March Break

 March Break was super relaxing up front and enjoyable but not remotely relaxing at the end, which was a little backwards but what can you do, the Arts and Science Musical waits for no woman. 

Monday a group of us had lunch at a fun local Indian place. Two of us work in schools so were off for March Break, two of us work for Investors Group people who were off for March Break, and two of us are self-employed law practice people. Plus there was Tony, as long as his boss doesn't read this blog he's good. 

Tuesday I had a chill reading and yoga day and went to the chiropractor. I have thrown chiro, physio and massage therapy at this neck and back thing for years now, and I am starting to think I've gone as far as I can go addressing this structurally and my next step should be better drugs. Then we went to bar night and I had TWO drinks, because it was NOT a school night.

Wednesday I got a pedicure. No matter how much I scrape and slather my feet, they are icky, and I think I just have to start getting pedicures more than once every year and a half. I don't think I've ever gone by myself before, and it was actually really nice. Then I went to a movie with Collette - Mickey 17, by Bong Joon-Ho, the director of Parasite which I loved. I didn't love this one quite as much, but it was interesting, and not a sequel or a remake, which is something I am always down to support. 

Thursday we left for Hamilton at around noon. We took a back way instead of the usual fastest highway route, and it was really nice - even though we still stopped at a burger joint fast food place, we got out of the car and ate at a table like fancy people. 

We didn't get to see Eve because she was in rehearsal from 5:30 until 10:30, so we just had a salad in the hotel bistro and went to bed early. 

The next day I slept in a bit and Matt did some work. Our friend Zarah drove in from Barrie and Eve wanted some company to distract her from pre-show jitters, so we went into Westdale and took her out for Persian food and went to the cute little stationery store and bookstore in her neighbourhood, plus Shoppers Drug Mart so I could buy her hairspray and mascara - and naturally we ran into our professor who walks several kilometres around Westdale most days. 

A little dramatic

At the bookstore Eve came over to me with a Japanese book called The Blanket Cats and said "omg look at this, it's about a place where people borrow a cat" and I was really confused because I thought I had heard about this book but it was called We Will Prescribe You a Cat. We thought maybe it was a different translation, but then we went back to the shelf and there the other book was, one shelf up. Not only that, there were two other Japanese books about cats (no judgment, to be clear).  Obviously I bought her one.

We dropped Eve off and went back to the hotel to meet Matt after his last call. We were now on awkward opposite feeding schedules since Zarah and I were full of saffron and lemon chicken and Matt hadn't really eaten much. We went to Jack Astor's for him to eat, and then somehow found it in ourselves to fall on a malted brownie like starving dogs before heading down for the show.

Zarah was having an amazing hair day and mine was bugging me, so I'm just going to let this be the family pic

The show was amazing (more on that later), and very long, and the seats were very small. At intermission we recalled going to shows there in our undergrad and thinking the theatre seemed a lot bigger. After the show we went back to the hotel and had super-classy hotel room gin and tonics and Doritos.

Saturday Zarah headed home and Matt and I went to visit his sister-in-law and our niblings (his bro had to go save heart patients, the selfish jerk). We went to the mall and bought them popcorn cooked in unnatural-coloured sugar syrup first. They told us about school and trampolining and Mitchie got Matt to help him make his hobby horse and pelted me with Squishmallows and showed me his calendar which was basically a way of keeping track of the birthdays of everyone he knows and Ninja Zone on Fridays ("I don't know when it stops so I just does it on all of them for the whole year"). Both the parents are doctors, and Mitchie frequently says "don't talk about sickness because it might freak me out". They are delicious and I love them. 

I got a lime cilantro chicken bowl from Tim Horton's on the way back to the hotel since I knew I wasn't getting out of the play until ten. Matt dropped me off and picked me up, and my tiny professor dashed from her house to the theatre at the last minute as usual and still got nabbed by multiple people to talk until the very last second until the lights went down.

I did the same as last year - Friday night sat further back and got a good idea for the whole production and Saturday night sat in the second row and shot covert photos and video from my lap. It was even better - they had ironed out a few kinks from the night before and were having a blast. They always sneak in a few ad libs on the last performance because the department head has to approve the script but, as Eve's friend Leah said, "It's the last show and she's already written my reference letters". 

Matt picked me up and we went back to the hotel. I read pretty late, but not late enough to see Eve's text that she got back from the cast party at 3:30 a.m. And she was still up for us to drop off groceries at eleven AND went into the lab for three hours on Sunday. 

I was tired for work on Monday but my Monday school classes really love library and I was happy to see them again. Two grade sixes were looking for books and I sent them to the shelves. When they couldn't find the book I walked over saying "well sometimes people take them without signing them out, so --" plucking the book from the shelf - "but in this case you're just bad at looking" and they laughed, and the little kids told me all about what they did on March Break and it felt like the Platonic ideal of being an elementary school librarian. 

So the week had a little of everything and I DO feel somewhat refreshed and restored.