The Week

As far as blogging goes, I'm currently feeling a bit like I've been following my thinner, in-better-shape friends to a lot of fitness classes lately and now I'm lying on the kitchen floor with a broomstick wondering if I should try to poke the Advil off the top of the fridge or the cookies from the cupboard shelf first. 

This is a slight exaggeration. I was in a bit of a blogging rut - could go for weeks without blogging, was finding most of the people on my blogroll had disappeared and was wondering if I should pack the whole thing in. And then I found a couple of people through NaBloPoMo a couple of years ago and found a couple of people through other blogs and it's felt like a thrilling resurgence - there's something so heartwarming and energizing about having a community, and being able to riff on other people's posts and feed on their vigor. 

But man, some of you people are beasts, and I am going to have to pace myself, or, I don't know, do keyboard workouts or something (I hurt my shoulder doing the yoga that is supposed to help my shoulder stop hurting this week - I am a delicate flower).

It was a good week, on balance. Weird from the being-married point of view, given that my husband was away for a week, quarantined himself for a week, and is currently in sunny Vietnam, while yesterday brought hours of blowing wet snow and slush build-up to Canada's capital yesterday. It's a work trip, totally justified, and I have no kids to wrangle solo at this point so I really have nothing to complain about, but I still rather feel like telling him where to shove his banh-mi.

Working hard, or just taunting your wife? 

Whyyyyyyy

Work was pretty good. I made a couple of wardrobe miscalculations - I wore a top that could only be termed a blouse on Monday, thinking that it was gauzy enough that it wouldn't be too warm, but then realized it had zero breathability. On Thursday I wore a dress with tights, which I don't recall being a big problem before but by the end of the day the tights felt like slimy sweaty leg-wrappers. 

My classes were all really fun. I have two grade six classes on Wednesday that are almost freakishly lovely - they all say thank-you, they tell me to have a good day, they compliment my hair, they thank me profusely when I help them find a book. The grade two class I read two on Thursdays is doing a unit on fractured fairy tale so we read Prince Cinders, a gender-swapped Cinderella where Cinders is a scrawny hairless prince with big, hairy brothers, and the fairy godmother is a dirty fairy who manages to make a tiny car that Cinders has to use as a one-foot skateboard, the suit for the ball is a swimsuit, and when he tries to make Cinders 'big and hairy', he turns him into a gorilla. There was much shrieking laughter and merriment. 

The kids are good. As an internship for credit in his Master's program, Angus is acting as pitching coach for his former baseball team at Elmira College. The team is in a growing year, and has struggled, particularly since Angus pretty much WAS their pitching in his senior year last year, but they've won a few games, and a notable victory was their first-ever no-hitter. 

He is the tallest coach

Eve went to a very terrible Engineering musical one night last week and a very good Arts and Science Musical (ArtSpy, hee hee), and also had the Arts and Science formal and two midterms and a doctor's appointment for a recurring rash she's been dealing with, and we FaceTimed on multiple occasions and she didn't cry ONCE. 

Did you catch that Suz and I were doing the SAME PUZZLE at the SAME TIME? I am simultaneously willing to accept that this is not statistically significant and also insistent that you all join in me in finding this an utterly shocking and delightful coincidence. 

Then I did this one. 

Now I'm doing this one. I've only blown my curfew and stayed up until two a.m. and had to hobble away from the table once. It is incredibly beautiful and also very, very difficult, and I am uncertain about in which proportions it is calming my anxiety or stoking my obsessive tendencies. I should probably not be allowed to puzzle when my husband isn't home and can't tell me to go to bed. Well, sometimes he texts me to go to bed, but that's easier to ignore (just stick some more bun cha in your gob and leave me to my visual-spatial improvement activies, bucko). 

Airing the Dirty Laundry

Drifting off of Sarah s and Engie's laundry posts - from one end of the scale to nearly the other, a family of seven and a family of two. I am currently a family of one, more regularly a family of two, and still occasionally a family of four. 

I was so relieved when Sarah said that she did everyone's laundry and, further, said exactly what I've always thought (but often been too chicken to say) - it's great if your kids can do their own laundry before they leave home, but if they don't, they'll learn very soon after. I actually think this about many things - I have half-joked (half-confessed) that I coddle my kids. I didn't work for most of their childhood, my husband worked hard and traveled much, the kids were often busy with school, sports and extracurriculars, and while I didn't act like a servant or expect nothing of them around the house, I didn't feel the need to be a hard-ass about making them 'pull their weight', when I was the one with the most free time to get shit done. 

