One of the major perks of living in a nice hood is that garbage day can be pretty exciting. I was riding my bike home the other day and saw, what I thought, was a giant cat toy/castle. I went over for further inspection and thought, there is a possibility that this is some weird sex bench. Why would a cat toy apparatus have shag carpet on it. I wasn’t sure I was willing to gamble with that type of potential cleaning job for a thing my cat would probably ignore. Garbage day brings people out to the Glebe. On my way home from work I saw a guy with a holding thing/receptacle attached to his bike going through people’s tossed stuff scoring some decent material. My favourite garbage day story is when I was just about at my apartment and I saw a line of elderly people slowly walking down the street with their roller carts looking out for scores in the garbage. But there were enough of them that I definitely felt this was a planned outing. At some point their activity director had written Garbage Foraging Day Trip to the Glebe on a white board. May or may not include lunch, depending on what you find. Pretty industrious.

I had to run down to Shopper’s a couple nights ago as I realized my cat had run out of food and the vet was closed, so I couldn’t purchase his super fancy, expensive cat pate. On occasion, when feeling sassy, I spray some chemical nightmare, fancy smelling perfume on me at the entrance of Shoppers. On this occasion I spotted the perfume, Happy by Clinique, which I wore throughout high school (probably to desperately convince myself I was happy? I was not). As I was spraying it on myself, 2 shoppers employees (and their random friend) came to check up on me. I politely said no I was fine and started to turn away when one of them gave me a weird look. As I wondered if she was really that annoyed with me for sampling a tester I realized I was walking away with the giant silver lid for the perfume bottle. I laughed and went, ah right, won’t be needing that and then looked seriously at the three of them and said or maybe I needed it for my collection…Good recovery, you perfume top stealing weirdo. Thank god they laughed.

My first day of vacay I figured I’d relax at the parents and float in the pool sipping on prosecco. That night I was going to have a couple drinks with a friend in CP. My Mom asked how I was going to get home. Uber. How everyone gets home when there is no bus of any kind. Imagine my surprise to find out there is NO UBER IN THE VALLEY. There is a huge drinking culture there and no way to get home (except for like one cab who I think also deals drugs, but I’m speculating). There is a massive market there to be tapped people! I had to call DAD to get home. Or Mr. B to the other person I was with. It’s cool. I’m just a 33 year old pub crawling with my mate, who has to call my Dad (her former teacher) to get home. No biggie. When he walked into the bar we were at we were doing some girlie, sweet shot. #adulting

My car shit out, basically right at the start of my staycation. Murphy’s law. Let’s stay home and do fun day trips with the car, we will save money. Well fuck off. I took the car in today and left it. Walked half way back to my house (think Carling/Kirkwood to the Glebe), but was so covered in sweat that I decided to Uber home. I knew I only had enough space on the ol’ card for one Uber ride, so returning to pick up my car would be an adventure. My significant other thought I should just call a cab. A cab? How do I even do that? Do I punch numbers into my texting machine instead of letters? What about a bus? A bus? How do I know where they are going? I used to take buses after concerts when I was in high school, to get back to the park and ride and I believe twice we ended up at the airport when it was the bus’s last stop. I can easily organize myself on a tube or metro but busses, not so much.

Fuck it’s been humid. Like crazy humid. I walked about 15 minutes the other day in the early morning sun (from my mechanics because I don’t know how else to get around) and when I realized I was sweating from my inside elbow folds. When I got home my bra was soaked. I realized that perhaps the padding in my bra was for hot days just like this, so it can soak up all that sweat and make your boobs look bigger. Then I thought I should just use some soaker pads from the meat department at work, the same pads they use to soak up raw meat juice, just shove them into my bra and walk to my heart’s content. I think there could be a market for hot day breast soaker pads. From chicken breasts, to lady breasts, we keep you from sopping through? Ok the punchline could certainly use some work.

I went out for breakfast with a friend who was going on about short weather being the best. I haven’t owned shorts in years, I just wear like yoga pant capris. So when I found a pair of biker short shorts today I put them on to test them out. I texted her immediately to let her know that I had tried wearing shorts but after 3 steps my vagina ate them.

With the new season of Game of Thrones coming out, I knew I would need to commit to watching the previous season that I hadn’t seen yet. We had been putting it off because the Man had seen it and knew I would not recall anything from the previous seasons I had seen and it would drive him crazy. It was precisely what happened when we started it. I needed synopsis and clarification on every character that come onto the screen. It was like oh that guy from that movie I just saw at the Mayfair, Oh my god Snowdon is dead?, Dinklage! and yes, my favourite Beth of Targ! He just sat there shaking his head and I concurred that yes, watching this season with me would indeed be painful it might be best to do it on my own. Rude.

At the cottaaaaage. (Please watch Baroness Von Sketch show immediately for cottage reference). Through some amazing luck we managed to book a cottage in the valley this weekend after we had pretty much giving up because everything was booked or crazy expensive. I feel like there are a thousand people with cottages they don’t use all the time so it feels weird to rent one because people should just share the bloody thing. If I had one I would let people rock out there whenever we weren’t. No maybe I would rent it out to make money – dammit!

Anyways, everyone knows I am no city girl but when we packed up the car to go to the cottage for 2 nights, it looked like we were moving all of our earthy belongings in the world. I wondered how we got to this point. Sure we needed lot’s of bags of chips, no carbs be damned…it’s the cottaaaaage. We also needed enough booze that we would never run out…it’s the cottaaaaaage. We also brought our own pillows, enough TP that if the diarrhoea apocalypse happened, we would survive, our own pour over coffee gadget because I refuse to use a Keurig (I swear I am not a snob!) and only important vitamins to maintain our cottage life health facade…at the cottaaaage. I also stopped at Strawberry Blonde Bakery on the way out of town, my favourite special occasion gluten free treat. I bought 2 scones and a doughnut for my cottage breakfasts but ate all of them before we even got there (we skipped lunch?). I also demanded we make smores which got a little stupid when the only places we picked up groceries were Whole Foods and Farm Boy. I, of course, required gluten free graham crackers so I bought that at WF but I figured on the way out of town I would pick up garbage no name marshmallows and cheap ass Hershey chocolate (the way God intended a smore to be made). But we ran out of time and went to Farm Boy and bought artisan square marshmallows (that obviously had a lower heat threshold than regular marshmallows) and fancy Farm Boy Callebaut chocolate. Sure I could make a fire in the woods without any effort because I’m a fucking Girl Guide people, but here I was with the most snobby of smore ingredients, I felt embarrassed. Then our Saturday guests said it was the best fucking smore they had ever had and everything was ok. We all laughed our asses off at these gentrified marshmallows jizzing all over us as we tried to make the final product. Good times.

