Eve Passed Her Driving Test!

 This is such an immense relief, I can't even tell you. Like I said, we were confident that she is a capable, safe driver, but the fact that Covid postponed first the in-car part of her Driver's Ed and then her test made this all very fraught. She was worried that I was going to drive her an hour and a half and then she'd fail. She was worried that she wouldn't be able to get another test soon and she'd miss out on being able to drive her last summer before university. She was worried she'd throw up on the way there. It was a big giant worry-fest.

The night before she said "I have something I do that I think is normal but is probably weird but you have to find it cute because you're my mom". She said she has soap that she uses the night before every test because it's gold and sparkly and she feels like it's good luck. I told her this is not a remotely mockable thing - anyone who has access to soap that is gold and sparkly would be an idiot not to avail themselves of its possibly miraculous properties. I also told her about the time we glued a tortilla chip back together in my student house because it was the Lucky Tortilla Chip that was clearly the reason the Blue Jays were still winning and someone accidentally broke it. 

To distract ourselves the night before we watched a couple of episodes of the Really Bad Fireman show I'm currently watching. I'm finding that I can't deal with anything challenging, insightful, dense or really with any redeeming qualities right now viewing-wise, so I just keep finding terrible shows with bad writing and lots of episodes (me: finds a show with a bunch of seasons and episodes so I can just put one on whenever I want to watch something and it will last a long time. Also me: watches two-hundred-and-forty-hours of tv straight and then feels annoyed that I'm out of show). Eve enjoys heckling the ridiculous situations and dialogue: "Why the hell do people call out a criminal for being a criminal and then turn their back on the criminal? OBVIOUSLY they're going to get clocked by the bad guy!" (this literally happened TWO EPISODES IN A ROW). We briefly appreciated that, aside from two obviously hunky leads, some of the firemen were less conventionally good-looking. Then we realized that every single female character is ridiculously, insanely, stupidly hot and were mad all over again. 

Eve said when she started out her foot was shaking so hard it was impossible to maintain a constant speed - "It was, like forty-eight! thirty-seven! fifty-three!" I remember from singing exams how frustrating it is when you are actually unable to control your body. Once she got over that, though, the instructor said she aced everything else. Her parallel parking was flawless, apparently. 

I was completely calm and positive and supportive on the drive there, and then when she drove out of the parking lot with the tester, I lost it. I texted Jody (HI JODY) from my picnic table and told her I was freaking out and she CALLED ME immediately and talked to me until Eve got back and got out of the car and yelled I DID IT, and this is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me. 

We had read that the route in Cornwall goes by the Dairy Queen, so I said "good, bring Lactaid, we'll go to the Dairy Queen to celebrate when you're done." And we did, except I realized as we were headed there that it was only 10:20 a.m. and it might not even be open yet and if it was it was a weird time of the day for ice cream.

Did we let that stop us?

Reader, we did not.

Possibly NSFW?

 Holy shit you guys, the sleep thing is extremely bad right now. I feel like for the the past few weeks I'm never really asleep or really awake. Got about three good hours last night, worked in the library this morning and covered in the office this afternoon. It was quiet. It's never quiet. Quiet is not good. I think I was literally asleep at my desk at one point. I kept pretending I had to go to the bathroom just to walk around and wake up.

Also, I catalogued a buttload of dictionaries.

Aren't they pretty?

The sleepless brain makes the stupid brain even worse, as you can imagine. I was watching a tv show where a woman was taking a pregnancy test and timing it using her phone and I said "hey, they should have a pregnancy test app where you can just pee on your phone". Help.

At our last outdoor bar night I was telling the group about hanging out with my friend Jody (HI JODY) on her front porch on Sunday for three and a half hours. Jody is an accomplished equestrian and, in the course of our long and rambling conversation, she pulled out her chaps to show me and, waving them around expressively, begged me as a writer never to use the term "assless chaps" because chaps - *emphatic wave* - are, by their very definition, assless. I confess that I have, in the past, almost certainly used the term 'assless chaps', if not in writing then in speaking. I told her we saw a dude in Montreal walking down the street wearing chaps and his ass was hanging out. We concluded that he must have been wearing a thong, or assless pants. 

