using one?” To be fair, I also went for other essentials — like overpriced coffee. 
7. Coffee – After they announced Bridgeheads were closing I really started to panic. I wished my next destination had not been Whole Foods for the face cream because I only bought one bag of Equator coffee since the prices were so goddamned high. I then went to Shoppers and also bought a bag of Kicking Horse coffee. Even during the pandemic I need decent coffee. Now I was panic hoarding. It was in this vein that before I hit the cash I grabbed 4 packs of Mini Eggs. Just in case. JUST IN CASE.

Good News Items From The Pandemic:

1. We are all going to gain weight together, as a quarantined community. It won’t just be me for a change. Come along everyone! I will show you how!
2. We totally get to keep our library books that we currently have out, for a very long time. I may actually read this one — woot!
3. I FaceTimed my family for a cocktail hour — like when have we ever had a cocktail hour before and now we do it. Amazing. I have also had a FaceTime girl’s night. And no one had to pay for an Uber home — amazing!
4. I am going to get soooo caught up on Podcasts because I am doing so much walking, because what the fuck else is there to do.

The Ups and Downs of Working From Home:

Ups

1. My own bathroom – Oh my god. I cannot tell you how amazing this is. If you have read my last blog, you will understand how seriously magic this is for me. Having my personal bathroom is all I ever really need in life. That and my supply of 3 ply toilet paper. It’s a fucking game changer. I am never going to work again. 
2. Music – Man do I enjoy cranking out the 60s and 70s playlists while I am working. And because I am here by myself it is okay for me to get up and dance and singalong whenever my heart desires. Okay, let’s be honest, I do this at work too but I am less judged here. 
3. Lunch – Instead of being herded to the cafeteria like sheep, the possibilities are endless! One day I went for a walk and another day I did yoga (what!? — Like when was the last time I did yoga ever…turns out it is still boring). And I don’t have to commit to a giant meal, I can dainty snack all day long. Wheee!

Downs

1. Being on camera all day long – I gave myself a headache the first 2 days of working from home because I think I strained my neck from trying not to double chin on the video meetings. I also realized after the first day, which included meetings with my boss and director, that there was a picture over my left shoulder that read “I’m too sober for this shit.” Greeaat.
2. Easily distracted – I was like this in school too. If I had to write an essay, I would find every last thing to clean before I got started. Last week I definitely took a forced break to clean the windows on the door behind me because once I noticed them, I could not focus on anything else. Oh should I wipe down this desk again because I see dust? Yes, yes I should. 
3. No steps – I did not realize that I got most of my steps walking to and from bus stops and wandering around work. So now I have to go for long, daily walks in order to get my steps in.
4. My cat – Tiger, who can be in chair comas for days, has magically come alive since I start working from home. He is so active that he has participated in three of my conference calls to date. I feel like the guy whose children walk in when he is on his live broadcast except my child aggressively nuzzles me, meows, sheds to an extreme level and drools. 

Overheard before the pandemic: “If we get to stay at home and I have all this time on my hands I am going to live my best life! I am going to workout! I am going to write! I am going to finish my online classes! I am going to become famous!” Fast forward to last night where I spent 6 hours on the couch watching Homeland and sipping the cheapest wine, right from the bottle, thinking: “I am going to live my best life! Like right after this episode…”

Dominican 2020

Pre Game

This was the first trip where we have ever used the Park and Ride. This was semi necessary as we were flying out of Montreal at an ungodly hour. We parked our car and then ran towards the bus. When he asked where we parked we looked at each other and pointed in a general direction, realizing we would never see the car again. 

When we got to the airport, I had my general airport stroke where I have no idea what I am doing or where to go. We managed to magically check our bags, go the wrong way, find the right way and then try and go through security with an over ripened banana and a bottle of water. And I don’t waste water y’all so the whole line had to wait for me to chug my precious Flow water. 

After we circled every food stand for the next 20 minutes, complaining about prices, lack of gluten free food, the lines and being generally indecisive, we sat in our flight area, casually staring at other people that would be on our flight. When I took off my coat I realized that my hoodie (which read – “Ok, but first kombucha”) or something health trendy was so covered in cat hair, I had an OCD meltdown. I had obviously tried to nap on the couch (Tiger’s couch) before we left and not realized that every inch of my black sweater was now an orange sherpa sweater. I started trying to pick off all the hairs and then got so into it, I took it off and tried to continue to pick each and every hair off one by one. I looked so insane, an older trio pointed and laughed. I did this for more than 45 mins. I cursed that I had packed my lint roller into my checked luggage and vowed to never be without one again. EVER!