I forgot about mosquitos. I have this romantic, completely scrubbed clean view of the country as being this tranquil, magic place that is beautiful and perfect. Within 3 minutes of being in the cottage I looked down to see a giant welt on my leg. I had already got my first mosquito bite and we had not even put down our bags yet. I also forget about country folk. I used to totally the shun the valley local. I was never a valley gal that drove a truck, or bought smokes for her Dad at Beckers or drove an ATV or loved to Ski Doo. I was the only person in my group of friends ALWAYS that had never listened to country music. I was not related to anyone else that lived in the valley (unheard of) and my parents were not born there (not even born in Ontario!). So I never understood the country folk but as I sat there on the back deck of this cottage listening to a group of ol’ lads, each with their individual cooler next to them full of Bud Lights, discussing, what it sounded like was, politics with the thickest valley accent you could put on, I felt a warmth in the cockles of my soul. Sure my family was not from the valley, but the valley life I knew. And I appreciated its sincerity and its simplicity. My Man noted that I told everyone I met while cottaging that I was from Almonte and it oddly made us immediate friends. If you are from the valley you are trustworthy. We met the lady who was renting us the cottage and after a minute of talking she said we seemed very trustworthy and she was great at reading people and then I told her I was from Almonte and she just laughed and handed us the keys because she knew everything would be fine. Their is a valley badge of honour, you will be trusted, you will work hard, you will not take shit for granted, you can drive any vehicle you encounter because you have been driving since you were 14 and you can probably survive at least one night in the wilderness because you camped, lived in the woods or was a girl guide (or all 3 in my case). I used to be a bit embarrassed or awkward about my small town roots but I gave grown to love and respect it as a badge of honour. So eff ya valley – keep on shinin’ eh!

I have booked my vacation for the summer! And when I mean booked vacation, I mean I am taking an unheard of 9 days off in a row. No major plans yet except for trying my absolute best not to think about work for 9 WHOLE DAYS! In the spirit of budgeting, this is what it’s come down to – we either buy my dream vacuum or we go to Wonderland. I shit you not. These are the dilemmas I face. I feel like this is fairly representative of my life. But alas, no decision needed to be made, the car crapped out. So instead of wonderland I bought a ball bearing or something or other. Lame.

I unexpectedly upgraded my iphone recently. It seemed I was feeling particularly confident, perhaps cocky even, that I could handle a nice new thing. In the past I have paid for all the Apple care I could afford and asked them to not hand me the phone until there was a case on it that would protect this little device from potential slips out of my hand. This was different. I waived all forms of protection and didn’t even get a case on the spot because “they weren’t cute.” So when I walked into our new store in Toronto to work a shift a few days later and was already feeling extremely nervous about running a store I had never been, I was not surprised by the fact that my phone randomly fell out of my jacket pocket and power smashed on the cement floor. It was just one of those moments where you want to start talking to yourself in the manner Gil would in the Simpsons, “come on Gil, I need this. Shut up Gil, close the deal.” etc. I immediately texted my financial advisor (boyfriend), while getting tiny shards of glass in my finger, that I needed an emergency quote on getting an iPhone 7 screen fixed…for a friend…

When I returned to Ottawa I waited until payday to find a dodgy little cell phone repair place that would fix my phone on the spot. And dodgy place I found. Oddly enough about 250 feet from my house. It’s a place on Bronson that I have probably passed a million times and never, ever seen. I walked into a little shop where I was greeted by a Bulgarian (no idea) man who quoted me $200 because it was the 7. I said Apple would do it for cheaper, my financial advisor (boyfriend) told me. He went back and googled and said I was right. He would do it for the same price. He took my phone and the first sound I heard was that of a hair dryer and I felt like I had just handed my life to a couple of Lithuanian brothers (no idea) who, judging by the 3 cameras in this tiny shit hole, were running drugs and then when some moron like me came in with an actual phone, they melted it with a hair dryer and then would try to hack it back together. I was looking at the cases they had on the wall. The ones near the window, the Justin Bieber and One Direction covers were completely sun bleached. I went to check out the other side of the room and was accosted by a puff of those automatic air freshener machines that I would spend the next 20 minutes trying desperately to avoid. I heard the sound of breaking glass and I thought, what the fuck have I done. I should have just walked in, seen all the cameras and asked these nice Romanian guys (no idea) for cocaine and left. The best part was when I heard one of them ask the other one rather loudly “where the really important phone was” which was obviously a show for me because up until this point, they had not been communicating to each other in English. I didn’t know how long I’d been there. I’m of the generation that wears no watch and of course the clock on the wall wasn’t working. Then out of nowhere a man appeared with my phone, looking good as new. Relief. Sweet, sweet, first world relief.

I went back to the gym today for the first time in months. I have been off the wagon. I am trying to get back on. Eating better, drinking less (ish), going to the gym, biking. I am trying. I watched intervention at the gym which is a great way to make you put your problems in perspective. Here I am wrestling with the fact all my clothes fit me like a sausage case and here is this guy who does 15 hits or heroine a day. Perspective. Although he seemed in good shape, so maybe the answer is do more heroine? No, no. Intervention is not a place to get fitness tips…

Overheard in a Glebe coffee shop –

Customer lady: Do you just sell regular pop here?

Guy behind the counter: Yes we do, it’s kombucha pop.

Me: Nope they don’t.