So this occasioned much discussion at bar night, including Collette (HI COLLETTE) telling us that her search algorithm had coughed out pants for women that make it easier and more discreet to pee outside (something like this, I guess). There were several rude suggestions about why that particular item might be directed towards someone (for outdoor sex, in case I'm being too subtle), although Collette protested "Nuh-uh, they just think I'm a hiker!" and then she said she should try another search that would make the algorithm even more perverse and I yelled "hide your phones, everyone!" Then we realized that Google and Amazon are literally always listening, and I had said the words 'assless chaps' loudly at least a dozen times in the last five minutes, and we all stared at our phones in silent horror.

Eve's driving test is tomorrow, an hour and a half away because all the centers are crazy busy since they had to close for so long because of Covid. She's anxious. I'm anxious. She's a perfectly good driver, just... anxious. I'm a perfectly good mother (?) just... anxious. The drive there is going to be a bit of a trial. 

Maybe I'll try to distract her by telling her about the blog post I just wrote that inadvertently turned out to revolve around urination and ass. 

Me, Also Me, Bed, Duck Duck Pork

 Me: Takes on a bunch of extra shifts thinking the structure will be good for me.

Also Me: Complains bitterly every single time I have to go to work.

Me: Thinks it's time to branch out my reading a little

Also Me: Reads three horror books that take place in snowy places. Two are about mountain climbing.

Me: Thinks I'm finally getting on top of the pandemic/sinus/perimenopause-induced brain fog.

Also Me: Literally forgets how to make a taco

Me: Carefully makes a meal plan and grocery list so my failing memory won't lead to disaster.

Also Me: Buys every single ingredient for pork carnitas. Except pork.

I thought I might be able to make a whole post of these. Turns out I was wrong. I'm feeling better on the whole, but I couldn't fall asleep last night and then woke up stupid early. Did I mention that my library work is very solitary, and once all the books are put away and I'm sitting at the desk cataloguing it is very difficult to stay awake if I'm really tired? 

Eve has a pretty severe case of Senioritis - I'm actually surprised it took this long to kick in. She has Chemistry and Music this term and a half-credit in whining, apparently (which I respect). Honestly, the Chemistry teacher seems to be phoning it in a little as well (again, no judgment, it has been a YEAR). Last week she assigned molecular models, which seems a little more grade five than grade twelve, but whatever. Eve came and showed me these one evening:

She used q-tips and tin foil and straws and gold paint and squished-up cotton. I said it looked like a fine job and she said "It's not - I refused to use anything that I couldn't find in a five-foot radius and it took me seven-and-a-half hours. If I'd just walked around the house it would have taken me one." Well okay then. I regularly almost fall off the couch trying to lift Lucy into my lap without standing up, so I get it.

I spent most of the beautiful week-end walking around Barrhaven having drinks or burgers on various decks. Did I fall into the trap of forgetting that a warm day in March does not forecast a warm night in March and end up freezing once the sun went down? Why yes, yes I did. 

A negroni because we fancy

Vaccine bookings opened for people eighty and over last Monday. The portal opened at eight and we got an appointment right away, but then it crashed before it went through and then every other time we got on we got an error message. We tried to call the help line and it was four hours on hold with the most annoying goddamned jazz elevator music you've ever heard. We gave up and just kept trying the online site and eventually after six hours got my dad an appointment for this Thursday. Today was booking for people seventy-five and up so we got on again to book for my mom. It crashed again but let us right back in and we got her an appointment also for this Thursday, a few hours before my dad. Not complaining (anymore, for the moment, stand by) but what a giant clusterfuck the whole thing has been.

Someone posted bunk beds in our neighbourhood buy and sell group. Have you ever seen bunk beds like this?

Personally, I have not. Personally, I rather think this looks like someone balanced (perhaps Krazy Glued) a single bed on top of a double bed and is punking the buy and sell group. How do you get into the top bed? Does the top bunk person always have to get in bed first, or they have to stand on the bottom person to get in? So many questions. 

The weather has become drastically warmer and the streets and parks are thronged with people. Everybody is very happy. I will admit, to no one's great surprise, that it all makes me a little cranky. It takes my body a couple of weeks to acclimate and I'm always too warm getting dressed and yet I know I can't really wear a tank top yet. I miss my snowy walks where I could actually wear a coat with pockets to hold kleenex and sunglasses and masks and shit. I miss the ducks making little duck foot trails in the snow.

I mean, come on.

I guess the ducks might still be there, but that trail has to be a hellscape of mud at the moment. 

