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. 

Five For Friday: Now Randomer Than Ever

 1. I am still in and out of responding to comments in the comments - sometimes I forget, sometimes it doesn't thread properly and annoys me. Some answers to recent questions/comments: I was heretofor unaware of the Scrub Mommy and her (presumed) main squeeze, Scrub Daddy. Now I wish I'd bought one for myself. Also, I am wondering if the Scrub Mommy was created in complaints to only having a Scrub Daddy being sexist (and also oblivious to who, traditionally, statistically does most of the scrubbing). Eve IS very frugal and careful about what she buys, even with my money. 

Does Angus only hang out with handsome, strapping young men? They are usually on a baseball team or colleagues now, who kind of work out for a living, so I guess? When he was home he used to come to my room shirtless to talk to me and grab the upper door frame and lean forward and I would tell him to stop Captain America-ing at me.

Backwards baseball cap is suitable for a staff picture - dream job or what?

Back to the apartment building we put my parents on the wait list for: Common Household Mom was understandably concerned that we be informed on when an apartment becomes available, and reassuringly when the manager was writing down my parents' phone number and email address my mom said "can you put in bold letters CALL ALLISON FIRST?" So we are good on that front. 

2. After some wobbly days, I had a really great week. I went to see The Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge at the folk festival with Pam and Sonia. I saw Melissa at Bluesfest a few years ago and have been longing to see her again, and my friend Janet took me to the Indigo Girls for my birthday thirty-ish years ago, and was there too, on the other side of the stage. It was sublime. Melissa Etheridge ninja-ed in for the last chorus of Kid Fears, which made me cry, then she had the Indigo Girls come out to do Sleep While I Drive with her and I cried again. 

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I also watched a really good movie with Collette Friday night - nominally a horror movie but really a trauma metaphor, really well done. 

3. Sunday I went for brunch with Holly and Nat who have the same birthday as each other and my mom, a week early because I will be with my mom this weekend. 

And last night I had dinner with Di and Jody and Angela, friends that I have solely because my daughter is really good at picking friends with kick-ass moms. Jody told the waiter we are Sad Moms because we're friends because of our kids who have all moved away. I said we should maybe switch our story to 'we met when some master criminal was assembling a team for a bank job' to sound less pathetic. You know when you have a three and a half hour dinner that you have some shit to discuss. 

I'm really close to perfecting the half-my-head selfie.

4. We showed up for bar night and our friend Dave, who is sweet and very funny and always keeps things interesting (get you a Dave and a Collette if you want your friend group to always be trying new things, many of which will make you look like an ass, but will also be theoretically be forming the shit out of new synapses and keeping your brain young) had decided that we should all sit in different spots from our usual. Is it odd that we always sit in the same spots? I'm not sure. It's a round table, so it's pretty good for everyone being able to converse with everyone. Anyway, we shifted positions. We made a brief stab and everyone taking on the attributes of whoever's seat we were sitting in, which was unfortunate for me because I was now a basketball-coaching high school physics teacher (I did dazzle them with my knowledge of a kilogram now being defined in terms of Planck's Constant). 

Wrong, all wrong

The conversation is always free-flowing, although sometimes a theme develops. This time, someone mentioned a cast member from MASH, and then someone else said it was a long time before they realized that Trapper John M.D. was the same Trapper John that was in MASH, and I said I was today years old when I realized that. Then there was a protracted, hilarious, fairly embarrassing flurry of trying to remember who played who, further complicated by people confusing the movie MASH with the tv show MASH, and then figuring out who was still alive (Collette has thought Ben Kingsley was dead for the last ten years but is finally over it, but she refused to believe that Jamie Farr is still alive).

Anyway, it was like giving a toddler four rolls of toilet paper to unroll, we were all having a merry time, and then another (smaller) group of people that is also there every Tuesday stopped by on their way out of the bar, and the man leaned towards us with a very serious look on his face and said "you can't be doing this", and he meant sitting in different seats because their group was all confused every time they looked over at us. We laughed a lot, although once they left we agreed that if we had known we were being observed we might have tried to elevate our conversation a little.