I am, once again, on the search for a hair dresser. The lady I loved previously moved to a new salon where an old Italian man watches everything you do from the corner. My most recent hairstylist spends her time talking about where I work and not in the most positive fashion. The first time I went to get a hair cut there I only did it because I heard you get a first cut discount and normally I could not afford this place. We had nice conversation but she continually felt the need to bring up why she tended to not shop there. It’s totally fine. I shop all over too. It’s all good, feedback is great. So when I went back the second time and she started telling me what was so great about the other places she shopped at and I realized I had a choice in sitting here. Sure the cut was good but every time I left I felt frustrated. I want a hair cut to be relaxing, me time, not defending my honour time. So I have decided not to return there and am once again on the hunt for a hair stylist. I think it’s insane to spend $85 on a hair cut as my hair is pretty long and straight forward and have someone passively aggressively take shots at the place you obviously work. 

The most expensive (and worst) haircut I ever received was in England. I had been cutting my own short, spiky (purple or red or black) hair most of the time I was traveling so I splurged on a nice salon in town. The chatting with the hairstylist was wonderful but the problem was were chatting too much. He was so excited to learn more about Canada and I love making huge sweeping statements about people and countries that people lovingly accept as gospel (and then I feel guilty later that I may not have been totally accurate). By the end of the cut my hair was so short, I resembled a young boy. I was so mortified. I left thinking I was going to have to show the guy I was seeing (don’t even remember who it was) and that if he hated it, I understood and if he liked it, he may like little boys. But on top of all this the hair cut cost 60 pounds I believe. Which is over $100. For the rest of my trip I never got another hair cut, just let random people I was living with take their turn with scissors if it needed it. Maybe I need to go back to that. Any takers?

I went to the spa yesterday and one of the saunas was called a Russian sauna. Every time one of my coworkers came out of the sauna I said, is a Russian sauna just a regular sauna but with projected pictures of Putin wrestling bears on the walls? I thought it was clever. Every time a coworker came out I added a piece, like Putin, shirtless, riding a horse while wrestling bears etc. It was a pretty fun game. When I tried to relive it at dinner that night, I aggressively said the sauna projected pictures of Putin wrestling Trump, but like sexy mud wrestling or something. I’m sure after the couple cocktails I had it was slightly more vulgar. What? Me? No way.

Mexico

Nothing quite says lazy tourist quite like flying 6 hours across North America only to land in a hot, Mexican West Coast town surrounded by other, mainly white Canadians. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but thinking every second person was my Mom or Dad was pretty hilarious. It didn’t even occur to me until we landed in Mexico that the only thing I could say in Spanish was una cerveza por favor (one beer please). Let it be also be known that the only Spanish I learned when I was down there was una mass (one more).

I spent the first 4 days of our all inclusive trip feeling guilty about being a tourist. I have often suffered from tourist guilt, mainly because as a group, similar to mob mentality, tourists turn into a collection of loud, entitled, stupid, drunk morons. Even when I lived in England I would make fun of tourists…with my purely Canadian accent. But what I realized at this resort, different from other places I have travelled, the tourists were old and Canadian which made for a very quiet and friendly environment. There were few Americans, no Brits and very few young people so it never got out of hand. AKA on the first night we landed I went to bed at 9pm and was not missing much.

We had been warned about people selling time shares everywhere (and to this day don’t know what a timeshare is). When we landed and were being ushered through the airport they handed us to Jimmy Smits holding a map. Ultimately we thought we were being red flagged as tourists needing assistance on how to get to the hotel. After 10-15 minutes of speaking to Jimmy Smits and having 3 tequila shots with him we realized that he was a) trying to sell us something and b) we had missed our shuttle to the hotel. It was not so clear at first as he had a map in his hand and was circling and scribbling what we thought was just a nice, quick, understanding of the area by the Mexican tourist board or something. Also he was smooth and suave a la Jimmy Smits. But by the end we had promised to meet him so he could show us something or sell us a hotel or give us free tequila or something…My super human ability to either reproduce accents or my ability to translate them completely for others was lost in Mexico. I mainly had no idea what he was saying and the trifecta of Tequila shots had helped nothing. I had wished he had been wearing a Grandpa sweater and had referred to me as Mama and Alex as Mano. I feel if he had made me believe he was making the effort to be Jimmy Smits in Sons of Anarchy, we may have made more of an effort to meet him for his sales pitch.

We finally managed to get to our place via Taxi which Jimmy Smits somehow payed for. The Bell Boy (man) at our hotel was a great, slightly older guy, let’s call him Jimmy Smits, just kidding, his name was Renee. It was his second day which was fairly obvious because he could not find our room anywhere and kept profusely swearing which meant we were going to be best friends. After running down every hallway in the hotel villa, we found a staircase leading to our room number. We would learn the most from Renee over the next couple days, like how the restaurant never closed (it was closed when we got there) and how to find our room (close to impossible). Renee was great, he taught us about the mob hold on the tourism industry which protected us, much more than any of the workers there. He said if one of them were to steal from a tourist or touch them inappropriately, they would have to answer to the mob. You would disappear for awhile and then sometimes, return having had a 2 x 4 taken to your body repeatedly. I wondered about all the tourists there that must have known this and were turning an epically huge blind eye to the fact that by traveling here, we were all kind of supporting the mob. This trip sponsored by the Mexican Sopranos. But instead of waste management being the cover up business, that it was tourism. I was completely horrified and thought I may not be able to enjoy myself until we got to the beach and I found margaritas.

I remember as we were pulling up the our hotel I was explaining that our living quarters wasn’t exactly the Hilton. When the taxi stopped, he stopped at the Hilton and I thought, well thank you for that comedic accuracy of exemplifying precisely what I am saying. The entrance to the hotel was lined with giant golden potato sculptures with with faces that I wondered if Hilton had recently struck a deal with Mr. Potato Head and this was what the collaboration looked like. Or perhaps the Easter Islands hadn’t wanted them and randomly sent them to Mexico instead. We then realized we were staying in the little, old school villa right next to the giant Hilton towers. Our hotel was open air, bright orange, two levels and I believe one of the first hotels ever built in Puerta Vallarta. We concurred it was indeed old by the very pungent smell of mould in the rooms. It didn’t phase us too much, everything else seemed lovely.

