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I don't really want to become a one-post-a-week blogger, but I'm not feeling inspired, so I'm going to just tell you some stuff that may or may not be of any interest.

We had friends over on Sunday of the long week-end, had a non-barbecue barbecue (I did everything in the slow cooker because Angus and Matt were in town but were at double-headers on Saturday and Sunday and I still think I'm going to blow myself up every time I light the barbecue). We played board games, which some of our friends do regularly but I almost never do because I hate most of them. Games that involve strategy, like this one, or this one? Hate them - I suck at them and find them tedious. Card games? Hate them - they make me wonder why everyone doesn't just read more. But I like trivia games and silly word games. My brother-in-law and his wife gave us this game for Christmas.

This was extra funny, because I had already bought this game for our New Year's Eve party.

We didn't even end up breaking open the Drunk one, Smart Ass was such a hit. We played it at Christmas...

Then the kids kicked us out and played it at Christmas....

We played it at New Year's. 

We played it on the May long week-end. 

We played it at other random times in other people's houses. Here we have Smart Ass with a cat's ass. 

Oh wait, actually that's Clue (hated it) with a cat's ass  but we played Smart Ass later and the cat's ass probably made an appearance then too.

It's a simple trivia game with a few categories (Who Am I, What Am I, Where Am I), a question and then a series of clues that make it successively easier to guess the answer. If you guess wrong once, you're out for the duration of the question. This is why the kids can play it - they just need more clues. You have to strike a balance between guessing too early and waiting too long (three guesses which I have a bigger problem with). 

We played Drunk Ass on our last get-together too. It's not actually a drinking game (yeah, okay, it's totally a drinking game, but you don't have to play it that way). The trivia just involves questions about various types of alcohol and cocktails, and then there are sobriety tests that, at this point in our lives, are just as funny to do while sober, or mostly.

So apparently I love board games, as long as they involve trivia. Or booze.

I Have Drunk Deep From the Well of Culture. And Rum. With a Bourbon Chaser.

Saturdays around here don't tend to be a beehive of activity. There's usually some kind of sporting event, for one kid if not both, early in the day, and then some down time and we catch up on Modern Family (Matt and Eve and me), Person of Interest (Matt and Angus and me) and/or House of Cards (Matt and me - Angus hung around for part of one hoping for some kind of salaciousness and almost died of boredom; not a future politician, I guess). Saturdays after Matt has just returned home from a week overseas are usually reserved for stumbling through the required activity and then adjourning to the couch (him) and the reading chair (me) for some recovery time.

As things shook out, he was scheduled to get home from France Friday night, after a week in California and a week in Asia not long ago, but Eve's spring Glee recital was on Saturday morning and I had NAC tickets for Saturday night, AND then we found out that Collette's birthday dinner was reserved for Saturday night also. So I took Collette out for dinner last week, and figured that Saturday I would go to the Glee recital, the NAC event, then stop by Collette's for a civilized drink before heading home to sleep the sleep of the virtuous and well-rounded.

I bet you can guess how well THAT worked out for me.

First, Matt's flight got cancelled. He was rebooked on one that was scheduled to land in Ottawa at 11:30. The recital was at 12:30. We figured it was going to be a Disney-movie-type-thing, except he would probably arrive seconds AFTER Eve performed, not before. Eve was fine - she felt bad that he felt bad, and I said I would try to record it. My mom was coming with us, and Eve's teacher, because she is just that awesome.

The recital was fantastic. Not in the way that Glee the television show is fantastic, because they're all professional singers and actors who are just playing regular kids. These were regular kids who had the balls to sing in public. They weren't all great, but they were mostly quite good (my kid was the best, duh). And their two songs (Break Away and Price Tag) were bookended by ballet and tap performances by five-year-olds, and how better to be bookended than by a dozen little pink-gowned blissed-out darling children reveling in the sheer joy of being small and pink and dancing on a stage? And then at the end we found out that Matt had (by breaking a land-speed record and three traffic laws) actually made it seconds before Eve's class went on. So that was awesome.

