Unloading. Or load-shifting.

I don't want to jinx it, but after a few months of feeling just deeply disinclined to attack any of the chaos in my house, I seem to be getting the bug again. I was waffling about whether I would try to do anything about it Sunday, so I went down to flip the laundry and then did a little bit in the basement because DID I MENTION Angus is coming home for Thanksgiving? and I thought perhaps it behooved us to fix things so he didn't have to blaze a trail through piles of stuff to get to his bed (although, to be scrupulously fair, a lot of that stuff is still baseball-related). There's a table right outside the half-walls in front of the bed that turns into a dumping ground. There is also a table beside the dryer that turns into a dumping ground. I suddenly realized that, even if I didn't have time to get down to the finer details of dealing with the pile of crap, ALL of the pile of said crap could go in the laundry room where it will not be seen by any casual visitor. I seem to have a subconscious habit of spreading the crap around so there's a little bit of crap in a lot of places, when having MOST of the crap in ONE place (laundry room, back storage room) really makes the most sense. Although I realize that 'sense' is perhaps not the best word to apply to this situation.

I did some other stuff, then came down and sorted through a pile of stuff that had collected near the coffee table in the living room, which is at the front of the house. We don't really go in there unless we have company, and Matt tends to come in from work and drop his bag on one of the chairs flanking the table, so again, stuff collects. I separated out a couple of things and photographed them and posted them on my Facebook community giving group. There was a yoga mat I bought Eve when they were doing yoga at lunchtime at her elementary school - I have since bought her a bigger, thicker one, so this one was superfluous - some stationery with roses on it that is not my style, and some clothes that seemed nice enough to see if anyone specific wanted them rather than just donating them to the thrift store.

Someone took the yoga mat almost immediately. Someone asked for the stationery, so I put it in the mailbox. She said she'd be there after 5, but it was still in there when I left for work the next day.

My mood for this kind of thing is very inconsistent. Sometimes I'm happy to leave something out for several days (it's in a bag, it's sheltered from weather, come grab it whenever). I also almost never ask for anything on the group, unless it's unbelievably perfectly something I need that it would therefore be dumb to spend money on, because I have trouble enough remembering to brush my teeth and breathe these days, never mind making any additional stops. Sometimes it annoys me inordinately when someone says definitively they will come by a certain time and they do not.

When we first started, I left a pair of kids' snowpants on my front step for MONTHS. My parents are coming over this weekend, so subconsciously I was probably thinking of my mom saying "why is something hanging out of your mailbox?' when I messages the person and politely asked when she was planning to come.

The usual response when you remind someone that they forgot to pick up something is that they breathlessly detail some crazy emergency that just happened - their child broke a tooth! their mom tripped over a feral hog and needed emergency surgery! a meteorite crashed through their roof and started a fire! And like, I get it. I do. But this person said "Oh, I'm so sorry, I completely forgot, I will come today". 

I was deep into a paragraph about how refreshing it was to have someone just admitting to have forgotten rather than making up some story fit for this year's Guinness World Records when I realized that I do not know this woman and my effusive thanks would probably terrify her to the point where she wouldn't want to come within a hundred metres of my house, so I erased it and gave it to you instead. 

Although this Facebook memory because funny Eve is funny, pretty much from her first word on.

Walking and Sweating

 I did not go for a walk after work today. It was hot out, my mom had already walked Lucy (I drop her at their place while I'm working because she is an extremely spoiled dog) and my Monday school offers ample opportunity for getting steps in.

It is quite a long walk in from the parking lot.

It is a long-ish walk from the end of the school to the front door, or from the servery door, where I usually enter, to the library.

Once I am in the library, the distance from the desk to the end of the shelves (a distance I cover multiple times during the day) is not inconsiderable.

I did not realize until today how long and flat this school and library is. 

I kind of like that the very last book in the non-fiction section is about Antarctica.