What we learned about staying in an open air hotel was that when there was something weird looking on the floor, one should look up. I was horrified to notice one day a woman in front of her door taking pictures of the ceiling. At her feet was a pile of green mess. She saw me and said they were guarding her room. I looked up to see a group of bats. I grew up with bats always being in my back yard at dusk. I have no real reason to fear them but I am just fucking terrified they are going to fly into my hair and get tangled. I don’t even think it happens, I think it’s just an old wives tale, but they scare the shit out of me. The most hilarious freak out was when one night we were walking through the halls and a thousand, violent bangs started going off. There were flashes from outside and I announced that gang warfare had made it into the city. I was trying to run to the window to see if I could see (insert Mexican Gang something) in the streets when I realized the bangs had woken up the bats and because those poor little pips have razor sharp hearing, they also started erratically flying around trying to find the drug cartel gang fights as well. So the scene was basically us running down the halls crouched, screaming and me holding my hair trying to figure out where the gun shots were coming from. Must have looked pretty awesome to the guest walking down the hall who was not afraid of bats and had just come from enjoying the fireworks.

Our two big outings consisted of a tour day and what he have called the greatest sales pitch ever day. The tour we signed up for cost $20 each and was a full day, so I feel that should have signified how stellar it was going to be. The bus had about 12 people in it and 7 of them were a group of older (except one daughter) Canadian women. For 70% of the trip I thought they were Italians, I think they actually were Iranian. Most of this tour was outdoors and one portion was in the jungle and the youngest lady of the group got onto the bus with platform wedges. Her Mother was wearing shorts with tights that had lace designs over them. I wondered what they thought they had signed up for. The tour’s first stop was the city centre, where we saw the boardwalk, bought Alex a Don Draper sun hat, saw a church, a silver jewelry factory but most importantly, we bought fresh candied pecans which – I am telling you now, was the whole highlight of our trip. They were, I’m sure 1000 calories per pecan but fucking worth it. We would, later that week, walk 1.5 hours from our hotel to find this shop in order to buy more. This is how good they were.

At this point of the tour I was already losing my mind with the group of ladies. They would talk through the guy’s tour spiel and make the tour wait for them as they took 1000 photos of hilarious things. The most fun I had was watching the daughter gingerly walk on the cobble stone streets where I knew, at any moment, she would fall and twist her ankle, officially learning the lesson all young women learn at sometime – function before fashion. What really boggled my mind was when we got to the Tequila making place. The tour was supposed to be over half an hour at this location, but they shortened it to 15 minutes so they rushed us in, gave us a bunch of tequila shots and we left. What was very curious was how the women, who had come on this tequila making tour, did not drink. They did say how glad they were to get all the knowledge of how to make the tequila but would not imbibe. They were just so grateful for this knowledge though. The weird thing was we never got the tour, we received no knowledge of how to make tequila and I had no idea what these women were talking about. The last stop of the tour was where Predator was filmed. I have never seen Predator nor do I still really care too. The most fun was getting there on these tiny, windy roads looking over cliffs on this giant tour bus that would drop to it’s death at any second. Alex was particularly stressed by this event. Anyways, the whole jungle area had been turned into a zipline park, which I would have nothing to do with, so we had a drink and sat in the sun until we left. Most everyone on the bus was totally fed up with this loud group of women but the final straw was when we got back to the town and they stopped at our hotel for us to get off (only us, it was our hotel) and they all started to get up and block the aisle. I totally lost my shit, asked them to sit down in a firm teach voice and stormed off the bus. Remember when I said I am not good in groups of tourists? Yes, well we decided then we would not do another tour that trip because apparently I’m a rager.

The other outing we had was a visit to the sister hotel of ours which we thought was just a showing and a “but you could have had all this” visit, but it of course was a sales pitch for some weird travel membership that we never understood the benefits of. We spent the morning looking at two hotels both related to our hotel and they were amazing. There were young people at these hotels with beautiful beach bodies, so we knew by choosing our current hotel of mainly large, middle aged people we had made the right decision. At the end of seeing both hotels the young man who had been showing us around asked if he could do business with us. We still had no idea what he was selling. We tried to explain this to him but he insisted we just tell him if we could do business. Alex told him that he was selling us a mystery box, we had no idea what was inside it but he was asking us if we were interested. It was already getting comical until they took us to our sales room where they showed us a video of how cheap their travel prices were but still, not what the program was. Another guy came to offer us the sales pitch. After about half an hour, I stopped him and asked, what are the basics of the program and what was the price, this seems to be the only thing you haven’t told us. He skirted around the question and then asked us also if we had ever heard of the word inflation which we both thought was pretty great. After we gave him roughly what we spent on travel per year he spent the next 10 minutes dividing it in two. So here is your number, but now let’s divide it in two. We were like cool, but what the fuck is the fucking program. Anyways, long story short – we still had no idea what the program is, they were extremely insistent and we still, to this day, if we see a deal we yell, but divide it in two!!

The trip was great, we never over did it. We never got white girl drunk and never got too sun burnt. They were ramps next to every stair case (because of all the old people staying there) and by day three my brain was epically confused when approaching staircases as to which one to take or which one I was actually doing which was pretty funny because it led to me having anxiety every staircase we got to because I had already tripped going down the stairs about 5 times. I swear this was not the alcohol. I had a few margaritas but I decided my favourite drink was the WASPiest one, a Tom Collins. All the bartenders called it a Tom Columns. Trust me to go to Mexico and drink gin. We spent most days reading on the beach (I read Amy Schumer’s book only to get aggressively annoyed by the end that I was not her) and of course we played in the waves (where I was molested by a wave that took by bathing suit bottoms off and continually beached me and had me rolling around while I tried to hike them back up in front of a loaded beach). Yay Mexico!