Then I went to see Shane Koyczan with a couple of book club friends. Honestly, I bought the ticket in the spirit of trying something a little new, and I wasn't sure how into it I would be, especially given that I was exhausted. I wasn't sure if it would be too earnest, or if I would find it like the symphony where my mind drifts and I can't stay focused on the performance, or if, as my friend Carolyn said, we might get trampled in a mob of besotted hipsters.

It was phenomenal. It was spectacular. It was fantastic, and I say this from the bottom of my cynical, middle-aged, shriveled little heart. It was earnest in the very best way, but the emotional intensity was liberally sprinkled with profane hilarity, and my ears couldn't look away. I can't find most of the poems online either because I can't remember what they were called, or because they're new, but he did this one (without music, which I actually prefer), and don't feel bad if you don't feel like watching it because I almost never watch videos embedded in blogs either, but it's very good. And I have to say, everything he said rang so true, except that he still doesn't go to beaches or public places and hasn't had many relationships, because I have to think that this dude gets so much ass flung at him he must not be able to catch it with both hands and a net.

Then I went to Collette's. Matt had gone to the birthday dinner, which was heroic in the extreme since he had probably been awake for over twenty-four hours now, so he kissed me and went home. And I had a beer. And then the whole night turns into a hazy haze of WTF punctuated by flashes of OH DEAR GOD, and there was a bottle of rum with a kraken on it and some kind of weird hop-flavoured bourbon, and a lengthy, serious discussion about elbows. Then I was towed home like a salvaged galleon through the streets of Barrhaven by three friends who wouldn't let me lie down on someone's lawn for a rest no matter how much I begged. And I slept the sleep of the debauched and repentant.

How was your week-end?

Panic at the Movie Theatre!

Eve and I just got home from the movies (Big Hero 6). We went with three of her friends and three of mine, with a not-exact breakdown of parent-to-related child ratio, which isn't really important so I'm not even sure why I just tried to figure out a way to describe it. We were all roughly in the middle of the theatre, the four girls in front of the three adult women and one adult male.

Photo by Carlos Garcia |Campillo

We got there pretty early because a couple of weeks ago I took Eve and her friend from next door to see The Book of Life and the theatre was super short-staffed and we didn't get into the movie until two minutes before the movie started which stresses me the fuck out and there were almost no seats left, which was okay except some douchey couple dragged their five little girls in fifteen minutes after the movie started, bustled up to the top row where we were and started calling out asking people to move so their kids could sit down, then left and sat somewhere else while the five little girls whispered and went to the bathroom five times and spilled snacks and jumped up and down until I snarled at one (I didn't actually snarl, I just said "please sit down" quite firmly).

I was focused on not letting this kind of thing happen again. Of course, I can't control the actions of douchey people, but I could get us there early so maybe we would could sit in a less douche-accessible area. 

It seemed to go pretty well. I thought any late-arriving presumptuous douches would have trouble accessing us in the middle where we were. And we had a bit of a wait, but I hadn't seen my one friend in months, so hey, more time to catch up.

We had a lovely chat. It seemed like we had been sitting there for quite a while, but not in a bad way.

The movie was supposed to start at 1:30.

We checked our phones. It was 1:40.

Someone from the theatre came in at 1:45 and said they were having some technical difficulties and it would be ten or fifteen more minutes. We weren't overly upset, since our friends still had time to make it to their family dinner, and our kids were still happily chatting. The people with small children were less sanguine. There were bathroom breaks. There was crying and complaining. There was mutiny among the troops. 

Twenty minutes later, the gentleman came back in and said it would be fifteen to twenty minutes more, MAX, before the movie started, OR we could go to the 3D one at 2:40 (too late for our friends to still make their family dinner, plus I loathe 3D), OR we could get our money back.

Eve and Marielle asked if they could get Dippin Dots. Caitlin and her friend asked for popcorn. Did I mind that we were now basically rewarding the theatre for making us wait for our movie? A little, but not as much as you might think.