This has largely worked out perfectly fine. They both live away from home at least during the university year, feed themselves competently, do their own laundry, keep their living spaces relatively neat and clean, and conduct a bunch of adult business so that you'd never know that I cut their meat for them until they were 12 (funny side anecdote about this: we were once visiting good friends out west and after everyone was served, I started to cut Angus's meat without thinking, and then froze with embarrassment. I turned my head to find the other mom doing the exact same thing, and HER son was a year OLDER haha). 

So anyway. Laundry. Some people I know name laundry as one of their most despised chores. I don't feel this way, although I do get that the grueling neverendingness of it can be overwhelming. It's less gross to me than cleaning up after dinner (my husband does most of that), less back-breaking than vacuuming or floor-washing, and gives me an appealing sense of setting things in order. 

We don't have a laundry day. My routine when the kids were/are home is to have a hamper in the upstairs hallway that everyone puts their dirty clothes in. One of us brings this down two floors to the basement in the morning, and sometimes then brings the clean clothes from the dryer upstairs. Every night before I go to bed, I go down and get the clean clothes if they're still there, put the wet clothes in the dryer, and put a new load in the washer. This way I find that it's just a part of the daily routine rather than a big chore for one particular day. 

I love the machines we bought I can't remember how many years ago. Our old ones had to be served twice before they were the age these are because they would leave black marks on the clothes or stop draining or whatever. I wish we had gotten the - what do you call them - booster things for them, which I think of every time I'm bent over with my back aching transferring laundry - but other than that I am very happy with them. 

I usually alternate between hot water loads (sheets, towels, underwear - I read an article once that made it almost impossible for me to wash everything in cold water, although I see the eco-sense of it and I sometimes try) and cold water loads (other clothing - sorry, Engie, I don't typically sort lights from darks unless something is new and I'm afraid it will run. I find almost nothing does with the way clothes are made now). Every few days I do  delicates load, a short, cold-water cycle with Woolite detergent for fancy stuff and bras, which I wash in mesh bags.

I hang most clothes to dry. Matt affixed the top part of a drying rack to the wall in the laundry room for me years ago which, along with hooks on the back of the door from the laundry room to the storage space (and, in a pinch, the arms of the treadmill) is usually sufficient for hanging stuff with the way the loads are spaced. Stuff to be ironed stays down on the laundry table (usually an unholy mess - I was in the process of getting it cleaned off and organized in the fall, but that energy has since departed, so it's still in progress) since the iron and ironing board are in the laundry room. I often bring everything up to the main floor to iron in front of the tv when I have a pile - if I need something quickly I just do it down there.

My laundry room is messy but a good size and I'm pretty happy with it. I love the flooring, which I picked at the same time we picked all of the finishing for our house (the house was build and in inventory, which meant we got it quickly but still got to pick things like counters and flooring, which was nice). When I said what I wanted for the laundry room, Matt, whose taste is quite a bit more conservative than mine, said that he didn't really like it. I said "yeah but who cares, you're going to spend almost no time in the laundry room", and he allowed that it was a fair point, so I got it. I still like it. 

I love folding laundry, especially when it's still warm, or even when it's cold from the dryer vent being connected to the outside, because then it smells like outside. I still yearn for the clothesline from my parents' former house, the one I grew up in. We had a deck, and the clothesline stretched from the deck across the yard to the hydro pole, and there was some kind of pulley to lower it to hang stuff and then raise it up and send it soaring across the lawn, which was so satisfying. 

When the kids were little I used to sneak into their rooms after they were asleep to put away laundry and surreptitiously gaze lovingly at them. Once this wasn't doable any more I would put their stuff in baskets for them and they would put it away (Eve immediately, Angus less so). 

There's some complicated baggage (ha ha) around the laundry that needs to be done when Matt gets home from a work trip, especially a long one. When the kids were little and it could get really difficult being alone with them, I would sometimes feel resentful that I then had the dubious pleasure of dealing with his smelly, well-traveled dirty clothes, who were seeing so much more of the world than I currently was. At this point I don't mind at all, but he feels kind of sheepish about it. 

I'm finding it really interesting how an ostensibly humdrum subject like laundry has so many patterns and permutations in different families. 