Hey, remember when I was all excited to be an adult and get the hydro bill. Well I got a hydro bill and I am no longer excited. It went from excitement to depression rather quickly after opening it. So fuck you hydro. I am renouncing my adult excitement over paying you.

We spent the first month in this beautiful Glebe apartment waiting for something to go wrong. Trying to find issues that could be future problems. I realized I have seen The Money Pit so many times in my life I always have that minor worry that the floor will give way and I will be sucked into the carpet (in a charming and cute Tom Hanks way, not a heroine induced Trainspotting way). Perhaps I will run up the stairs one day and they will just crumble underneath my feet. I re-watched Money Pit just to make a list of all the horrible things that could go wrong but luckily enough this place isn’t big enough to have that many horrific atrocities. The one thing that did almost ruin my life about living here was when I was taking my laundry to the laundry dungeon and I saw a demon bug run in front of me and then enter a crack in the wall. Right there in front of me, one of Satan’s most terrifying creatures. I think they are called silver fish. It may also be a type of millipede. I hate googling them because the pics freak me the fuck out. But they have a thousand feathery legs that allow them to move extremely fast with Luciferian confidence and sinister purpose. I then pictured a million of them crawling in the walls and thought I may have to move out and burn down the building immediately after. This one experience I had has given me recurring anxiety every time I need to do laundry. But the worst I did not experience myself.

I noticed, a little while after moving in, that the man had stopped bathing and had switched exclusively to showers. This was odd as when I met him he was strictly a bath guy. His tub at his old apartment did not even have shower curtains so that one could actually use it for that purpose. I asked him why the switch and he admitted, he hadn’t wanted to tell me, but when he had had his last bath, a demonic bug had been in the tub with him. NO! No fucking way. I was so excited to move into a place with a tub and then that luxury was being so atrociously ripped away from me. I was horrified for him. I consoled him and said everything would be ok. He said the bath was dead to him. I didn’t use the bath for weeks either but then one day I decided to pick a fight a fight with the Devil. Well not really. I put industrial tape on the overflow drain (holes a demon could escape from) sprayed lavender all over the bathroom maniacally, as apparently that is their kryptonite and poked the bathroom fan, above the tub, to make sure they weren’t all congregating there, casually waiting to dive bomb unsuspecting bathers. The first bath, there was no relaxing. I was on high alert that one may just appear and I would scream and splash and exit the tub in extreme ladylike fashion. I never saw one, nor have I ever seen one since. So I should be more relaxed about it now, but I just can’t forget it. I still have visions of grinning, deviant, evil creatures sharing the bath with me. But now at least I am back to bathing occasionally but still with medium relaxation levels. I guess I will survive;)

To continue my journey into adulthood, I made a dentist appointment! I have not seen a dentist in a long, long time. And I am sure you are all thinking, we know, we have seen your teeth. But they are just what I call British teeth, they are scraggly and confused and look terrible but they are healthy. Like Austin Powers but zero decay, cavities, or gingivitis. I am not afraid to go to the dentist but I think I still have negative associations of them from wearing an uncomfortable retainer for years, with little success. And you know, losing it randomly in restaurants all the time when I would take it out to eat. Real sexy like. Dumpster diving for my retainer (my family reading this will remember exactly what restaurant and what city this happened it btw). Anyhoo, I picked a dentist right beside my work because all my coworkers have gone there purely out of convenience. As I walked in I noticed they were affiliated with the Redblacks, 67’s and Fury and I realized that maybe this place might be too fancy for me. When I walked into this ultra modern exam room and saw a huge TV mounted on the wall I wondered why I hadn’t casually inquired about prices before I came. Sure I had benefits but I still have to pay up front. I decided there was nothing I could do but relax until she tilted my exam chair back and I noticed a giant TV screen mounted on the ceiling and I thought, fuck, this is going to be stupid expensive. Well my financial spidey senses were correct. It was. During the initial consult, I told her I had never had a cavity. She told me that my teeth were extremely healthy and in great shape but she could see what remained of a filling I had once had. I gave her a minor half assed speech about my avoidance of fluoride and then insisted and promised, I have never had a cavity. She said she promised not to use the fluoride on me and then told me I absolutely had had a filling at one point. I told her I didn’t want to argue with her but unless I had possibly suffered a massive stroke that wiped out only my dental memories, I had never had a damned cavity. It didn’t really matter but I had my orthodontic pride I needed to retain. When she was actually putting my filling in she dropped the surgical instrument she was using on the ground and everyone ran around looking to sterilize it again and through the rubber chunk holding my jaw open, chocking on saliva and with half my face frozen I yelled 5 SECOND RULE! Everyone laughed. Always a fucking comedian eh?

I’ve been getting this sneaking feeling that I’m on the cusp of adulting.  This may seem like a feat for people, knowing they have made it through the roller coaster of youth and the confusion and pressure of someone in their twenties. But for me it causes that mild underlying anxiety of ok, I’m here, what next? I also on occasion respond with an aggressive fuck no as well. I started my thirties with a bang. Everything changed. Relationship. Job. City. Now new home! But this feeling of adulthood occasionally creeps over me as I walk from my Glebe apartment to work, where the streets are lined with lamp posts that reminds me of Narnia. Glarnia. 

This apparent adulting disease I am pre-diagnosing myself with can be shown through many things. Take for example when the new boy and I went away to Montreal for the weekend. We were going to have the MOST CRAZY WEEKEND EVER! And in order to prepare for it, I needed to pack my gamut of vitamins, enzymes and herbs in order to make it through the weekend. Ginger for the nausea I will get after pretending to drink like a teenager only to realize my liver is no longer as spunky as it used to be. Digestive enzymes for when I eat whatever I want forgetting that my tummy has a limited list of things it will except without forceful punishment. Probiotics just to minimize the affect of me rogue eating/drinking. B12 just to make sure I had the energy to make an attempt at being crazy. And of course Advil for when I really do over do it. I don’t normally get to that point these days (shocker) as I now seem to have a fairly adult tolerance and can usually show restraint (what?). Not always, not always.

