I Did a Blip

 I have been a bad blog friend because when I'm not blogging reading other blogs makes me feel too guilty. But I miss all of you! I had a tiny manic phase which was great because I could go on four or five hours sleep a night but I was too restless to sit down long enough to write anything (my house should really be even cleaner than it is). I went to see Eve and my professor and my sister. I turned un-manic and had a tiny mental health bobble as a result. I turned fifty-six. 

I kept thinking I should blog, and then I thought what if I just sort of...float in a sea of existing for a bit. And not feel like I'm shirking some kind of duty or like I might as well just stop forever if I stop for three weeks. I hung out in extended child's pose. I gardened. I sat outside in the back yard looking at flowers and reading brainless fluff. I did another book fair and it almost killed me. 

I drove down to see Eve - briefly, because she was preparing to leave for a conference and then do a presentation for the institute that funds her lab right after returning, and had a shit ton of stuff to deal with - and then continued on to my sister's place. My sister only lives an hour and a half from Eve, but it's still been difficult to get there much because whenever we were down in Hamilton it was to bring Eve home, and she was so desperate to come home for a bit I didn't want to ask her to spend her vacation time somewhere else. Jody and her husband come up here quite a bit, which is lovely but it's always a big family thing. Since Eve's been doing her master's I've been able to visit her and then hang out with my sister alone for a few days three times in five months, which has been joyful in a way I didn't even know I was missing. 

We went to the bookstore that she used to live down the street from because we always do if it's open. She bought me a puzzle for my birthday because if I buy any more puzzles my husband will murder me, and it was really pretty and made from sustainable cardboard. When I picked her up she was wearing a dress that I wore to Matt's thesis supervisor's wedding thirty years ago. I found it and couldn't believe I still had it and showed it to her before giving it away and she claimed it and wears it all the time. I still love it and it makes me happy every time I see it on her. 

Eve showed me around her lab for the first time - the centrifuge that could rip through a wall if safety protocols aren't followed, the sign that says how many days since exploding agar, the burners where they explode the agar, the super-poisonous stuff and the e. coli that probably wouldn't poison anyone. I met two more of her lab mates and saw her bench. Her lab is in the hospital, and I had parked randomly in the underground parking lot and was not sure we would ever be able to find each other, but I got in the right coloured elevator by accident and it was actually very easy. It was very, very cool to see her in that setting, doing actual science-y stuff but in a place that appreciates her wit and offbeat humour. One of the other women bought a pink flamingo for her little boy, but when she saw Eve's face upon seeing it she turned it into a lab flamingo named Walter instead. 

Stickers on the door of their very serious workplace

Isn't her record keeping so incredibly neat and pleasing?

Where the magic exploding agar happens

I took her out for dinner and then we went to hang at my hotel for a bit. We were going to go to the hot tub but there was a hockey tournament, so Eve suggested we watch some of season two of The Four Seasons on Netflix. I was a bit surprised that she was into it (it's about a group of fifty-something couple friends who travel together each season, with various dramatic arcs), but she said "obviously. It reminds me of you and your friends because you're the same age and you travel together and you all love each other and occasionally there's drama and sometimes you're very stupid." No lies detected. 

We went out for dinner with Lauren, Eve's housemate and now close friend, and Jean, my former professor who also taught Eve (still so trippy). We had a riotous, wide-ranging, gossipy, amazing talk session as usual, and then we went outside and talked even more and I went to take a picture of Jean with the girls, and a couple was just coming out of the movie theatre next door and asked if I wanted to be in the picture. I did not - Jean is tiny, and even the small girls look big next to her, and I always feel like an ogre. Eve says this is stupid, it is obvious that Jean is jellybean-sized, and I didn't want to turn down the kind offer, so we let the man take our picture and asked what movie they had seen and it was Project Hail Mary. They said it had been hard to catch some stuff because of their hearing aids, and Lauren ended up clarifying much of the movie's action in minute detail, which it was obvious the couple was loving, and it was loud and funny and weird in the way it often is when we're all together. 

Eve putting actual coins in a parking meter, which was a huge novelty for her

I was driving Eve back to her apartment and she thanked me for being 'such a nice low-maintenance Mommy', which was awesome, because, in all honesty, parenting our kids has never come with a whole lot of heavy lifting, which is all down to dumb luck, but I have always hoped that me being around would always feel like a nice thing and not an obligation for them. She'll be home for a bit at the beginning of July, but it was nice to have an opportunity for a couple of hugs and a couple of meals until then. 

Texting Tuesday

 While I was waiting for my mammogram I texted this to Eve:

Referring to when this happened in 2023. 

Hours later she texted this:

Five For Friday: Now Randomer Than Ever!

 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.

Also, when I first parked and got out of my car, a woman and a man were walking by and she was saying to him "yeah, well that's what's happening right now. It's called menopause. It's brutal." I yelled "Amen, Sister!" and she looked back and said "RIGHT??" and it was a beautiful moment. 

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). 