The pictures from all my other walks from October 1st until yesterday are all pretty similar - leaves changing even though the temperature remains stubbornly, stickily, dystopically warm.

At my parents' place after work I said it looked like next weekend (when we'll all be together for Thanksgiving -the Canadian version) was going to be nice, my mom said "cooler" and I said "that's what I mean by nice."

Tonight I am browning a bunch of ground beef and pork to make taco meat (homemade seasoning), beef taco skillet, (I make it with more spieces) and vietnamese caramelised pork for next weekend when the kids are home (Angus is coming home for Canadian Thanksgiving for the first time in literally years. Eve said "omg, we're getting the band back together?) 

That tweet reminds me of when we opened the local paper and saw a picture of Angus with his cooking class visiting a local butcher and getting to help them make a turducken. I was like "we asked you what happened that day and you said 'nothing' - A TURDUCKEN).

Lucy.

Friday Randoms

 I have a list of things that I thought I was going to blog about, and some of them make zero sense. I don't know why I think two words is going to make me remember what I was going to say. Someone (obviously I don't remember who) suggested in a comment that I might want to think about HRT even though I am much younger than her, and I remember thinking I am NOT that much younger, and yes, a doctor's appointment to discuss HRT is on my list. How do women with important jobs where forgetting stuff might have actual consequences manage through perimenopause? That thing where someone goes in for surgery and ends up having the wrong arm or leg or testicle removed? If I was a surgeon I would be pretty frickin' nervous right now.

The greatest humiliation of my trivia career is probably the time I couldn't remember 'Don Quixote's squire". 

The correct answer is Sancho Panza.

All I could think of was Pancho Villa.

Someone I follow on Facebook made a humorous post about their little boy looking a little goofy in his first school picture. This reminded me of how I used to get a little frantic about how the kids should dress and post for school pictures until my husband told me to relax, it was just supposed to show a snapshot of how they were that year. Fortunately this happened before the year that Angus went wearing a t-shirt we had brought him from Mexico (without paying very close attention to ALL the words besides "sun" and "sand") and the word 'tequila was prominently displayed in the picture. Also the year he wore a thrifted Abercrombie and Fitch shirt and a fold made it look like it said 'bitch'. Parents of the year over here. 

I finally made a recipe from one of Suzanne's Dinners This Week posts, after saying I was going to for let's not even calculate how long. It was this recipe I think - kind of like with this recipe that my friend Kerry recommended, I couldn't imagine exactly what the flavour profile was going to be, which is interesting since a lot of the stuff I cook is pretty standard. Another enjoyable aspect was the text exchange Suzanne and I ended up having about inch-thick pork chops, which I will not detail here (not without getting permission from Suzanne anyway). The ones I cooked were very much not one inch thick, and I did end up overcooking them a little, but they were still delicious.

This morning I got my hair done, and afterwards I walked down the sidewalk to the little cupcake place I almost never go to - I suddenly realized that I could probably get a chai latte there - I never get them anymore because Eve said I'm not allowed to go to Starbucks anymore which, fair. I had a pleasant exchange with the girl at the counter, who then whispered that she was going to give me a free strawberry coconut cupcake because it had fallen over and the icing was a bit smooshed so they couldn't sell it. I said I could pay for it but she just shushed me and stuck it in the bag. I am reminded of that time Pam and I went for lunch and were offered cupcakes instead of carrots - I am pleased both by the memory and that I managed to find the post from FOURTEEN YEARS AGO WHY DID I DO THIS TO MYSELF.

Then I stopped by the grocery store, and in the parking lot I stopped to let an old man in a yellow t-shirt cross to his car and he yelled thank-you, and then another old man said "beautiful day!" as we were walking into the store, so then I came home high on free-cupcake-cheerful-old-man energy, walked Lucy and read in the backyard.

Wishing everybody a splendid week-end.