Happenstance and Serendipity

Things I planned to do on March Break:

Buy paint and paint my bathroom

Switch out my disgusting shower curtain liner

Switch out my twenty-year-old shower curtain (it just took me a frighteningly long time to think "what is it called? Bath curtain? Bathtub curtain?)  for the cute new one I got from Redbubble

Do a bunch of yoga

Write a bunch of blog posts

Things I ended up doing on March Break:

Going out for lunch with girlfriends

Going to see Journey and Toto

Going to see a musical at our community theatre

Walking Lucy over to my parents' place in the glorious sunshine and drinking a gin and tonic at one o'clock in the afternoon

Having a lengthy nap after said gin and tonic

Taking care of my sick, between-international-trips husband

Reading a bunch of books

No regrets, largely. Although I need to get back to the yoga. My back is better from all the physio, but I need yoga. And I need to go back to physio because my Achilles tendons and calves have been troubling me for over a year, and I suddenly realized that I keep feeling like I'm stiff going down the stairs, but the only reason I feel that way is because it feels like my feet are going to break off at the ankles. I'm worried my physio guy is going to think I'm stalking him. 

In January four of us who see each other often met a fifth woman who we are close friends with but hadn't seen since before the pandemic (because she lives on the whole other side of the city and that was suddenly a Big Thing) went out for lunch and it was really fun. When we left, of course we said "we'll do this again before three years goes by ha ha ha", and then my brilliant friend Margot (HI MARGOT) immediately emailed everyone and made us pick a date for March because otherwise another three years would easily have gone by. So we went out for lunch again on Monday and this time could just talk about whatever without having to catch people up on three years of our (or, let's be honest, our kids') lives.

Monday night I went with my neighbours to see Journey and Toto because the sister that was supposed to go went to Cuba instead and there was an extra ticket. As usual with this kind of thing I acted like I was going in semi-ironically ("whoo-hoo, going out for some cheesy eighties goodness") and then ended up feeling pretty emotional about the whole thing. Toto played one of my breakup songs, the one that whenever it came on in my room I would stop whatever I was doing and star in my own sad little montage for. They all just looked like they were having so much fun, like the thrill of being a rock band never went away, and it was infectious.

Okay, so, Journey. I did not do my research. I wasn't certain that it would be original Journey coming out, but I did not inform myself to the contrary either. The first guy out looked vintage (old). Then some others. Then the lead singer came out. He was....short. Also, possibly...Asian? And yet the voice was Steve Perry's.

So apparently Steve Perry left the band forever ago, and they replaced him with this Filipino guy. At least that's what they claim. I'm pretty sure it's actually Steve Perry wearing a tiny Asian skinsuit. It's kind of a cool story - guy who does Journey covers ends up actually in Journey. It makes the whole '50th anniversary tour' thing a little sketchy, but whatever, nobody likes a math geek, Scully.

My niece is only 21 but she got big into eighties music as a teenager, so I sent her a clip and got this very satisfying reaction:

(insert frustrating interlude where I figure out how to upload a video to Youtube and STILL can't manage to post it here because I am a FREAKING LOSER). Instead, enjoy my eighties concert shirt which I bought and brought home before I realized it has my birthday on it. 

Tuesday I went to see Memphis the Musical with my friend Sarah (HI SARAH) at the smallish theatre fairly nearby. I had a subscription to this community musical theatre a few years ago and it was so much fun, and I'm not sure why we never did again. I had thought about getting tickets for this production too a month or so ago and then forgot, so it was fortuitous that Sarah wanted to go. I didn't know anything about the story, but it has to be a pretty crappy musical that I don't like at all. The show is loosely based on the story of the Memphis disc jockey who was one of the first white DJs to play black music in the 1950s. Like Sarah said, it's sort of similar to Hairspray - the funny parts are very very funny, the dark parts get considerably darker. The music was great and the acting and singing was amazing, considering this is amateur community theatre. 

Look at me, going out two! nights! in a row! Meanwhile, Matt got home from California on Saturday and was sick. He confined himself to the basement until he tested negative for Covid a couple of times, and then still mostly confined himself to the basement because he didn't want to get me sick during March Break. I stuffed him full of citrus fruit and chicken soup, plus this which made him full and also possibly high:

After I made him lunch on Wednesday, I took Lucy for a walk because it was cold but sunny. We stopped by my mom and dad's because they usually dog sit a couple of days a week and we hadn't seen them yet. I managed to land there precisely at happy hour, so I had a drink with them while Lucy snuggled with my dad and ran around their back yard. They have a deck with stairs down to the yard, and she seems to feel that the extra distance means she has to bark extra loud while firing herself out the door. 