4. The Foghorn Leghorn chatter on my last post reminded me of one trivia night where we didn't get the question because "Foghorn Leghorn" drifted through my mind but I didn't say it, and if I had Michael would have gotten the answer because Leghorn is an actual type of chicken, which makes sense NOW, but all my life until then I had just thought it was his name because it was funny. The more you know. 

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. 

If They Ever Meet in a Gazebo My Marriage is Over

  My husband was very kindly driving me to a brunch with girlfriends because it was the long weekend and I hadn't slept much and was a little anxious about driving and parking. He was supposed to leave for Helsinki on Sunday but the trip had been cancelled so he was around. We were talking about what was going on at work for him and he mentioned that this week he was seeing someone who was kind of like a comic book villain in his career.

Me: "comic book villain?"

Him: "yes, kind of. For, like, decades. We stopped manufacturing a part he had always bought from us and he was bitter, but we still produce one piece that he has to buy from us. He calls us The Vendor of Last Resort. We're trying to close a multi-million-dollar deal with his company and he's not happy about it."

Me: "Hon! You have a nemesis?" 

Him: "Yes?"

Me: " Like, a years-long rivalry with antagonism but also grudging respect?"

Him: "I ...guess so? We have a bi-weekly phone call where we mostly exchange insults and then begrudgingly do some business in the last three minutes."

Me: "Have you ever kissed? In my world this kind of thing usually ends up with kissing at some point."

Him: "....no. He's from North Carolina and sounds like Foghorn Leghorn." (I'm not sure this would be a deal-breaker for me personally. Foghorn Leghorn has a sort of attractive level of confidence.)

Me: "Wait, so you said Helsinki got cancelled because someone more important bumped them. This is the more important someone?"

Him: "Yes. He called me and asked where I was going to be this week and I said Helsinki. He said "are you sure?" and I said "unless you give me a good reason not to be."

Me: "BABE, YOU ARE LITERALLY IN A ROM-COM."

Him: *speeds up in an effort to get me to the restaurant and push me out of the car as soon as possible.*

Update: He has now started calling his dinners with his nemesis DATES, so I think he's getting on board with the whole Enemies-to-Lovers thing. 

Texting Tuesday

 New blog series! We'll see if I keep it up! Or even post more than once for it! But I was particularly proud of my classy response to Margot and Michael showing us how difficult it was to get to work from the cottage this morning. 

Happy Things Friday

- Two EAs told me I looked pretty and they loved what I was wearing on Monday. I was wearing what I thought was an unremarkable black dress, but it was very kind of them.

-A grade three boy who is generally pretty challenging - hard to find books for, heaves around sort of sullenly, has trouble self-regulating - asked for a book, and I needed a few minutes to find it. He was leaning over a table looking at another book when I brought it to him and he looked up and said "Oh, thank-you so much, you're the best!" 

-My hairdresser said seeing me always makes her whole day. We discovered this place years ago when Angus wanted to get a red fauxhawk like his friend's for hockey playoffs, and she told us where they'd gotten it done. The place had such a nice atmosphere I started going there and taking Eve too. When I went in last week to make an appointment there were no customers and my stylist was sitting in a chair getting her roots highlighted, so came over to the counter with foils in her hair. One of the other stylists got a breast reduction and was so excited about it that when we started talking she pulled out her shirt to show me her new boobs. I love it there. 

-I met a baby named Watson and a Samoyed named Gary (no, those are not reversed) and a German shepherd puppy named Waylon and I just felt like everyone's naming game was really strong in those cases. Lucy and Waylon really hit it off, also. Once again I felt like a basic bitch for having a Lucy named Lucy, which is like the third most popular dog name, but I just always WANTED a dog named Lucy. And I am, for all intents and purposes, the basic-est of bitches.

-We were at bar night and Collette's husband Mark came in a bit late and said the sunset was amazing, so we all got up and went outside and it was, indeed, amazing - there were clouds that diffused the pink light all over the sky - and then our waitress followed us out and as we were filing back in we heard her say "holy shit!" and it was a lovely moment.

-Lucy coming to hang out with me during yoga, and, instead of lying on Eve's corgi Oodie that I put out specifically for her to lie on, deciding to lie right on my yoga blanket instead. It is, frankly, an annoying thing, but I'm having a really good week, so...

-On Wednesday my regular shift at my afternoon school was all viewing periods for the Scholastic Book Fair. This always stresses me out slightly, because it's often double classes coming in and it is absolute chaos - I spend the first three minutes going over all the rules and the next seventeen minutes trying not to flip out at the arrant flouting/ignoring of said rules, and often flipping out slightly. Usually the book club runs for one evening when parents are going to be at the school for parent teacher interviews or some other event. This brings in the most money of any book fair hours, because adults with credit cards are in the mix.

This evening is usually on a Thursday, which means I'm not at school. I ran or helped with nearly twenty book fairs but haven't ended up working any the past few years because of awkward timing. I realized when the other librarian showed up that this book fair evening was going to be right after my work hours, and it was only the other librarian and her son there, so I decided to stay.