I am always gently reminded as I sit down on a plane that they are, literally, the most uncomfortable modes of transportation I have ever encountered. You cannot move your legs, you cannot rest your head on anything to sleep, you cannot get comfortable and then, during the flight, random things on your body go numb and then hurt for no reason. No? Just me?

After sitting in our seats we were accosted by a gentleman telling us we were in his seats. Well no sir, we are not in your seats. And you know why? Because I know the fucking alphabet and can put the letters J and K together and match them with a sign. So fuck off. He called a flight attendant who showed him he was sitting on the other side of the aisle. Imagine that! There are two sections with the same number! Wild! Gawd.

My boyfriend leaned over just before taking off and loudly asked what that intense smell was. I leaned over and quietly explained that it was the woman sitting next to me and apparently before leaving for the airport she had been performing ceremony with 1000 lit incense sticks. He nodded in understanding and then we spent the next 6 hours being molested by Nag Champa. 

Game Time

When we landed, everyone clapped. You know how there are weird triggers in your life that you autopilot cry or tear up for? Like some nobody you have never heard of winning some olympic sport you give zero shits about, but they are up on that podium so you just cry? (Maybe this is just me.) But when a plane lands and people clap, I just totally tear up and have a little moment. Is it because we are alive? Maybe…

We piled onto our bus, taking good looks at all the characters that may be coming to the resort with us. I had already pointed out all the sketch people and was positive they would probably be in the room next to us for the whole week. As we drove to the different resorts, dropping off people, I was starting to have a full fledged panic. Each resort we had been to looked like total dives. I started explaining to the boy that I had researched ours and the reviews were pretty good and I hoped it wasn’t a bug infested dumpster fire. I checked my Fitbit and my heart was racing. They announced that EMOTIONS was the next resort (possibly the worst name for a resort that I have ever heard, felt very French Canadian) and I closed my eyes and just prayed to the beach gods we hadn’t booked a shit hole. We stopped, we got out and, deep breathe, it looked nice. Thank the sun and sand baby Jeebus. 

When we got there our room was not ready for us. They told us to go down to the buffet and help ourselves while we waited. Picture this, I am dressed in a half covered in cat hair black hoodie, jeans and Blundstones and holding a giant winter coat, walking into a restaurant where everyone is basically wearing bathing suits. Just blending right in. No big deal. I felt like I was representing a winter biker gang on the set of a beach party music video. We ate, drank a few margs and then went to our room. So up until this point, the resort is amazing. 

When we get to our room, it gets a little less amazing. The couch has enough dodgy marks and stains on it to guess it may have been a prop for a porn shoot and we instinctively knew we would never sit on it or else we would absolutely contract a disease. The other desk and table were white and also showed a thousand stains and scuffs. The bathroom is trying to be fancy but has obvious issues. There are gaps in the caulking, there are chunks out of the wall and the drain in the shower is basically there for show. There is no door to the bathroom, it is just part of the suite – awesome. The toilet has a decorative glass door on it, so when I start reacting to something stupid that I eat, I am basically doing it in the middle of the room. Weeee. When it came to the bed, we just had to disassociate. Every night I took my little lint roller (that was in my fucking checked luggage and not my carry on for my bloody kombucha hoodie travesty) and went over every inch of the bed. Mainly for foreign hairs (gag). The first night we had a thousand daiquiris and stayed up late brainstorming about the different diseases we could be contracting just by being in the bed. 

The bed was so hard it was like basically getting a spinal adjustment every night. I enjoy my spine being punched into submission, so I was fine.

This resort had a coffee shop in it. Did this play a large part in my interest in this resort? It did. I DRANK ESPRESSOS EVERY DAY. It was glorious. We had them every morning, we had them whenever we felt tired in the afternoon or when we felt like we were a bit too day buzzed to carry on. It was magnificent. It was all included too except for the luxury coffees. My favourite luxury coffee on the “Berevage Menu” was a cup of Tim Horton’s Coffee for $5 USD. Hahah! I wouldn’t take a free cup of Tim Horton’s let alone pay that much for it. I secretly prayed the whole trip I would see someone order it so I could speak to them about their life choices. Purely out of curiosity. 

On the first day we decided we were not going to fuck around with sunscreen (I usually chose one day to Russian roulette it). We stood out on our tiny balcony and sprayed and slathered every inch of our bodies. This took forever and made the balcony floor a terrifyingly dangerous, grease skating rink. At the precise moment we decided we had enough sunscreen on, we had packed our beach bags with all of our necessary things and decided to head to the beach, it started to rain. It was the perfect comical timing.