I haven’t completely cloaked myself in the gown of adulthood, nor do I ever hope to. But making multiple trips to Ikea to buy furniture for our place has made me feel like I’m trying the cloak on. I bought two rugs for the apartment for God’s sakes. I never thought I would need to buy a fucking rug ever, let alone two. How so terribly dull, but I actually got pretty pumped about it (also because we were currently using rugs we found in the garbage). And now I like the two we bought so much, I want another. Must get out more!

The other stupid adult thing I bought was a humidifier or as well call it, the expensive cat drinking fountain. One morning, after about a week of living here I woke up with lips so dry they were bleeding. For those of you who know my obsessive compulsive moisturizing habits, you know this would just not do. I immediately went out and got a humidifier. I got a design where the water runs down the front of it when it’s on (which is probably the reason I have to pee so much). My cat has become obsessed with it. When I fill it up at night he comes running until I turn it on and then he sticks his head right into it to lap up the water therefore giving us the gift of cat saliva in our humidifier mist.

Back to Ikea though. I am a master at Ikea furniture. I start off confident, then seeing the number of screws, my confidence waivers but I usually have a beer in my hand. After the second beer I realize that I have totally fucked it up but can salvage it as I recognize the error of my ways. I only got so turned around once that I actually called them to ask if they had put it on sale because it was faulty. As I was on the phone with the lady I realized what I had done, so I quietly told her I may have a solution and then thanked her very much for her time.

Another odd adult thing that has been happening more and more are people complimenting my hair. Everyone loves the colour of my streaks and ask me where I get them done. I tell them, they too can have these streaks as they are just solid chunks of grey coming in in giant blocks on my head. I tell them to add some more stress to their lives, perhaps drink more and add the odd visit from anxiety and they can also have this amazing hair style.

I am such an adult I have hydro bills! Never in my previous rental/house sitting/homeless situations have I been responsible to pay a hydro bill. Well technically I am paying half of it but I demanded it be under my name so that a bill could come to the house with my name on it, that I could then pay and possibly actually afford it. I want to be in a luxurious, over sized bath robe, sipping port and smoking a cigarette out of those long old fashioned black thingies when the post man drops off the bill with my name on it. (I’m not sure why my idea of being an adult is being an extremely wealthy human. Perhaps this is the reason I think I may never actually make it to adulthood). 

Lastly, although I never actually feel like an adult at my job because of my weird (nonexistant?) let’s say experimental management style, I do indeed hold a job where I make a wage I can live off of. No more hiding from those bills, no way. Now I just ignore them and spend the money I am actually making on rugs! And the stupid white grip stuff you put under the rugs!  Anyways, it’s been an interesting ride but I am now living in a pretty freaking nice place, within walking distance from my work, with the new man. And tiger pip, my giant orange puss. And occasionally I feel like an adult but then I come home, make a fort in the middle of my living room with all the blankets and pillows in the place with the boy, eat pizza, drink beer and binge Netflix. Perhaps this is in fact adulthood. 

I got a promotion! I got a raise! I got a new office! I got a laptop & a cell phone! Weeee!! I kind of have this feeling, possibly for the first time, that I am finally in the job that I was meant to always have. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all perfect, there are many things that still bother me about working in retail but my actual position, my influence, my responsibilities, my creativity, my nurturing side (which has only ever been seen at work) are all exactly what seems to be required for this job. Everyone who knows me knows that the people part of any job is my favourite and now I feel like the Mother Hen of an entire store. I’ve had such a blast in my first couple weeks, it’s been a riot. The challenges, the stress, the accomplishments, it has all made for a roller coaster of a month. The problem is I get really excited or stressed at work dealing with everything I enjoy doing and then I fry my adrenals to the point where I need a nap and am considering asking for a nap room. After doing a 5 day stretch of morning shifts (and everyone knows how fucking awesome I am in the morning…and by awesome I mean grumpy and shitty) I was hitting a mental wall. One afternoon I told my coworker that I was so tired I felt incongruent. Then I said incongruent wasn’t the word I was looking for. But you know what I mean right, like I feel isosceles. And then it occurred to me I was replacing feelings words with grade 9 geometry terms in a weird and random way that totally confirmed that I do indeed struggle to express my feelings. I feel like I may have just said trapezoid and then left the room.

But seriously, back to be being an emotional helmet brigade. I found out that my work offers 7 free therapy sessions with licensed psychologists all over the city. So I thought, free therapy, yes, this will be hilarious. I remember walking in to my first appointment and wondering if I would just cry like a crazy person because it’s totally nerve wracking being put on the spot to talk to a total stranger. But I thought, no I will just make a thousand inappropriate jokes that will make the doctor write down little notes and then I will panic that she sees through my wit and diagnose me with some intense behavioural disorder that will lead to a possible trip to the R.O. And what I did was stellar, I walked into the room, disappointed to not see a Freudian chaise lounge, sat on the plain jane chair, stared up at the lady and just started balling. I was like dammit woman!! Pull yourself together. No but really, I did get a lot from the few sessions. I don’t remember any of it because I have the memory retention of a 105 year old with Alzheimers. But I remember feeling relieved. That I was a) not a sociopath and b) she kind of had my back on things I thought were stupid. I also do recall by the 5th session (and my last, I am keeping 2 in my back pocket for meltdown emergencies) that by the end of the session I was annoyed at how many questions she was asking. I was like ugh, just say that one pearl of wisdom that makes me leave realizing everything is totally fine. And then when she assigned homework I was like, YES homework-homework I will actually do for a change! But it turns out nothing has changed since high school or Uni, I never completed my homework and when she asked about it I lied saying I had done it. I immediately pictured my Dad shaking his head while laughing in disbelief, as he always thought my commitment to academics was a bit of comedy in itself. And here I was, with real life homework and I took it with the same complacency as my education. Nailing it.