We talked some more. The front section of the theatre where the birthday party was set up devolved into something resembling Lord of the Flies. I asked Eve if, in the event that it got too late, she wanted to go to the 3D movie or wait and see it with Marielle next week-end. She said she would wait. 

We were just on the verge of having to bail, and the movie started. I thought the movie was fantastic - I laughed out loud and cried three times, not including the time I cried during the beginning short. As we were leaving the theatre (they refunded everyone's money, even the people who stayed and saw the movie), the parents with small children looked like battle-weary soldiers fresh from the wars.

Sometimes I miss the little hands and baby voices and hilariously mispronounced words and lapful of toddler. 

Sometimes having older kids is a really good deal. 

(A mother and two kids did, in fact, squeeze in right next to me after the movie had started and there was some phone fiddling and loud talking. I might have to avoid the movie theatre for a while until the douche-magnetism  wears off).

Scintilla Day 2: Instructions

Prompt 2: Tell a story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual.

*****************

Step 1: Find yourself living in Toronto with your husband of a few months, working for a cool little independent bookstore, finally getting treatment for depression which will surely solve all of those problems in short order and forever (insert slightly bitter snort).

Step 2: Figure things are going pretty well and it would be a good thing to find a way to give back to the community.

Step 3: See an ad for PAL-Reading Services in the paper.

Step 4: Feel struck to the core with the conviction that this was Meant To Be in every possible way - Blind People who are Tragically Denied the Joys of the Written Word (because you don't know Braille, or there aren't enough books in Braille, or something!), LET ME BE YOUR READER!

Step 5: Go in for a short test. Be accepted with alacrity and praise despite a slight quibble over the pronunciation of the word 'eschew'.

Step 6: Take the subway to that part of town a few times a month. Enjoy being ensconced in your own tiny room with a window, a counter, a tape recorder and a book. Resist the temptation to add editorial comments or introduce yourself ("Hi, I'm Allison and I'll be your reader today").

Step 7. Marvel at the range and variety of material you're asked to read. Biology textbooks. Historical treatises. Inspirational memoirs that make it necessary to remove all traces of eye-rolling from your voice.

Step 8: Encounter issues such as: How do I read the word 'deftness' without making it apt to be mistaken for 'deafness' and yet still maintain the flow of the narrative?; Should I vary my voice to indicate when different people are speaking?; Have I really been pronouncing 'detritus' wrongly my whole life?

Step 9: Show up as usual one day and enter your little room.

Step 10: Find a volume of poetry for the first time and think that this will be interesting.

Step 11: Get set up and scan the first poem.

Step 12: Realize in short order that the book is, in fact, a volume of African-American lesbian erotic poetry.

Step 13: Check the room reflexively for hidden cameras -

Step 13a: not hidden microphones because THEY DON'T HAVE TO HIDE THE MICROPHONE, IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE COUNTER.

Step 14: Wonder if you're being punk'd, except Punk'd doesn't actually exist yet.

Step 15: Decide that perhaps you're being silly.

Step 16: But then think, are you really? It's Toronto, for crying out loud - centre of multiculturalism and diversity and difference. And if you're not the straightest, whitest straight white girl they could have given this to, you have to be close.

Step 17: Look around more carefully for hidden cameras.

Step 18: Decide that you're probably just being silly. Who knows what kind of roster of readers they have? And hey, blind African-Canadian lesbians deserve their sexy poems as much as anyone else. And you haven't been Catholic, strictly speaking, for quite a while.

Step 19: Become involved in the work at hand.

Step 20: Do a pretty damned good job, if you do say so yourself, including reading out the phrase "To the woman who makes my clit dance" without exclaiming 'okay, seriously?' afterwards.

Step 21: Turn in the book and tape recorder and give some pretty serious side-eye to the chick at the front desk on your way out. Be unable to decide whether her expression is a little TOO suspiciously deadpan.

Step 22: Spend the subway ride home alternately blushing and giggling like an idiot.

Step 23: Resolve to become less naive and easily embarrassed.

Step 24: Take a second, many years later, to be fervently grateful that you weren't doing this kind of volunteer work when Fifty Shades of Grey was published.