I walked home, invigorated with the sun and the wind and the gin and the giddy excess of being out for two! nights! in a row! I got home, sat down with a book and nodded off in about three paragraphs.

This morning I woke up and looked next to me on the bed and saw this

Basically same, girl, same. I stayed in and finished some laundry so Matt could pack for Malaysia, which he's been desperately trying to get healthy for, and finished a couple of books, including my buddy read with Eve. Soon after she got back to school we Facetimed and she told me that the night before she woke up a couple of times and felt like she was sliding off the silk pillowcase I gave her for Christmas. Then she woke up having fully slid off of it and knocked the water glass on her bedside table over. Unfortunately one of the books I gave her for Christmas was in the line of fire water. 

But felicitously, our buddy read, The Drowned and The Saved was on top of the other book, and while it might have been drowned, it was actually... yeah, we shouldn't be joking about a Holocaust book like that, but we were both happy it was spared. 

Week With Laughter

I have been having a bit of a stupid week. I am calling the week stupid to avoid having to apply the label to myself, but the truth is it probably isn't actually the week's fault. I'm not sure what the deal is - Matt's away, but that's not unusual. If it's a progression of the perimenopausal brain fog I have to do some seriously therapeutic levels of crossword puzzling or whatever the hell, because this cannot continue.

Monday I woke up and got ready for work. I wash and dress and take my morning meds and then come down with my water glass and my phone, put my phone directly into my purse and then go to the kitchen, drop off my water glass and pack my lunch and grab my water bottle (except when it's my first day at a new job, but whatever, we're over that). 

For many many years the garage was too full of crap to get a vehicle in. A couple of years ago Matt worked like crazy to get it empty enough to park the Rav in. This is completely awesome, so this is not a complaint - it's very tight in there, so I come out of the house, dump my purse and extra bag and the bag with my indoor shoes in it and Lucy in her carrier on the front step, open the garage, back out, get out, close the garage, grab all the stuff and chuck it in the rav, then go to my mom and dad's to drop off Lucy. 

So Monday I did all this, backed out and started driving down the street. The radio display said 'audio device not connected' for longer than usual, which usually means my phone isn't in the car, which is weird since I put my phone in my purse first thing.

I looked over at the passenger seat. No purse.

I actually tried backing up to get back to my driveway, which isn't as stupid as it sounds because we live on a very quiet crescent and I checked that there was no one coming behind me. But I was flustered and completely lost the ability to back up in a straight line, so I got most of the way there and then still had to turn around.

I grabbed my purse and flung it in the seat, dropped off Lucy, got to school. Realized I had my purse but had STILL forgotten my phone. Which doesn't really matter, it doesn't really work at my Monday school anyway, but I didn't know where it was since I always put it in my freaking purse first thing. 

I shook it off, started setting out the rest of my stuff, sat down, turned on the computer, tried to turn on my little desk fan. Desk fan was dead.

REALLY?

I think my little desk fan fleet is dying and might have to be replaced, which would be fine except I usually just replace them one to one with the same brand of fan and they don't seem to be available anymore, but ANYWAY.

After work I had an appointment at my CPAP place to get my pressure level adjusted. My machine is old and under a recall, and I've been promised I will get a new one in due course. Due course is now supposed to be expedited because the machine was too old to accept the SD card needed for the prescription. By which I mean it took the tech twenty-five minutes to get it to recognize the card and then it said "prescription rejected".

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Tuesday I got up and got ready again, and when I rechecked the bag with my lunch bag and water bottle I couldn't find my water bottle. No problem, I thought, I must have left it in the kitchen.

It wasn't in the kitchen. It's tall and yellow, it's hard to miss. 

I went back and forth between the kitchen and the living room a few times before I realized I had set it down at the top of the two steps leading down to the entrance and it was hidden by another bag. 

After work I went to pick up Lucy and had a drink with my parents before heading home. They reminded me that this weekend is daylight saving time. In a quick Google search about 'spring forward', an article in Philadelphia's City Life by Sandy Hingston states that "You may have heard that DST decreases traffic accidents. It doesn’t. Evening accidents decrease, but early-morning accidents increase — and early-evening pedestrian fatalities soar immediately following the switch." Various other article titles are "How to Survive the Stupid Spring Forward of Daylight Saving Time", "Proof Daylight Saving Time is Stupid, Dangerous and Costly", and "It's Official: Turning the Clocks Back is a Very Stupid Idea". Under the question "How does Daylight Saving Time affect the brain?" the answer is "Every cell in our bodies keeps track of the time, and changes in daily patterns can trigger stress in our brains and cause sleep deprivation, disorientation, and memory loss."