The beach was lovely. Although, walking into the water was a solid test of how much pain you could endure on the bottom of your feet. It was like walking on a bed of nails in order to swim. Which meant that by the second or third time doing this, I basically just jumped in swimming after 2 steps regardless of how badly I bottomed myself out and beached myself. It was just less painful. 

We spent the day (everyday) reading our books on the beach. At around 5, the boy wondered if he had drank too much and also considered the fact that he was having a stroke from possibly drinking the cheapest, off brand booze all day (Like Gin was called Gem, shit like that). I asked him why he thought that. He said it was because his eyes were randomly hurting and hard to focus. I explained that he was reading at dusk and that was just his eyes desperately trying to adjust to the light. Not a stroke. We has a good laugh. 

The entertainment that night was a terrible magic show where I considered tipping off PETA to the amount of tricks that involved a dove up the magician’s sleeve. RIP magic show dove. RIP. 

On one of the days that we were sitting next to the pool (because it was raining randomly every half an hour and we kept trudging back to the room every time it did) a man approached us about their spa services. I took a look knowing full well I was probably not going to the spa. I took out my phone and took a picture because one service interested me the most. “Linphatic Dreinage.” Because the services were phonetically spelled I could not possibly trust this spa. 

There was an interesting mix of people at our resort. There were the country Canadians that stood in the pool for hours every day with their hideous Big Bubbas in hand. They were there everyday, all day. Who comes that far and doesn’t prioritize the beach?! Anyhoo, there were also a couple groups of very young boys. Like disgusting teenage boys and they seemed be by themselves. Watching them eat dinner made my stomach turn. Plates and plates of food basically being thrown at their pimply faces. And I vowed then and there that I could never raise teenagers. One night at dinner, a DJ setup on the beach and started to play dance jams while we ate. When Usher’s Yeah came on, an anthem of my generation that no matter what effing music you are into, you dance to. And as I paid my homage to the song with a quick pursed lips and back slide, I saw the young boys didn’t move and had never heard of the song. Ho boy. Babies.

Going on vacation for me is half about reading and drinking and half about people watching. I could people watch for dayssss. Which is what I did. I become obsessed with groups of people, like the 2 couples that brought a full bottle (or two) of premium booze to their dinner tables each night and finished the whole thing while the boy and I looked on drinking the free paint thinner off-brand Rhem and coke. I even took notes of what booze they brought and looked them up after. One night the man’s phone rang like 16 times at the dinner table so the boy and I loudly joked about how important he was to have his work phone going off every 8 seconds while on vacation. You are SOOO importantttttt. 

I won’t bore you with every second of the trip (also, it is about at this time where I stopped writing notes and just drank more). But I will tell you about the day trip that was infamously the most harrowing day I have experienced in a long time.

For those of you that don’t know this about me (and how could you not, I talk about it regularly to try and normalize it) but I have some wacky digestive issues. And by wacky, I mean my stomach  basically runs its own program, completely unbeknownst to me. I try my best to repeat what has worked in the past and has produced positive results but there is no telling if it will work a second time. So on the day of our day trip that we booked, I woke up early to slowly whisper sweet nothings to my intestines in hopes that a full evacuation would occur before we got on a packed tour bus and drove for 2 hours. Lucky for me it worked and then right before leaving, it worked again! Yes! Do other people in their mid thirties cheer when they BM in the morning and pray it is the last of the day?? Probably not. But this gal does!

On the bus we sat next to chatty, young couple from Ontario. They introduced themselves as Annie and Adam from Oshawa. We laughed and said we were Angie and Alex from Ottawa. They said they were there for their 4th anniversary and asked how long we had been together I looked at the boy and said uhh, maybe 3 years? He replied that it was our fourth anniversary last week and I smiled and nodded pretending I was agreeing with the information or confirming my knowledge of it. An hour into the ride I wondered why we signed up for something that had us in a fucking tour bus for so long. I was starting to feel a bit queasy from the trip, which is a bit unusual for me. The boy from Oshawa also didn’t look great either. I let him know I had a couple medical options with me if he needed them. The couple asked what I had. As I started to rhyme off my list, I realized I was old. I had Advil, Tums, Gravol, Robaxacet, ginger, Imodium and digestive enzymes. For a day trip? Yes, I know, I know. Did I also have my expensive Hauschka cream? Yes! Because even in the fucking backroads of the Dominican, my face would be moisturized. He took an Advil, she took a Tums and I took both. Weeee. I am sure you are wondering why I did not take a Gravol at this point. I have taken Gravol once before in my life and I basically fell asleep in bumper to bumper traffic, while driving, having not read it makes you drowsy. So I have generally avoided it since then.