Ode on a Québecoise waitress

So I've been wandering around feeling crushingly fatigued and restless and irritable and wondering what the hell is wrong with me and then I thought, well DUH, I'm an introvert. And all the carousing and merriment and ever-so-mild debauchery of late has plumb drained my aloneness tanks to virtual emptiness. Even this week, when usually I'd be alone for a few hours during the day, got eaten up by errands and plans that necessitated my rubbing shoulders with the human public to an absolutely exhausting extent.

So, Montreal. With two friends from high school who now live in Halifax - three of us, down from the usual six due to the vagaries of family and employment. Anne Marie is a doctor and, it has to be said, a massive weirdo who I adore, even when she's haranguing strangers or service personnel. Sheila works at the BIO and even though I made her describe her average work day for me in excruciating detail, I still can't remember exactly what she does. She is also my age with a four-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old, so she is very, very tired.

Friday when Anne Marie got out of her palliative care conference, we asked the concierge for what I thought was going to be a restaurant recommendation but my never-drank-in-high-school somehow-turned-into-a-huge-lush-over-the-past-ten-years doctor friend asked for a bar recommendation instead. The concierge was about to send us to one place, then suddenly he backtracked and said that place would probably be packed at this point and gave us another recommendation. We took this at face value at the time, but then on the way in the cab we realized it was 4:40 p.m. and figured that he probably realized we were way too old and uncool for the first place.

We got to the bar. It wasn't open yet (because, newsflash, it was four fucking forty p.m., what the hell were we thinking? Well, that we wanted to get shitfaced AND be in bed by nine-thirty, but apparently that doesn't fly in Montreal). So we went down the street to this place and tried to order boozy hot chocolate, but they wouldn't let us order booze without ordering food and we didn't want food yet (jesus christ, it was like all of Montreal was conspiring to keep us sober). So we got a caramelia 34% and a Xocolatl épicé and some other thing that needed instructions on how to decant and drink. Then Anne Marie went to look at the chocolate stuff for sale, and Sheila started imitating Anne Marie in the cab, when she asked for money back from the twenty-dollar bill she gave the cab driver and he said something to his dispatcher but she thought he was arguing with her and snarled I NEED CHANGE while I tried to climb over Sheila who was between me and the cab door leading to the sidewalk, while he stared at all of us. Sheila imitating Anne Marie growling I NEED CHANGE now caused the people at the next table to stare at us, so I left to go find Anne Marie, tried to tell her what had just happened and ended up laughing so hard I couldn't speak, which then caused everyone else in the place to start staring at us. So now our work here was done.

We went back to the bar. It was cool. The chairs looked like big hands and the drinks menu was on records. Also, the bartender was charming and attentive, possibly because there was absolutely no one else in the joint for the three hours we spent there, but I prefer to think it was our scintillating collective personality. As far as I remember, we had a Sweet Tart, a Jacques Brel, a Captain America, and something that the waiter swore didn't have tequila in it, but it sure as fuck had tequila in it. Then we did a bunch of shooters. Anne Marie made a reservation at an Italian restaurant down the street on her iPhone. We weaved down the street to the restaurant and met Natasha.

You know when a waitress is so freaking amazing at being sincere that you know that means she's just even more insincere than everyone else, because she's insincere enough to really sell being sincere? You could have sworn this woman had been waiting all her life just to serve us dinner. And it wasn't just because of the shooters that we thought this, because after insisting that we order the charcuterie platter for an appetizer, she brought Julio the meat chopping guy over and introduced him to us, and HE did not seem that enchanted to be our meat-chopping guy AT ALL. The food was amazing, and the wine was highly enjoyable, but by the end of the night we were just there for Natasha. We wanted to take a picture of her so we said 'can we take a picture of you' and she thought we wanted HER to take a picture of US, and we were like, 'no, we want to take a picture of you and send it to our husbands so they'll be jealous of us' and she was like 'um.....' and we were like 'look, we're all totally gay for you AND we're hammered, you're getting a gargantuan tip out of this' and she was like 'cheese!' Then, as we were about to pay the bill, I suddenly clicked over from that perfect state of blissful floaty everyfuckingthing in the world is fantastic to that unperfect state of it's going to be awkward if I have to spend the rest of the night throwing up and we only have one bathroom. But I didn't. So it was still one of the top twenty-five nights in my life.