It was loud and crowded and hot and by twenty minutes in I couldn't swallow. There were lineups practically out the door. People kept asking for stupid vending machine pencil sharpeners and cat diaries and strawberry erasers and I had to keep looking at all the stupidly shaped things to find the right one, and then go back to find the price, and there was only one debit/credit card machine so we had to keep doing a weird dance to pass it between the three of us and not step on each other while grabbing posters and pencils. There was so much math, and the calculator buttons were so tiny.

And it was SUCH A RUSH. I'd forgotten how satisfying it was. People are generally very patient, the kids are super stoked, and my very last family had six books and my calculator was dying, so I did the math in my head, and then the dad pulled out his phone to check my work (very nicely, not in an offensive way, I was happy to have the confirmation) and then showed me that I was only off my fifty cents (undercharging them) and sounded very proud of me. Further, I had had my head down over the books and table until then and only realized upon looking straight at him that the dad was a wholeass snack - fervently grateful that I hadn't noticed this earlier, because THAT would not have improved my math-under-fire skills.

We made eight thousand dollars, about three thousand of which comes back to the library in Scholastic books or cash or Scholastic credit. I have now committed to help with a fair at my Monday school in June. I will bring more water for that one. And not wear sleeves. 

Not Sure What My Damage Is, But It's Been Reported to the Police

 I'm an okay driver. Careful, not especially confident but much more than I used to be after all these years. I don't really get scared about driving places anymore, but I will happily take the opportunity to be driven if possible - except on long road trips, where I kind of like being on my own and blasting my own music the whole way. Before January I had never been in an accident, although once when the kids were little and Matt was away and it was the dead of winter and I was running on no sleep, I dropped the kids at school and then backed into a light post and cracked the back bumper. But this year, on an icy day in January, I was heading home from work and merged into the left turning lane close to home. The arrow was green and the car in front of me looked like it was going to go, but then didn't, so she slammed on her brakes and I slammed on my brakes, which would have been fine except it was icy, so I slid into her, fairly gently but definitively.

It was immediately apparent that this was a very minor thing with no injuries, but GOD, what a horrendous, icky, mortifying feeling. The other driver was a woman who spoke French - Hatian, maybe - and was really upset. Not angry, necessarily, just freaked out, which fair enough. Her teenaged daughter helped with the exchanging of insurance information and licenses. The back of her SUV was covered in snow and it wasn't clear that there was any damage at all. My front bumper had a crack in it. I called Matt and made sure he thought I had everything covered. When he got home we drove to the collision center.

I fully expected to be treated like an idiot, if not a criminal, at the collision center. Instead there was this hilarious, maternal Black woman walking around with an air cast on one foot helping everyone who made me feel instantly better. She took the insurance from my husband, wandered off and wandered back with a pen and said "you didn't sign it. That's a 130 dollar fine. I know that, because I paid it!" She told us about buying a Camaro and the dealership had done the paperwork so she figured it was good, and then she sped off "burning the gunk out of the engine" and got pulled over and got a speeding ticket "which I deserved!" and a fine for the insurance form not being signed, which seemed unjust. I was already in love with her, so later when I started coughing and she wandered over and got something from a cupboard and then took my hand to gently pour some mints in it I was looking at her with literal heart eyes. 

There was a sort of video-game-board thing where you had to move your car around on the virtual street to demonstrate the accident. I am not good at video games and have no depth perception, so it took longer than it should have, and we were giggling by the end. Then we saw another guy at a desk who was also very matter-of-fact and consoling - he said "look around, this place isn't usually this full". The whole experience was much less terrible than anticipated.

So fine, except Matt keeps saying he wants to take care of setting up the repair and is never in the country so keeps not doing it. Which, still fine, honestly because I could not possibly care any less about my car having cracks in it and needing body work (honestly, same girl same.)

THEN, last week after bar night, I got in my car to go home. I was parked nose to nose with my friends Michael and Margot (Matt was in Belgium). I backed straight out, and just as I was checking the mirror and preparing to turn the wheel to curve out to the right, I heard a smash.

I know! Like, are you fucking kidding me.

As soon as I opened the door, I heard a voice saying "Oh my god, I'm so sorry", and basically relaxed because as long as it wasn't my fault I was pretty much okay with whatever happened next. Two of my friends were still there, and came over as a very nice young waitress from the bar apologized and gave me her information. She said she could just give us some money instead of going through insurance, and I told her I'd get back to her, but really I was already pretty much deciding we would just pay for it. She's my daughter's age and she's a waitress and I've been a waitress, and I am fairly certain we can absorb the cost of a few hundred dollars better than she can. I gave her a hug and told her not to stress. Fortunately Matt agreed with me when I told him about it. I'm thinking of it as banking a little karma.

So now I have matching front and back bumper cracks. All the lights still function, which was my main concern. And hey, when we finally get it in for repairs they can do it all at once. Weird way to ..... hang on.... jesus lord, babies, I literally had to google 'word for efficiency-ing something' to obtain the word 'optimize'... weird way to optimize the repair process, but it's me, I am not normal. 

You know what would have prevented that whole debacle? If we had both BACKED IN. I did not because it was dark when I got there and it's a very crowded parking lot. And now I'm more afraid to, because every time I'm in a car at all I am braced for a bang crunch. Oh well. Could have been worse.