So next week could be even worse?

Good thing next week is March Break, that's all I have to say. Otherwise whatever idiotic crap I pull might be headline-worthy.

Tuesday night we went out to do bar trivia. I did not have high hopes of being a stellar contributor, given my behaviour the past couple of days. When Collette heard it was about to be Spring Forward she said "like, tomorrow, or next weekend?" Janet said "tomorrow is Wednesday". Then Michelle kept forgetting which wrap she wanted to order every time she closed the menu and now nobody was sure we should be trying to play a game of skill or, you know, thinking. Thought. Smartness. 

We used to play at a neighbourhood restaurant that did a monthly game and always involved a charity. The first one was a Pug Rescue so we called ourselves the Pugnacious Six. We briefly switched to the Medulla Oblangatas for the next one which was for a brain injury support place but no one could say it, so we stuck with the Pugnacious Six after that. The waitress did her valiant best, but our table card ended up saying 'Pugalicious', so obviously we had to stay and defend our dignity, or something. 

We came in second this time instead of first because we missed one sports question. After the game we put this in the What'sApp to Matt, who is our Sports Question Guy:

We had a good time anyway. The most hilarious category was called "Foreign Titles of American Movies", where the question gave us the translation of a movie title as it was shown in France or China or Japan. We slayed effortlessly and were kind of surprised that more teams didn't get perfect on the category, and I brought the answer sheet home so I could share them with you.

In French: Mom, I Missed the Plane (Home Alone - and yes, the sequel is called Mom, I Missed the Plane AGAIN)

In French: Very Bad Trip (The Hangover)

In Chinese: One Night, Big Belly (Knocked Up)

In Hebrew: Love in the Skies (HI NICOLE haha - TOP GUN - love how they just skated right over all that pesky war and fighter plane stuff for this one)

In Chinese: Satan Female Soldier (G.I. Jane - geez, China, Misogyny Are Us much?)

In Chinese: Six Naked Pigs (The Full Monty - yeesh,  possibly even harsher than Satan Female Soldier)

In Italian: If You Leave Me, I Delete You (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)

And my personal favourite -- In Japanese: I'm Drunk and You're a Prostitute (Leaving Las Vegas).

Puzzling school situations, Puzzling dreams, Puzzling Puzzles

 My husband is leaving this afternoon for a week (then home for a few days and gone for two weeks). For a nice change of pace, the massive snow dump happened just before he left instead of just after - bad for him, good for me. March Break is one week earlier than I thought it was, which is... neutral, I guess, I'm not gasping for it the way I was for the Christmas holidays. Funny thing about my Thursday school, I was almost ready to give notice and then I went in last week and it....suddenly didn't suck anymore. It's almost like it was my vicious winter depression that was the problem and not the school. 

I do have to say, it's been startling and humbling working in a K-8 school (my other two are K-6). There's something about the boundary-testing and defiance and general VERY MUCH THERE-ness of pre-and-early-teens that I'm struggling with how to address. Part of the problem was that I was trying to act from a position of 'there are no bad kids', knowing that sometimes neurodivergence and anxiety is misjudged as bad behaviour. I moved from this to 'there are no bad kids, but there are kids whose needs outstrip my resources', articulated wonderfully by my friend Sasha (HI SASHA). And then my extremely wise friend Kerry (HI KERRY) jumped in with 'uh, of course some kids are assholes, just like some adults are assholes', which blew my tiny, over-idealistic mind. SOME KIDS ARE ASSHOLES. This doesn't mean they're evil or destined for a life of unremitting dickishness, but sometimes they're just being assholes and need to be told to knock it off. (I should have just talked to a teacher, they would have set me straight in nothing flat).

Speaking of friends who are smarter than me, everyone who commented on my last post about the one teacher at my new school who didn't talk to me at all during library period and left without half her class, and said 'maybe she was a sub'? Never even occurred to me and guess what? SHE WAS A SUB. The new school is turning out to be a pretty chill gig. Not to mention I found this while shelving:

Angus had one of these when he was four or so, and it was a Precious Beloved Object. He called it his Masseen Book, and we actually bought a second copy in case anything ever happened to it. He took it everywhere, and would have to come down and get it if he accidentally got into bed without it. 