We went to Pride yesterday!! Nothing says the best political statement ever as hot, gyrating bodies in the rain, riding by on floats in a sea of Rainbows. If only us straight people could get our shit together enough to put on that much of an accepting, love in, street party. I guess it’s for everyone really. I always go. No one has ever turned me away due to my sexual preferences. Yay for inclusion! I went with a friend, her little girl, her mom and her brother. Her brother said he wore a shirt that signaled he was straight. It was a pink V-neck that said “missionary man” on it. I said, are you kidding? He was not. I said you know your shirt is tight and pink and that is a sexual position that 2 dudes can do as well? Can’t they? The look of surprise was rather priceless. We then quickly discussed the logistics. He then realized he was wearing the perfect shirt for Pride. The parade handed out all kinds of good stuff. For some reason no one handed anything to me…when I heard how many condoms my friends had received I wondered if they looked at me and instinctively knew I wouldn’t use them, even if given for free. Were they judging my hatred of latex barriers? How dare they! It’s possible I’m looking to far into this and it was not a judgemental conspiracy to make me feel bad. It’s possible, that arriving late, I just missed the free condom floats. Next year I will be on time!

Chicagooooooooo!! Again no Oprah…wtf?! Miracles happened in order for me to go this year. The day before we were supposed to go, at around 4pm, while maniacally running around work trying to get shit in order before leaving, I felt my whole body start to hurt. By 6 pm I was at the boyfriend’s place (YES! Will tell that story later) unable to drink a beer (ALERT HEALTH CANADA) and under a blanket starting to get the shivers. By the time I got home I felt so horrible I pounded back every supplement I thought could help (oil of oregano, garlic, Reishi mushroom spray, olive leave extract, propolis and probiotics). I put on my fleece onesie, also known as my polka doted flu exorcism outfit, wrapped my self in my 2 Sons of Anarchy Blankets, also known as my Jax will fix everything blankies and tucked myself under a duvet and two blankets. I woke up many times throughout the night in pain, shivering and sweating (obviously). I kept visualizing myself stepping onto the plane totally healthy. I even texted my co-worker to say I wasn’t going, I was for sure dying. Then something miraculous happened. I woke up in the morning in a cesspool of sweat and satan and realized I felt only mildly felt like a sack of shit. I was going to pump my body full of more supps and get on the god damn plane. And I did. Chicago!!!!

Chicago is very different from Ottawa. The extreme politeness and political correctness of the Ottawa airport was replaced by some serious sass and sarcasm at the Chicago airport. Even our flight attendant was telling us how it was, honey. She get’s paid the same on a big flight then a little flight so she don’t mind the little ones because she can tell eager tourists like us where the good shopping is and how to get there for free. The rudeness and eye rolling from the airport security was unparalleled. It was fantastic. I dreamed of working my job where I could openly look bored and annoyed. It was as if them taking my passport from me was rude of me to interrupt them.

Anyhoo, we were there for our department’s holiday show and annual meeting. I had had 2 consecutive nights of dreams where I performed a comedy routine for the room (all team leaders and assistant team leaders, coordinators etc. from all over the Mid West). I had even recited a few things in my head until I remembered I have paralytic stage fright and would also probably offend someone. I was going to prepare a wonderful slideshow entitled “Why I hate children” and then go through a series of photos showcasing how my department had been destroyed on many occasions by wee vermin. Anyways, I had some good material. In my head, it would have been killer.

My co-worker was unaware of how truly sick I was until it was completely confirmed when I had refused a drink all day and then when relaxing in our hotel room I was unable to finish a beer. This was followed by a call to room service to bring me 3 blankets so I could cocoon myself, round 2, to keep sweating out my illness. We then continued our evening by watching every exciting Chicago tv show that could possibly have ever existed…Chicago P.D, Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, Chicago Code…how many tv dramas can one city produce?!

I had been doing alright at hiding my sickness until the next morning, when while going over our calendar order, I was sweating so menopausal woman profusely that droplets of sweat were splashing onto the order. I couldn’t stop perspiring. I was holding my hair in my hand and wiping my forehead with the other. It was hilarious. I went back to the room, changed my outfit, put my hair up and pulled my shit together (ingested a thousand supplements). By noon I was fine.

Last year we were a cool and casual 12 hours late for our flight, this year we almost missed it because we were frantically trying to finish our drinks before getting onto the flight. I wasn’t as loaded as last year but I had had a couple. Our plane was tiny! Like tiny tin can being hurled through the sky tiny and as soon as we got on we were hit with an intense smell of sweat and polyester. It was like being punched in the face by a sweaty change room. As we kept walking, situated right in the middle of the plane, was an AustralianTaekwando team, all in matching unwashed polyester green track suits. They apparently had just come directly from a match or whatever they call it and forgot about the idea of showering. The ladies seated in front of us were so disgusted they demanded to be moved to first class. You couldn’t even tell where first class was, it was like the four seats at the front so I wasn’t sure how it would make a huge difference. They don’t get different air circulated up there?! It just reminded me of playing soccer on a hot day but every time I put my head near the window about to fall asleep, I would get a massive whiff of mouldy polyester and body stink that I would have to return to upright position.

While going through security back in Ottawa I forgot I had claimed that I bought $50 in goods (hmmm rough estimate). The border services guy who called me to his booth was so hot I became distracted. He asked what I spend the $50 on and I pulled the leopard print shall out of my purse, wrapping it around my neck while swaying and singing a little jingle. Then I grabbed the candle I had bought and showed it to him like the models would on the Price is Right. I’m pretty sure these guys don’t get treated to fashion shows everyday. He had a good laugh. To conclude, trip was good, pulled my shit together. The end.

I was going out for drinks for a co-workers birthday and decided to run over to Winner’s to buy a fat shirt because I felt uncomfortable sausaged into my current t-shirt. I grabbed a bunch and went into the change room. I wish someone could record the dialogue in my head as I try on clothes. It’s self deprecating, sad and hilarious. I tried on the first one. I was like ok, this shirt says to me, I wish I was a hippie but instead I am fat and buying clothes at Winners. I like it. The next one was table cloth meets free spirit, but the free spirit part made my hips look giant. The third was a cross body tank top sack. It was sooo comfortable and as I looked at myself in the mirror and saw myself comfortable in this grey, dull sack tank I heard a voice in my head yell, do not give up on life!! Do not buy comfortable sack clothes! I ripped it off my back and went with Winner’s fat hippie.