Oh well. It will either get colder again and I'll be comfortable or it will get warmer and I can wear fewer clothes and still be uncomfortable, but that's why I have air conditioning and an ever-growing collection of battery-operated fans. I don't have one of those necklace ones yet, but obviously I've considered it. 

We did our usual early-morning ritual, nine people up at 6:59 a.m. trying to snag a campsite for five months from now when booking opens at 7:00 a.m. (this is just kind of my life now). It's always a blood sport, and some years we have to try two or three days in a row, but this year over half of us couldn't get a site. I guess because of Covid and travel bans there are like fifty thousand more people trying to book Provincial Park campsites. Not sure if we're just not going to go or if we're going to squish a lot of people on very few sites and pretend to be a couple of large non-traditional families. Most years I would be fretting about this. This year it's not even a blip. Matt just wants to be able to go to the U.S. and watch baseball. 

Right then. I guess I'm going back out to buy some pork. 

Food and Drugs

 Just realized I my wall calendar is still on February - I forgot to flip it for a whole week. This either means I'm getting better at keeping appointments and work shifts in my phone calendar or I've forgotten a bunch of stuff I was supposed to do this week (brb, checking if I'm still employed). I have this weird tic where whenever I try to open either the calendar or maps app in my phone, I open the opposite one. Isn't that weird? Even if I think about it first I almost always end up on calendar when I want maps or vice-versa. 

Last week I did my usual library shifts and office shifts and then I did the afternoon snack program, because I am aiming to do all the jobs at the school. The kids will not know what to expect when they see me. Will I check out a book to you? Give you a late slip or some ice? Toss you a little bag of Shreddies? Jump out of a closet and start teaching math? WHO CAN SAY? (anyone who knows me at all can very definitely say I will not be teaching math). 

Doing the snack program is a pretty funny line between a sappily beatific "I am literally FEEDING HUNGRY CHILDREN" vibe and a "omg, back the fuck off you relentless little vultures". One little boy said "I don't want any food, but you look like you have some big muscles". Um, thanks? One girl said she liked my tattoo. One boy worked me like a used car salesman to get a blueberry muffin. 

It was Matt's birthday this week-end. We have a restaurant nearby that's been doing what they call a Global Table Series, where the chef creates a menu of seven courses of a specific country's cuisine, you pick up a giant box of little containers, watch a video of him preparing each course and then prepare it yourself. The video is hilarious and there's just enough prep that you feel like you're cooking fancy but not so much that you feel like you're doing all the work.

 Matt ordered the Thai one for us for Valentine's Day and did all the cooking and it was so much fun. It turned out that this month the Mexico one fell on his birthday weekend so I ordered it and picked it up and did the cooking. 

(or not, hahahahaha)

Lime ginger margaritas!

Arepas and something and tamale something and right after I said "we don't eat the banana leaf, right?" Chef Blackie said "do NOT eat the banana leaf, people".

We literally cooked tiny quails. Okay, I will stop with the food photos. 

We start early and watch each course video and then pause to cook and eat the course. We played a game between courses four and five so we wouldn't get too full. We still kind of felt like an anaconda that had eaten its yearly goat and needed to sleep for five months after, but it's a really nice way to spend an evening. 

He is OLD, but well fed. 

We looked at the menu for next month, which is Germany, and hesitated, because Jagermeister is involved, but we might try it anyway. 

So I started this post and then stopped because I was feeling really crappy and then I finally talked to my doctor and she's pretty sure I've been walking around with a raging sinus infection for weeks, which explains a lot. I thought it couldn't be an infection if I didn't have a fever. Am dumb. Antibiotics are onboard and hopefully I will soon be less stupid. 

Have you seen this article? It made me feel slightly less like I have to book a brain scan stat, after I started losing my train of thought in the literal middle of a sentence, even with no outside distractions in play. Today I went to get gas. I put my credit card in the slot and couldn't remember my pin number. I mean, I knew what the numbers were, but I couldn't remember how many of them and in what order. I did it wrong twice, took out my card and put it back in and got it right, but it wouldn't let me try again. I got my debit card and got THAT pin number wrong the first time. Took some deep breaths and finally got it right. How are you people with full time jobs or little kids surviving? It is MADNESS.

I figured I'd add some pictures to the post and my phone is upstairs, so now I can't post it AGAIN. This is BALLS.

Okay, pictures added. I still feel like the post is missing something. Wit? Relevance? Wheels? A duck? Whatever. Posting.