Found Everywhere, Commonplace

 At bar night last week Michael said something, realized that what he said hadn't been particularly intelligent, then said "I'm in great shape for trivia tomorrow night". I said "oh, are you guys doing trivia tomorrow night?" Then they all looked at me and I said "oh shit, am I doing trivia tomorrow night?"

We used to do trivia nights at a local restaurant called Stoneface Dolly's but it closed during Covid, which sucks, the couple that ran it was really nice. Our name was The Pugnacious Six - I just sat here for a few minutes trying to remember why; it was because each night was to raise money for a local charity, and the first one was a pug rescue. The next one was for brain injuries, so we toyed with changing out name to the Medulla Oblongatas, but the host couldn't pronounce it so we stayed pugnacious. On our way to trivia this time, I made some comment about someone being at Diminished Capacity, which became our new name (Dim Cap for short). It is usually six of us because a few people hate trivia and Matt is so often out of the country.

We tend to be a very robust group brain, while individually being exceedingly weak in some areas. Tony can tell you what year any song or movie came out. Mark and Matt are very strong in sports and geography. Collette and Dave are wild cards with really good general knowledge and Collette knows what all the British kings and queens look like on sight, which freaks me the hell out. I slay on literature and basically nothing else, although last time we did this I was very proud of the fact that I got a question about an actor's last name being what happens when you do his first name (Rip Torn).

There was a section with musical clues. The first clip was Cruel Summer by Bananarama, which we got because we are old. The second one started, and we were all looking around blankly, then the chorus started and I realized I knew it, at the same time that Michael realized he knew it, and then looked really dismayed that we all saw him recognizing it, because it was Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift and Michael prides himself on his sophisticated musical taste (we call it "he hates anything that has a melody"). The third one was some rap thing we didn't know - we thought it might be another Cruel Summer, but it was not. 

It's a fun mix of questions with different themes and ways of asking. One section had the categories listed and as soon as I saw "Merchant-Ivory films" I knew I had to remember the author of Howard's End and A Passage to India, and I was briefly seized by the terror that I would not be able to summon it up, because if I fail at a lit question you guys, I really have nothing to offer. Fortunately it came to me, PLUS I learned the fun new fact that he briefly served as a private secretary to a maharajah, which seems like a fun thing to be able to put on a resume. 

To demonstrate how much people who are good at one category can suck at another, Collette and I kept trying to answer Kenya for which country's national dance was tinikling, which is dancing between long bamboo poles, until Michael pointed out that the bamboo made it more likely to be an Asian country than an African one (goddammit, I just looked it up and bamboo DOES grow in Kenya, our wrong answer was still possible, screw you Michael). I looked up a Youtube video of tinikling and got a broken ankle just watching. I wish I could think of someone else guessing something dumb. Alas, I cannot, unless you count Collette thinking a picture of Kumail Nanjiani was a picture of "the Indian guy from the Big Bang Theory". I am faceblind but remember names, and Tony knows faces but not names, so he said "no, that's the guy from The Big Sick", which was all I needed - see? Unbeatable group brain. 

Oh! I have another one that I got by guessing. It was film titles that were Latin phrases, and the only one we didn't know was a 1951 film starring Deborah Kerr and the title meant 'where are you going?' I pulled Quo Vadis out of somewhere while everyone else was still stuck on Veni Vidi Vici. 

I can't quite figure out why I enjoy trivia nights so much when I invariably end up feeling dumb and embarrassed multiple times throughout the evening. It's so satisfying when you actually get one? The endless lure of possibility? We did win, although we did so badly on the last section that Michael said he felt like we didn't deserve it. He said this multiple times, actually, until I told him to shut up and drink his giant Oktoberfest beer. 

This is Dave, however, not Michael.