I have not resumed my organizing/decluttering mission, even though Christmas 2.0 has come and gone, so it well past time (times two) to put away the remaining Christmas decorations. Do you have an addictive personality? I tend to think I don't - drugs and alcohol are fun and all, but I've never once woken up feeling like I needed to blaze (no idea if I said that right) or toss back a shot of vodka. However, there are certain things that at certain times I feel very much that some kind of compulsion is involved.

After Eve and I did the puzzle, I took out another one. My friend Nat (HI NAT) gave it to me for my birthday and it's beautiful and also almost broke me. The picture is upside down because I had to spin it around to work on the top. I tried rotating the picture but then the pretty cylinder container was sort of upside down and it gave me a headache. Anyway. Here's me last Sunday thinking "I will put a puzzle out and every day I will work for the puzzle for half an hour and it will be a calming, Zen activity and it will soothe my nervous system, *gentle chimy music playing*. Here's me every other day last week looking up from the puzzle and realizing three hours have gone by, my eyes are bloodshot, my back is jacked and I'm dying of thirst. But I can't get up until I find this ONE FUCKING PIECE. Oh thank god, I found it. Okay, just one more. I have a sickness. I'm a little afraid that when Matt gets back on Friday he will find my skeleton slumped over at the puzzling dining room table.

On one of Suzanne's (HI SUZANNE) recent posts, in which she was talking about remembering your dreams, I commented that I do sometimes remember my dreams, and when I do they are bonkers, but then I go long stretches without remembering any. Very soon after, I had the craziest, most vivid dream about coming home from some errands and finding that Matt and a bunch of our close friend group had gotten high as fuck while I was out and destroyed the house. Furniture was upside down, stuff was spilled, Matt had poured spaghetti in my Doc Martens. They were all apologetic but incoherent. I have no idea where that came from, it's been like a decade since we celebrated Michael's birthday and broke the coloured shot glasses and discovered exactly how many Burt Reynolds shots are too many and whether or not a toilet can be peed in and thrown up in at the same time. 

To close on a less debauched note, Nicole's (HI NICOLE) last post mentioned not wading into the top sheet debate, which made me laugh because I remembered this post that was practically my most-commented-on post of 2020, and even though only three small paragraphs were about top sheets, that's what most of the comments referenced. I still use a top sheet, my kids still don't.

And now I'm going to change my sheets because not that he's dirty or anything, but every time Matt leaves I revel in the fact that I can change the bed and sleep in the nice clean sheets and read a paper book with the light on for a few nights. 

Now that I've made the word 'puzzle' incomprehensible to myself, happy weekend everyone.

I Haven't Really Got a Right to Sing the Blues but Here We Are

 Welp. Eve took the train back to school on Saturday. Week was too short. Hamilton is too far. I had a fitful, twitchy-leg, broken sleep the last two nights and I am sad and cranky.

Eve and I went to Bluesfest for the first time the year she was 12, even though we both have anxiety, especially about crowded places (Bluesfesting While Anxious, July 2015), and it became a tradition (which, let's be honest, happens with almost everything we do in this family and friend group that doesn't outright suck - our calendar of annual things is fairly crowded, which is cool because we are a family of lazy introverts, except Angus, he works out like five times a day, he's an un-lazy introvert). The day the lineup comes out is always exciting, and the two years it didn't happen because of Covid were weird and we missed it.

Well, the lineup came out on Wednesday and it was...not exciting to me. This is kind of disheartening for obvious reasons, and also because a lot of my friends seem to think it's splendid, so I also feel like a musical loser. I don't even know where my odd musical tastes come from. I seem to have missed a big chunk of the nineties somehow, and I like stuff in every genre, but I'm generally oblivious to what is cool right now, which means years later I am oblivious to what was cool right then. Collette has frequently urged me to come see certain bands saying "I swear you will know many songs, or at least a few". I did not. 

Not that there's anything wrong with going and listening to bands I don't know - I discovered Foy Vance and Chvrches and other bands that are in frequent rotation on my song list now. But it's nice when there's at least one or two acts where you can scream-sing most of the songs into the Ottawa July night (Blue Rodeo, Bryan Adams, Alanis Morrisette, Joe Jackson, Billy Idol, Sam Roberts, Colin James, Pink, Melissa Etheridge, and a few you'd probably judge me for if you haven't already). 