5. I thought peaches were over and was unhappily resigned. My personality for most of August is peaches. When there are blueberries I have peaches and blueberries for breakfast every day, but I am also good with just peaches. I got one more basket at Farm Boy on Thursday.

We had some delightfully brisk fall weather, and then some more summer-like heat, which of course many people who are not me were very happy about, but today is sunny but cool. I take every opportunity to read in the back yard because I think being outside as much as possible helps my mood.

The Day After Driving Eve Back to Hamilton

Given Eve's new location in Hamilton, there is a new Marriott we will probably stay at while visiting her now (all Marriott all the time for us because of Matt's ridiculous buttload of hotel points) which is walking distance. I was a little nervous driving to it after dropping Eve back at her apartment after dinner because I don't love downtown driving in the dark, but it was very close. The first thing that felt weird was having to turn left on a big wide street with bus shelters in the middle of it, but because it was a one-way street I was turning into what very much felt like it should be a lane of oncoming traffic. After checking the big arrow sign multiple times, I did turn. I was able to pull up to the curb outside the hotel while I went in to check in and once again didn't get ticketed or towed. The underground parking door was the size of a postage stamp, but I managed to get in unscathed.

The room was fine. I didn't sleep terribly well, but I hadn't expected to. Eve had said she wanted to get a fairly early start in the morning, but when I dragged myself out of bed and texted her she confessed that she had been over-estimating how chipper she would feel, so we got underway around ten.

I parked in the lot beside her building and went up. She had moved a few more things and I noted them all approvingly. There was one lamp Matt had packed for her from home thinking they would get a new shade for it at IKEA, but there wasn't one, so I said I would take it down to the car when we went and stick it in preparatory to bringing it back home. 

We accidentally both wore green, and a woman in Tim Hortons said we were gorgeous so I love her. I said her baby was really cute, which it was, but I would have said that even if it was ugly.

Then we left the apartment, locked the door and got in the elevator and I said "huh, I forgot the lamp". Eve said "I also didn't bring any cloth bags". Would going back immediately have made the most sense? Indubitably. Is that what we did? Lol, no. We went off bagless, knowing full well that our rule when we do this is that we're not allowed to get any plastic bags. According to Eve, this is okay for anything up to three kleenex boxes - any more than that and you risk becoming a spectacle - but rules are rules.

We went to Canadian Tire for a few last kitchen things and a toilet plunger, the Bulk Barn and Dollar Store for spices and little spice bottles, Costco for snacks and pesto and toilet paper, and the grocery store for a first grocery order.

The only time carrying everything without bags was dicey was in the Dollar Store, and I told the clerk that we would take a bag if it was a pain in her butt for us to gather everything up, but she was totally into it and helped us stack everything in cooking pans or hanging baskets. 

Eve doesn't usually make impulse purchases - even when I'm paying - so I was totally up for springing for a Scrub Mommy.

When we got back to her place, we filled up our purses and pockets with everything that would fit, and after our first trip up brought down grocery bags for the rest. Then I put the lamp right in front of the door so I wouldn't be able to leave without walking into it. 

We had dinner and a swim at the hotel, and the next morning I drove by to give her a hug before I drove home (listening to the Legally Blonde soundtrack the whole way. But I swear I will be over it any day now.)

Driving Eve Back to Hamilton

 11:00 a.m: Eve smooches Lucy a hundred times and Matt once, and we head out.

11:30 a.m: we decide we will only listen to musical soundtracks the entire drive

11:31 a.m: Legally Blonde soundtrack

Nicky Snelson (not a typo) belts out her songs while skipping and honestly, HOW?