Friday Funny

Because sometimes you have to laugh or you'll be so frustrated from searching for a double loft bed for your son (after finding one in the IKEA catalogue and realizing that it's actually the PERFECT SOLUTION and MUST BE OBTAINED and then finding out that the IKEA in your city doesn't carry it any more and then searching every other goddamned furniture store that is searchable without your ass actually leaving a chair and not finding one ANYWHERE) that you'll cry. Or at least use a lot of objectionable language and feel kind of cranky.

I can't remember where I came across this for the first time, but I came across a copy of it in my pictures file and it made me snort unbecomingly again. It's the corollary to those magical experiences where students come back and tell teachers what a positive difference they made in the student's life. As my son would say, Mrs. Johanson totally pwned Larry. Plus, his name is Larry - for some reason that also makes me giggle.

Also, if you haven't seen possibly the best legal typo of all time, check this out. My lawyer friend said he's considering it as a new template for his retainer letter.

The post I'm too tired to think of a title for

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. I want to assure everyone who might have gotten the impression that my doctor is mean and that I am not assertive enough that I did get confirmation that if the x-ray showed pneumonia she would CALL in a prescription rather than requiring the honour of our presence again -- NOT doing that little forced march twice in two days. The night was less than stellar -- despite the puffer Eve coughed forcefully and pitiably from bedtime until midnight or so until I gave up on both of us trying to sleep, got her up and propped her up in my chair to watch TV and gave her a full dose of Benadryl. Around two a.m. we both dozed off and the rest of the night was better, although I think I dreamed a couple of additional episodes of Naturally Sadie.

This morning we dropped Angus off at school and headed to the X-Ray clinic where my doctor had assured me we wouldn't need an appointment. This was true; however, the receptionist said she would have to ask the radiologist if they would do Eve since she was so young, and at least one of their radiologists refused to read children at all, so we might have to go to CHEO. I debated quickly between cash bribes and crying, and decided on standing there like a moron until we got the word that the radiologist would read her films, whereupon I debated quickly between flowers and chocolate and decided on sitting in a chair staring into space while Eve read Junie B. Jones. (I love Junie B. Jones. She has poor impulse control and is not afraid to call dumb, stupid things dumb and stupid and she brought a fish stick to school for a pet).

As we pulled into the parking lot for the clinic, Eve mused "this part of my life is quite doctorish". As we sat in the waiting room she whispered to me "I kind of like that they don't call your name, they call my name." In the x-ray room she made the technician laugh when she looked down at herself and said totally deadpan, "I'm wearing a paper shirt". The technician made her laugh when she assured her that, despite the apron that covered her butt, they did x-ray butts on a regular basis.

There's something sort of comforting about the day after you're up in the night with a sick child (when you don't work outside the house). Nobody really expects anything of you except recovery. You can tell people that your doctor is going to call in a recipe instead of a prescription and they get it. People tell you to take a nap. When you look up from your computer for the thirteenth time thinking there's a red car in the driveway and finally realize that it's just the red bowl on the edge of the counter blending in your peripheral vision with the window beside the front door you don't worry that you're completely losing your grip on reality. Quite as much.

I've read the paper and looked at the internet today enough to feel very grateful that things aren't worse. I could, for instance, be like Alanis Morrissette -- married to a guy named Souleye. Imagine the conversations: "Dammit, Souleye, how many times do I have to tell you to put the lid back down?!" "Souleye, honey, mind grabbing me an organic iced tea?" Also, I've never tried to rob a convenience store and fallen on my own knife while trying to escape (instant karma! Plus, hugely enjoyable visual). And... oh! I don't have to x-ray people's butts on a regular basis.

Life is good.