Usually I buy us both festival passes on the pre-sale day. I briefly thought I might not this year. But there were at least a couple of people we both want to see, and two one-day passes cost a little more than the pre-sale full festival ten-day pass, so I did. And it will be fun. I just could have used a bit more of a lift right now. 

Anyway, that was supposed to be a throwaway thought, not several paragraphs about my firstest of first world problems. My point was -- wait, I have to backtrack again.

Last Christmas Eve got me a gorgeous puzzle from the adorable little bookstore near her house. We started it during Christmas and finished it when she was home in February (it was 1000 pieces and really hard, there was a LOT of snow), and I just love sitting peacefully at the table with her passing pieces back and forth and hearing her funny little observations. We said we were going to do another one this year at Christmas but we forgot/ ran out of time. This week we almost ran out of time again, but on Friday (she was leaving the next day) she had some time in the afternoon so we took out a 500-piece one so we could make a little bit of satisfying progress, and did some late puzzling after Drag Race when her friend Jackson went home and she was showered and pajamafied. 

"I need the rest of Rusty Spotted Cat Adjunct Professor. I'm looking for Rus and fessor"

We did pretty well in that one day. Last night I was about to go upstairs, when I thought it might be a good thing to puzzle a little bit every night and listen to musicians that are coming to Bluesfest. 

I set an alarm for thirty minutes because I tend to get into the zone and look up and find that it's suddenly three a.m. I had to set another thirty-minute alarm when the first one went off, but I got the puzzle finished and listened to some good music. 

Also this week, we did our first buddy read. She was reading a book by Primo Levi for Social and Political Thought (three-hour lecture every week by a professor I had thirty years ago, half interesting, half torture). I thought I had read Primo Levi, but when I looked at his list of books I couldn't find any that looked familiar, and the one she was reading looked really good, so I ordered a copy and we read a bit every day and talked about it and it was terribly sad, of course, but the writing was amazing, in such a singular voice, and described so many things that were obvious once he wrote about them, but I had never thought about them or come across them in everything I've read about the Holocaust. We've given and recommended books to each other before but we've never read the book at the same time and it was very gratifying.

We went shopping and looked for jeans, which we also did at Christmas. She was very specific in what she wanted, and it's been very hard to find. First of all, why are there so many Mom jeans on offer? I mean, I guess I can allow for some people making the very unwise decision to purchase Mom jeans, but there were SO MANY. Second of all, why are all the jeans scattered around the store? There used to be, like, a wall of jeans, or a rack of jeans, and now there are walls and racks and piles and why? Eve was looking for straight-leg jeans, and all the ones that SAID straight had legs that obviously and perceptibly narrowed. "If these are straight, then what are skinny jeans?" she asked, justifiably. 

We split up briefly and she texted me "I give up. I'll buy overalls". 

Cool, I said, the overalls were cute. Then we went into one last store after we'd eaten and she'd had time to cool down, she took a couple of pairs of jeans into the changing room, and then I found one last pile hidden away (why?) and plucked one pair and that was the winner. 

She took the train home in the fall because we had tickets to Mean Girl the Musical from the Covid subscription year the week-end AFTER her fall break, and she really wanted to see it. She hadn't taken the train back yet, but she said she wanted to this time because one of her housemates was also, so she wouldn't be alone. This was pretty perfect, since it was snowing yesterday when she left, and there's a little station five minutes from our house.

We got there pretty early, and she said we could leave her there but, um, no. We had a funny bet going where Matt, the seasoned world traveler, told us where Car 3 would be when the train pulled in, and I disagreed, and then the train pulled in and I had to whisper 'stop now, stop now, STOP NOW', and it was about halfway between. She got on and Matt sort of acted like we could walk away, and I was looking at the windows to see if I could see her, but they were darkened and Matt said I wouldn't be able to, but there was a kid in one window with a very distinctive hair profile and I said if THAT was our kid we would know it. We walked along and then we saw a silhouette waving at us. 

It's the conehead in front

I said "is that her?" and the figure nodded exaggeratedly and then she texted this:

There was one mom on the platform openly sobbing. I did not, but last night I was sad that I didn't have to try not to let the bathroom floor squeak too much because Eve was already in bed, and today I was out of sorts. Supposedly this gets easier at some point. Stupid independent kids. 

