1. We have had a weeks-long string of sunny but cool days - I just typed "unseasonably cool days" and then wasn't sure if that made any sense, and then I looked it up and May has been cooler than any in the last eleven years, so I guess it does? Anyway, I love it so much and everyone else is so disappointed that it isn't warmer that I would feel guilty, except does anyone feel guilty when I am dying in the blast furnace that is July and August? NO. So I go to work and then I come home and sit outside reading because I know any day it will stop being the perfect weather for it, except then it keeps still being the perfect weather for it, so I am getting jack shit done, and I regret nothing.
Because Matt didn't go to Helsinki because of his about-to-be-the-third-in-our-throuple visitor (remind me to get Matt to find out if he has any food allergies), we decided to go to the garden center on Saturday. This was fairly momentous, since for the last few years May and early June have been crazy for one reason or another, so it was me going alone to the garden center weeks after planting should have been done already and shoving stuff into dirt haphazardly (I tend to take a blind faith approach to gardening anyway, but this was new heights of that).
How lovely, I thought, that we could go together, which I don't remember happening, like, ever.
Ten minutes after we got there I wanted to murder him. Thankfully we were in a place with ready access to shovels and dirt.
Tell me why, WHY, he would keep saying "I bet the portulaca is outside", or "I bet the snapdragons are in the back there", when I go to this nursery EVERY GODDAMNED YEAR and he has LITERALLY NEVER BEEN THERE? Also, he likes all the wrong flowers.
I said "I thought it would be fun doing this together" and he looked a bit crestfallen, so I told him to stop mansplaining the garden center to me and we compromised on his terrible taste in plants, and we came home and planted stuff and in the end it was quite lovely and I fertilized with Miracle Gro instead of Decomposing Husband.
2. Before we went to San Francisco I realized my passport needed to be renewed soon. So naturally, the minute we got home I jumped right on that, seeing as my son lives across an international border and having an up-to-date passport is fairly important.
Hahahahahahah like fuck I did. By the time I remembered it was an issue it was, well, going to be an issue. I did my usual thing, which is panicking in a group chat, and my friend Kerry (HI KERRY) did her usual thing, which is offering up her wisdom in a tone of type that subtly says 'calm the fuck down, Allison'. I was able to make an appointment in Kingston for last Thursday. This meant a two-hour drive each way, which somehow is far preferable to at least four hours in an uncomfortable chair, not even being able to read because my hands can't support a book.
 |
| Sharing my trademark unhinged smile before getting my 'Most Terrifying Resting Bitch Face of All Time' passport photos done. |
It worked out perfectly. It was a beautiful day for a drive. Everyone at the Kingston passport office could not possibly have been lovelier. The ancient security guard at the door said "go on in, dear. There are people in there but they're mostly walk-ins, you'll get to jump the line" (there were four people). I had a folder of documents, and when I pulled out the passport form it looked blank, even though I knew I had filled it out, and the man at the first window said "it's okay, it's just the back of it." and when I looked mortified he said "don't worry. Forms are my life."
 |
| How does a town sign lose its I? |
The employee at the actual appointment asked "did you drive here from Ottawa for this?" and I was worried he thought that was dumb and he said "that Meadowlands office is like the seventh circle of hell. And I was actually working there!" My appointment was done before my actual appointment time, and he said I would have my passport in plenty of time for us to visit Angus in early July.
Somebody had told me to have lunch by the water. I walked down, but I didn't really feel like eating in a restaurant, and I was waffling, and then I saw a bench by the water and suddenly realized what I really wanted to do.
3. I had a mammogram yesterday. Administered by a technician who sounded a bit like a kindergarten teacher and wrangled my breasts like recalcitrant toddlers. If my passport pictures hadn't already torched what remained of my self esteem, the way my boobs now flop around like kittens hammered the final nail into that coffin. On the up side, the gown matched my skirt.
Angus created a monster by bringing me a Booster Juice Mango Hurricane a few years ago, and I got the rest of one of my group chats hooked on them. The procedure is now that after getting your mangos juiced, you then reward yourself with juiced mangos (more like cantaloupes for a couple of us, but I hate cantaloupe).
5. I just watched a TikTok that reminded me of when Eve was in grade ten and one of her teachers heard her and her friends talking about older boys and the teacher said "no no, girls, don't mess with the older boys, stick to the ones your own age". Then she accompanied the class on a weekend trip to Montreal, with many of those boys, and at the end she went to the girls and said "I'm so sorry - I WAS WRONG."
Bonus Lucy pic because she looks like a Mafia don surveying her kingdom.
8 comments:
Booyah for a pleasant passport renewal! It's always so nice to have an easy interaction with something official like that. It almost makes up for the times that we've all had where things don't go so smoothly.
Last week I was in Chicago and a street hotdog was exactly what my body was craving for lunch. It's good food!
I always crave pancakes after a mammogram. Hmmm.
Yay to a pleasant passport experience, even the drive! And I love a good hot dog. Sounds dirty, I didn’t mean it to be (or did I?)
Congrats on not murdering your husband. The long term relationship - so much love, so much rage.
I renewed my passport ONLINE and the process was smooth as silk. I was not expecting that under the Trump administration, to be honest. I have an impossible to replace "Certificate of Birth Abroad" and whenever my official copy leaves my hands, I want to cry. But IT DIDN'T LEAVE MY HANDS.
My husband and I do not agree on painting. He is TERRIBLE at painting and says "no one looks that closely at it" and he's WRONG. I - HIS WIFE - LOOK THAT CLOSELY AT IT. He is no longer allowed to help with painting.
I have a sort of irrational knee-jerk response against hot dogs, and then every now and then I see or smell a hot dog and suddenly want to eat hot dogs until I die of eating hot dogs. (the phrase hot dogs has now lost all meaning)
OMG Julie, it took me three times reading to get the pancakes thing YOU ARE SO FUNNY. Go ahead and mean it dirty, it's more fun that way. This hot dog was very good. And yes - so grateful for him, so lovingly imagining murdering him so often.
So comforting being among my people. When our husbands are out do they find it comforting being around their loudly wrong, annoying people?
I fertilized with Miracle Gro instead of Decomposing Husband = FTW.
In the department of random asides: The guy who owned that company had a boat in the harbor near where I grew up. The boat was named Miracle Go.
LEGHORN IS A TYPE OF CHICKEN?!
Also, I am cackling at "recalcitrant toddlers."
Your garden center experience (Decomposing Husband, lol) reminds me of taking my kid with me to the garden center. She ALSO knew (no) where everything was. And she also loved every single flowering plant and wanted to buy it, even though I had a carefully curated list. We only came home with three non-list flowers and two non-list vegetables, though, so I'm calling that a win. And the flowers are, to be fair, quite lovely.
Post a Comment