12:45 p.m: Waitress soundtrack. Eve says it will never not freak her out that people will look at a book or or movie and just say "I shall make a musical out of this." Like, here's this whimsical story about a woman who suffers domestic violence regularly, unexpectedly becomes pregnant and has an affair with her doctor - FIRE UP THE PIANO AND BASS. A botched sex reassignment surgery? I HEAR VIOLINS. The Evil Dead? Urinetown? We are here for all of it, to be clear. 

1:00 p.m: we stop at an On Route, along with four thousand or so of our closest friends. It's Sunday! What the heck is going on. Everybody wants to spend the last week of August on the road?

1:10 p.m: we place our Burger King order at the kiosk and take turns going to the bathroom.

1:12 p.m: I am stretching my legs and idly staring at a pile of paper Burger King crowns on the counter and wondering if I should steal one.

1:14 p.m: Update: Eve has returned from the washroom and stolen a crown. 

1:15 p.m: There is a Coca-Cola Freestyle machine. My usual selection is half Diet Coke, half Cherry Vanilla Coke. Both of those are unavailable. I do something that I think is Diet Root Beer but is actually Diet Cream Soda, and then panic and push some other button at random. This decision will haunt me.

1:16 p.m: we procure nutritionally questionable food and return to the car and the highway.

1:25 p.m: I taste the drink and make the face and noise that Buffy makes in season 6 episode 5 after taking a shot. 

2:00 p.m: Hamilton soundtrack

We talked more about the Hamilton phenomenon when Zarah was here. Back to the 'what all the fuss is about', and then the inevitable backlash. As Zarah said, it's not meant to be non-fiction. It's a story, the way much of American history is a story, with the proviso that Lin-Manuel Miranda is not claiming that his story is true. And it's clever! There is wordplay, and there are callbacks, and the music is hella catchy. But I think this about many musicals that I see. Why did this one blow up? Impossible to say for sure, but sometimes things just do. And while it's a great musical (in my opinion), no one person or work of art can bear as much as people started to put on this one. Some people are mad because he hired black actors to play white historical figures. Others are mad because people are acting like this is revolutionary. It's all become so desperately overdetermined. 

2:20 p.m: I take another drink and Eve asks if I want her to dig out the cooler for a Diet Pepsi. Stupidly, I say no, and take another drink of the cough syrup/industrial soap/cherry scented outhouse deodorizer concoction I have inflicted on myself. 

2:43 p.m: we stop for a bathroom break. As we're trying to merge back onto the highway, a car in the lane we're merging into (with plenty of signal warning) speeds up and nearly forces us off the road. I lay on the horn with the full force of my not-inconsiderable weight. Eve says "they know they totally deserved that, they've got nothing to come back with." 

3:00 p.m: Still Hamilton soundtrack. 

4:30 p.m: We are approaching Hamilton and I get a little sad realizing we take a whole different exit to get to Eve's place now.

4:45 p.m: We do what the building management told us to do, which is to pull up in front of the building, put on our hazards, unload the car and take everything up in the elevator. This feels highly illegal and dangerous, but it goes off without a hitch (the 'hitches' I was envisioning being getting a ticket or stuff being stolen. Okay, honestly, Matt told us we could bring in a giant load and just leave some of it in the lobby while we took what we could up in the elevator. That was never going to happen. My worldview tends to oscillate between sappily idealistic and so cynical I wouldn't trust a baby.) The elevators are fast, everyone we encounter is friendly and helpful, and Eve, as usual, is stronger than I expect, so I don't have to damage my back. She sticks all the bins on the little dolly and gets them in, and I roll all the duffel bags.

We stand around feeling overwhelmed, then decide we should make her bed first so she can sleep there tonight if she wants to. 

The comforter is impossible to get out of its cloth bag.

"Not to shame you, but we might have to cut you out of these jeans, girl!"

After that we decide to go get dinner and then regroup. We waffle on whether to look for a place nearby or go to our default (Jack Astor's) and we decide to go familiar for now because we are tired and will absolutely suffer decision paralysis and end up crying. 

Favourite Broadway Musical? Thing you unpack first when you move?