Five For Friday

 1. Firstly, I feel like I somewhat unfairly maligned my entire vet practice because of one less-than-pleasant visit that wasn't even the most recent one. Most of the ones we've seen have been perfectly lovely, coo over how adorable Lucy is, and only mention her weight in the context of chihuahuas tending to have luxating patellas. There is body positivity, and then there is the fact that weight can be tough on the joints (is there a chance I am over-identifying with my dog's weight issues? Nooooo). But during Covid, I took her in, and even though they had been letting people in masked, for whatever reason they did not want me to come inside this day, and I had no car because the vet is so close we had walked over. So I meandered around the snowy parking lot feeling like a dork, until the doctor called me and fairly unpleasantly said Lucy's weight and teeth were terrible, clearly implying that I was an unfit vet owner. So that sucked. And unfortunately I don't know what that particular veterinarian's name is, so every time we go in I'm a little on edge that we might get her again. 

2. Matt said he would give me a piece of art for my birthday for over the mantle. I mean "art" because our kids are just out of university. The other three sides of the room have smaller framed photos or objects, so I wanted a large piece to kind of tie it together. Collette (HI COLLETTE) told me about Allposters.com because I liked a piece that she had gotten. It seemed a little overwhelming, but I was able to narrow it down pretty quickly. 

I ended up with this one.

It works on a few levels. Firstly, I just really liked it immediately. Secondly, I've always liked Paul Klee. Thirdly, it matches my curtains. When I was younger I would not have admitted that that last one was in play, but I am older and less inclined to try to impress people with a level of sophistication and worldliness that I do not, in actuality, possess. There is a certain indefinable aesthetic that I have seen in other houses that I love, but I've never been able to get there. We still have to hang the picture properly, but it makes me very happy every time I see it.

3. A skunk sprayed next door and our neighbours blocked Lucy and Riley's door in the fence while they weren't letting Riley out in their back yard until it rained or they could cut the grass and rake it up. And we were in a drought. The dogs were massively unimpressed. Generally Lucy scampers over there and inveigles herself into their house several times a day, and Riley does the same over here. Last week Matt let her out just as we were about to leave for bar night before I could advise him not to. We waited. We yelled for her. We waited some more. We yelled some more. Finally I texted my neighbour and asked her to send my asshole dog who has a more exciting social life than I do home. Matt commented that it is much like when Eve and Victoria from next door (who was born less than a week before Eve) were four to seven years old - we frequently didn't know exactly where they were, but it was in one of the two houses. 

I have now spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for photos of Little Eve and Little Victoria together but they predate phone photos. I did find one of Little Lucy and Little Riley (who is Lucy's sister from the previous litter). 

Eve and Vic at The Lumineers in February 2020, just before everything went kablooey.

4. While I was looking through hundreds of photos, I found this one of Eve with Marianna wrapped in bubble wrap. 

5. More memes from my favourite meme place, which I might have already posted, but hey, maybe your memory is as bad as mine!

My Face is My Fortune, That's Why I'm Totally Broke

 That has nothing to do with this post, the song has just been running through my head since I read Nicole's latest post. The alternate post title is "Friday Randoms, Oops Ha Ha It's Only Thursday." It's been rainy most of the week and the hood is a little foggy this morning, as is my mind. 

Lucy had a vet appointment. She went from this

To this

WTF Allison

She hasn't been to this vet in over two years, and she takes a car ride of the same length many mornings, so how did she know to start whining the second we pulled up in front of the animal hospital door? HOW?

I used to go places with babies, and I am way out of practice for juggling a small living being, my purse, my car keys and whatever else, and I felt like a hot mess. 

The vet was lovely. I said I thought Lucy seemed to hop on her leg a little bit when walking, and the vet asked "on the surgery side?" and I said "yeeeees... honestly, once the hair grew back I sometimes can't remember which side it was." But she examined all four legs and said they seemed fine. We usually get weight-shamed, but Lucy is actually down .2 of a kg, whoo-hoo! So much better than the time the vet was extremely bitchy and the weight gain seemed weirdly high, and then I remembered Matt had left his plate unguarded and she had gotten a giant piece of beef wellington the day before - once she pooped she was back in normal weight range.