I’ve become obsessed with watching 3 minute DIY hairdo and DIY craft videos on Facebook. I become so aggressively angry while watching them it is comical. The hair ones make me lose my shit because some model flips her hair like three times and then looks stunning. I once isolated one little clip that looked do-able. I spend about 45 minutes trying to flip a ponytail inside itself before having to resorting to a homeless ponytail before being late for work. And the DIY craft videos are soooo ridiculous!! They are these elaborate, multiple stepped, crazy crafts with the most stupid outcomes you are like, who are these people that spend that long making an elaborately decorated tin can pencil holder?! With jewels on it?! Who are these people?! Every time I watch one I get excited that it may be something I would be interested in doing and then by the end I am angry that I have spent 3 minutes of my life on it that I will never, ever get back.

Ah remember all your new years resolutions? Do people still do that? Well I did and I’ve only this week started thinking about actually doing it. My pants suck my will to live, I perma wear bulky sweaters to hide my beer belly and my awesome guns, which I brought out at every first date I went on, are extremely mediocre and hang, like the opposite of popeye on “spinach” or meth as it probably actually was. Canned green meth, bought by the ultimate enabler, Olive Oil. All my cute Value Village dresses make me look like a sack of can’t put the chips down with a chocolate ring around my mouth. For the first time, since pre-Christmas eating coma, I went to the gym 4 times this week. It feels good. I feel like I’m getting back to my usual self. I promise, universe, I am sticking to it and going to lose my festive 20 lbs. Of course I was totally denying it mentally until a co-worker grabbed my arm and said what’s wrong, you’ve gained weight. As an extremely sensible and well filtered human (ha!) I replied, well fuck right off buddy?! You think I’m not fucking aware that my elastic leggings are hard to harness myself into in the AM?! That I am not wearing my sultry t-shirts because I look like a striped, slutty sausage in them?! Like thaaaaanks for the fucking info tips! I am very, very aware! And then I left work early and went to the gym for an hour. And maybe cried a little, but that is none of your god damn business. The main gym I go to is the Women’s Goodlife, located in a Loblaws. The way I measure if I have worked hard enough is if I feel like my legs are going to collapse as I go down the stairs into the Loblaws. The fear that my legs are going give way and I am going to face plant into some raw fish in the sushi assembly area at the bottom of the stairs is my pat on the back for working myself hard enough in a workout. One of these days the ultimate reward will be when I turn that area into a seaweed apocalypse with my limp, bruised and toned as fuck body.

I recently discovered what driving the speed limit on Baseline feels like. It was a cold, blustery, snowy night when driving home from work in my feather light, clown car with 3 year old bald tires it occurred to me that it took all these terrifying extenuating circumstances for me to to actually drive the posted speed limit. I felt like how could anyone humanely ever drive that slow…well the same people that make me weave through traffic while swearing and losing my mind on the way home from work…yeah those people.

I went to Toronto a few weeks back, stayed in a painfully dodgy hotel attached to a Persian nightclub in between sushi restaurants. It was awesome. The main reason I went was to make sure I was still young enough to NOT REQUIRE SLEEP AND PARTY FOR 3 DAYS STRAIGHT!! It turns out I CAN DO IT!! But then it takes me two weeks to recover. Because, in fact, I am way too old to be doing shit like that. But I did enjoy the challenge. Dancing, drinking, after hours clubs, old friends, new friends, tooo much funnnnnn!!

I have developed a bit of a crush on my mechanic. He looks like a cartoon. He even has the name of a Looney Tune, Leo Wagorn. I don’t know what it is, perhaps it’s the fact that there is no end to his mutton chops, they just continue flawlessly into his hair, beard and nose. I once told someone I really felt like I could trust him because he reminded me of a human goat. If you can;t trust a goat, who can you trust? These are the things that make you trust your mechanic.

We went to Montreal to celebrate Rachelle’s birthday. We were going to drop in on my Grandma once in Montreal but we could not remember the address. We were driving Rachelle’s car, so right after leaving ottawa, we started playing with the bluetooth and calling my family for the info we needed. I have no idea why my parents have cell phones because they never have them on them or they don’t know how to answer them, who knows. I ended up calling my brother. We were chatting with him and getting the required info we needed. We got the address and thanked him for being the only family member that day to pick up their cell. Right after the call we passed the exit for St. Albert. We debated stopping. We weighed up the pros and cons of eating a pound of cheese and how it may end badly. I said I think I would rather be happy with cheese in my mouth and deal with shitting my pants later. This discussion continued until we heard a voice come from the car that said “I am still on the phone here.” Fucking hilarious. Sorry Ben. I am sure you were fascinated by the contemplations of people with stomachs that are not to be trusted. Of course, when we got to the hotel we were blown away that there were two bathrooms in the room!! It was at the Fairmont and we had a junior suite. And thank god for that. The whole evening of us preparing ourselves to go out, we were playing dueling toilets. Welcome to the world of IBS, celiacs, lactose intolerance etc. It’s hard to have fun in the world these days without crapping your pants. When we finally went out that night, we were offered free passes to an obviously exclusive dance club. Finding drinks that wouldn’t ruin our stomachs was like playing a game of twenty questions with the bartender. Jamaican rum? Non wheat vodka? Decent white wine? Sapporo? Oh god, ok I’ll take regular vodka and an adult diaper. We had a great time dancing and drinking and celebrating and then out of nowhere they cut the music and a man came up and gave a pro-Israeli speech. Whaaaa? The girl next to us started looking uncomfortable and asked what was going on. I said I wasn’t sure but would find out. It turned out all the posters that surrounded us that said I ❤ TLV was I love Tel Aviv and their punch line was “size doesn’t matter.” We were at a party for the Israeli diplomat. But my main concern was that their tag line written all over everything was size doesn’t matter…really? Who came up with that one….