New Job First Day Report

 I meant to take a picture of the library, and/or myself in the library, in my pink shirt for Pink Shirt Day, which I remembered just in time to not put on a not-pink shirt. I forgot.

Pros:

1) The other library tech is very chill. I love my library partner at one school, but she's very particular and some of the stuff she requires stresses me out a little bit. This one is basically 'keep the library running, don't let someone with five books overdue borrow more books, otherwise don't sweat it'.

2) There seems to be a lot of volunteer shelving help, so there was nothing waiting for shelving when I came in and I was able to get everything that came in put away by the time I left.

3) There is a library office. I have one at one other school, and not at the other. It's nice to have the option to retreat for lunch and not feel like you're on display for any clubs or anyone that wanders in over the nutrition break or recess. One kindergarten teacher always comes in and hands me an armful of books right in the middle of lunch and I always feel a tiny bit awkward about it.

4). There is no sink in the office, which is never ideal because I touch a lot of books that have been handled by a lot of kids and I like to wash my hands a lot, BUT there is a washroom RIGHT outside the side door of the library, so that is very convenient.

5) The school is, like, ludicrously close to my house. It takes less than five minutes to get there. It's right beside my kids' old high school, and I very nearly drove right past it out of habit this morning. The only closer school would be my kids' old elementary school, which is pretty much right down the street.

Cons:

1) The library is very warm. This isn't even on a normal person's radar, but it's a significant ick factor for me. It's the kind of oppressive warmth that is really hard to combat with my tiny desk fan, and I was feeling a little defeated when, after telling myself it couldn't be as bad as I remembered, I opened the door and found that it was exactly as bad as I remembered. I discovered by walking around that there are places where cool air blows from vents. There's a door to the outside that I can stick myself out periodically. And after looking at it several times, I realized that the other library woman has a medium-sized fan under the desk pointed up at where we sit - so maybe I'm NOT the only one that finds it oppressively overheated. Anyway, I didn't end the day THAT much more wilted and sweaty than I usually do. 

2) I don't think there are any other cons.

A lot of the books are shelved in bins, which in some ways is easy - you don't have to deal with heaving big chunks of books upright when they fall over, you don't have to find a way to slide in books to already-tight spaces, you just slip them in the bin. When you're starting in a new library it's actually hilariously difficult because you have to learn where all the bins are. Finding them once is no help, because you find another Minecraft or Artemis Fowl book and you know you found the bin before, but where did it go? So there's a lot of wandering around in circles looking dazed and confused. 

I had four classes today - there could be more to fill the empty slots. The previous woman in this position was there Mondays, but I'm already at another school then so we've had to rejig a little. Three of the classes could not have been lovelier. SO MANY kids said thank-you very clearly and sincerely. One boy came back twice to thank me for the books. One said he was happy I was there. One class was meh. The teacher didn't say hi or introduce herself and the kids were all kind of mumbly and sullen, and half of them didn't line up when the teacher told them to and she just left the library! Without them! It was confusing and a little funny. Three to one is a very acceptable ratio of great classes to meh classes. 

So the worst thing that happened today was that I got to the school, I got to the library, I unlocked the office and started unpacking my stuff. I take out my reading glasses and hook them on my shirt. I take out my fan and my container of mints and my water bottle for the desk. 

There was no water bottle.

I forgot my water bottle.

This is a bad thing, you guys. I am always hot, and it is winter in Ottawa which means there's no moisture anywhere in the city. I am on more than one medication that causes dry eyes and mouth. Half the time I don't have enough spit to finish a sentence or swallow.

I spent a minute or so in blind panic. I thought of calling Matt, but pulling him away from his important semiconductor tunable-laser fibre optic work (this is me science-ing, are you impressed?) for a water emergency seemed wrong. I remembered Eve was at home, but she was still in bed when I left and there were no vehicles left anyway. I thought of faking a migraine and going home (not seriously, but it crossed my mind. This was a really bad thing).

I realized I was in a school that had a staff room. And, you know, taps. I didn't know WHERE the staff room was, so I had to ask someone. I found the staff room. I found a mug in the cupboards. I filled the mug with water. I calmed the fuck down. 

This is a very good new job. Everyone agrees except Lucy, who is not impressed that I am leaving the house on a whole-ass other day now (she would be going to Grandma and Poppa's except that Eve was home this week, so don't believe this fake forlorn expression).