I finally got her back in her carrier, and then couldn't find my car keys. Which were in my hand.

I forgot to get yogurt at the grocery store yesterday and I have somehow become someone who can't not have yogurt every day, so I went to the grocery store and left Lucy in her carrier in the car while I dashed in for yogurt. After I paid and started walking out I suddenly thought I had left the yogurt at the check-out. Because it was now in the cloth bag I was carrying, and not clutched against my chest.

I got six solid hours of sleep last night, I don't know WHAT to blame this on.

No wait! Maybe I do. I commented on one of Suzanne's Dinners This Week posts that I was cooking short rib and later in the week had ground beef and steak, and joked that maybe my iron was low again. Ha HA, joke's on me, guess what the email from my doc a mere two days later said about my iron and B12? She also said she'd phoned a prescription for supplements in to my pharmacy, which of course they professed to have zero knowledge of when I went in because they SUCK like a vampire that would be anemic if it tried to sustain itself on me. Until I muster up the strength to deal with that, I will be napping with Lucy, who is either traumatized or dreaming of all the liver treats the vet plied her with. Liver treats - those are probably high in iron, right? 

First Week Back at Work

 My first week at work was weird, as it always is, not really in a bad way. At some point in the summer I wake up in a panic thinking I've just forgotten to go in for four weeks.

The first couple of weeks there are no classes because we need time to get all the class barcodes from the office and get them organized, and teachers need to pick a library slot. Given the way their days are chopped up by homeroom, switching classes, gym class, blended learning and prep, it's a miracle that the schedule somehow comes together. 

It's always a little strange being in the library for hours with no students coming in. In one library we put all the books from displays up on high shelves for the summer to keep them safe, so the first day is a lot of lifting and sorting and re-making displays. In another library the main librarian retired last year, and left a bunch of bins of books which the new librarian and I were uncertain about, so I did a bunch of scanning and sorting. 

There's something Zen and calming about placing all the books neatly, with books from the same series all together, and then there's something equally agreeable about the chaos left after six classes come rampaging through and all that's left is an upside-down copy of Dog Man: Mothering Heights and a few tattered Diary of a Wimpy Kids.

Once all of that was done, I started looking around at other places I could do displays. At one school there is a shelf of student-made robots. I looked up robot books in the catalogue. One was called amour chez les robots, and it was late afternoon and I hadn't talked to another person for hours and I was getting wingy so I texted our friends WhatsApp that I was afraid my library was harbouring robot porn.

They were there for me, like they always are.

Then I sent them pictures of the robots.

Then I told myself "do not put the robots in sexual positions. Do NOT put the robots in sexual positions."

Then of course...

I put the robots in sexual positions.

I put the robots back to normal before ending up with one of the weirdest "how I got fired" stories ever.

I couldn't find the amour chez les robots book, so Collette looked it up.

Tony shut down our juvenile speculation and held up the feminist end of things.

I made a pretty book display and called it a day, which was probably best for everyone. 

It was my parents' birthdays (three days apart) on the weekend. Since our anniversary falls right between their birthdays, you'd think we would habitually remember our anniversary. But we do not. In fact, I have joked about us never remembering our anniversaries, had someone look a bit pained, and said "it's September 21st today, isn't it?" (she said "I wasn't going to say anything!")

I always enjoy this Facebook memory.

And this one. When we were getting stuff ready for our wedding, my Mom asked what we wanted to give for favours. She said "you should think of something that makes them think of you", and I said "like nuts?" She thought I was joking, but then her older German friend said that she thought it was hilarious, so I painted little plant pots and put tealights in them, then attached a little bag of pistachios and the tag said "nuts to you from Matt and Allison".

My sister and her husband came for the weekend. We talked and laughed and went out for dinner and the weather was beautiful - we sat in the backyard all day Sunday. It was perfect.