We made a couple stops on the bus, but I was generally feeling more and more car sick, which is not my normal ailment. They passed out baby bananas for everyone, which is great, because that is usually a safe food for me – yay! When we had been in the bus for over 2 hours, I knew we had made a mistake. We stopped at a school and I asked how much longer it would be until our destination. He said about twenty minutes. Ok, we can do this. I avoided the school because it makes me feel like such a white tourist trash watching impoverished children like a spectacle. I just can’t do it. We stopped once more to look at something and then as we returned to the bus, I felt that hideously familiar feeling of my tummy turning. I sat on the bus and I tried to relax. We pulled over again and I was annoyed. Will we ever get to our fucking destination?! Everyone got off the bus to see some plant farm and I run to the driver and ask how much longer until we are near a bathroom and he says 10 minutes. I can do this. I can do this. I start panic pacing while everyone has walked to these makeshift greenhouses. I look at the boy and tell him I am hitting emergency level. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I do know my body is rejecting something. When my tummy performs the dance called the rejection roll, I have a small window to find a private shelter for my body to remove the evil. I don’t know how much detail I should go into, but while everyone was looking at plants off the main road, passed the front of the bus, I raced down the country dirt road until another road intercepted it which was protected by a fence and bush…This, ladies and gentlemen, will be the place where I leave my dignity. This will be where things you only dream about in your nightmares, occur. This will be the day my body violently rejected the baby banana a thousand times over at the side of the road in the Dominican. A special shout out to the boy, who at this point is standing about 20 feet from me keeping watch while pretending we are taking pictures of a small houses. Like we had, for some reason, emergency ran in the opposite direction of everyone for this special chance to take a picture of this one, non-descript blue house. He hero’d out while I died. 

After the most hideous moment of my life, we quietly got back onto the bus. I looked like I had just had my body taken advantage of…by my own body. When the others got back on the bus, the Oshawa couple asked where I had been. I said nowhere, brushing them off and then looked out the window with dead eyes. When we got to the first destination which had a waterfall, a tree house and some mining activities, I spent most of the time in the bathroom being sick. At one point, the boy asked our tour guide if they could get a vehicle to take us back, because I was not feeling well. The tour guide didn’t seem convinced he could, but he said maybe. After a solid 45 minutes of me being sick and crying and wondering if they could casually hire a chopper to get me out of the fucking back country, my body stopped being an asshole. I quietly emerged from my jungle outhouse and nervously ate a bit of rice. I looked at the boy while tearing up, saying that tomorrow we would find all of this hilarious. After 20 minutes, the rice remained in my body and I knew the ordeal was over. I had survived. And thank fuck because we got back onto the bus for another hour, to get to the BOAT that was taking us the rest of the way. 

The only thing I could think of for the rest of the day was, imagine if this had happened when I was on this small boat packed in with all these people. I would have just thrown myself off the boat and risked death. The only funny thing that happened on the boat was when we passed another boat that looked the same as ours and everyone had life jackets on and then I realized none of us had life jackets on. As we motored past the other boat, the Oshawa guy and I both called the life jacket boat a bunch of pussies. As we laughed I remembered that the boy couldn’t swim, so I quietly whispered him the plan if the boat capsized. When we got to the caves we were boating to, the drawings on the cave walls were obviously put there by someone with a crayon, like a couple weeks ago. I was so confused that they were selling these as ancient drawings from the ancestors. I am like, this is basically shitty, modern grafitti done by children. Glad I nearly died to make it here to see this.

We made it back to the bus without flipping the boat or me jumping off it. When we finally got back to the resort, I cried, got a stiff drink, kissed the ground and vowed never to go on a tour bus ever again. The next morning, the boy marched to our tour guide contact and cancelled our other trip, demanding a full refund because well, I wasn’t getting on another fucking bus.

The next day I realized that not only had I lost every ounce of dignity on my trip, but I had also lost my Hauschka face cream. I guess my coping mechanism on the way home was to quietly curl in a ball and moisturize my face and then throw it on the ground or something. God dammit! No moisturizer for the rest of the trip?! Cancel it. Pack it up. Time to go home. 

The rest of the trip was just us reading on the beach and drinking all day long. The boy tried not to bring up the bus ride incident which I brought it up every minute because that’s how I deal with embarrassment. I shout it from the roof tops and then have a good laugh. My stomach was fine for every day of the trip except the one where it mattered.

The end.