It's Weird, Because Reading is Supposed to Be My Thing

So.

I don't know.

Given that I always felt like I read all of the instructions for my online courses really well, multiple times, and still ended up at an open-book exam without the book, I'm kind of worried that my reading comprehension has drastically deteriorated in the past few years.

Last night ramped up that anxiety by a factor of HOLY FUCK.

I had an interview at six o'clock. In November. I was insanely, irrationally, stupidly nervous about the interview - not the interview itself, if that makes any sense, just the whole process. Because of this, I wasn't really concentrating on the getting-there part of it, and it didn't occur to me until far too late that six o'clock in November in Ontario would be dark. It was also rainy, as it happened, which didn't help. I should have done a dry run.

The interview was at Greenbank Middle School. I knew that because I read over the email several times, SEVERAL TIMES, and asked my husband where Greenbank Middle School was, and he told me. I also read the address - 131 Greenbank.

I left with lots of time. I set my GPS. I realized it was dark and rainy and wished slightly that I had done a dry run, but thought I would be fine - the address wasn't that far and seemed straightforward.

I pulled in at the address and it was slightly less straightforward than I thought it would be - there was a sign saying Ottawa School Board, so that was good, but the school was apparently attached to the board office, which meant I was dealing with a giant forbidding structure, not the cute little middle school with the obvious enter-here door I was looking for.

The email had said there was parking in the back of the school, so I drove around until I saw a parking lot. There was also another sign, and when I pulled up to look more closely, it said that the Board Office was to the right, and up ahead was....

Sir Robert Borden Elementary School.

Say what?

Okay. Okay. Let's regroup. Did I punch in the wrong address? Maybe I did. Still lots of time. I turned around the started driving back out to Greenbank. Saw a student on a skateboard. Stopped and asked him if he knew where Greenbank Middle School was. He could not have been nicer and more helpful. It was just back out on Greenbank and to the right.

I pulled back out, stupidly not resetting the GPS. It was (shocker) still dark and rainy. I thought I saw a school but wasn't sure if I could turn where it was. I found a side street and punched Greenbank Middle School in the GPS. I had to drive a bit of a crazy route, with mounting panic, although I was still on target to be early. I pulled into the parking lot. Just to be sure, I pulled up the email to check the school name and address one more time.

It said.... wait for it....the interviews will be conducted at...

SIR ROBERT BORDEN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.

So, I think that it is NOT my reading comprehension falling off. I think I'm the victim of a rare syndrome that makes emails actually transform while still in my in-box.

Anyway, I drove back to the right school. Parked in a parking lot that looked tailor-made for mugging and murder. Walked in the rain to a back door that completely looked like it would be locked.

But it wasn't.

On the bright side, after all that crap, I was hardly nervous about the interview at all.

Ceci n'est pas un blog post

I had a job interview today. I was weirdly panicky about the whole process, which was a little weird, and I don't want to say anything else about it for now, and I don't know how things will turn out, I'm just limp and noodly with relief that it's over. Eve is still at basketball practice and the temperature is plummeting and my head hurts and I don't have the energy to say anything witty or intelligent right now. The story of getting TO my interview is going to have you marveling (huh. Only one L in marveling? Okay then) at the extent of my ability to screw up simple tasks when I tell you about it tomorrow, though. Promise.

Wordless Wednesday: Law of Conservation of Ruffles

Where in the World is... Basically Anything

I've always been bad at geography. I don't remember directions well, I don't know which way is North at any given moment, I get lost easily. I had a terrible time with map tests. The car GPS system changed my whole life - I wouldn't have gone half the places I have without it, or not without a lot more anxiety barfing and palpitations. It kind of just became a thing, though, where I would say "I'm terrible at geography" and leave it at that. As if it was an irremediable condition. As if there was NOTHING AT ALL that could be done about it.

My friend Collette has really good directional sense. If she drives somewhere once, she knows where it is forever. And she knows where stuff is in the world too. "I learned it from television", she said once, and when I looked at her with blank incomprehension she said "You know, like, I learned where Korea was from MASH". I watched MASH faithfully. I had no freakin' clue where Korea was. It's just not an area of my brain that lights up when relevant information to it presents itself.

When Angus was going to Oklahoma last year, Matt immediately started trying to figure out if he could do some business in Austin and then drive up to Oklahoma for a couple of days, since Oklahoma was north of Texas. HE JUST KNEW THAT. Rather comfortingly, when I repeated that Oklahoma was north of Texas to a few of my friends, they hadn't known it either.

This summer when we were all camping at Sandbanks, a few of us walked from the beach to the café for ice cream. Collette got a coffee that had a world map on the cup. She started asking the kids where certain European countries were. Her kids knew almost all of them. Eve knew none (I didn't either, but fortunately for me she was only asking the kids). Eve and I decided this could not stand. We came home and started studying maps on the internet. You don't even want to KNOW how low my score was the first time I tried to guess where all the states were.

It's been really interesting. Being able to visualize where a state is on the map when it's mentioned for Matt's work or on the news is a whole new thing for me. Some things aren't as south as I thought they were. Massachusetts is shaped like a gun. I knew Rhode Island was small, but dude, it's, like, MINISCULE.

Then I started learning capitals. I was fairly confident that I would know some, if not most of those. WRONG. Now, am I wrong or should there not be a rule that if a city is a capital of one state it shouldn't be a well-known city in another state? No? Just me? Capital of Massachusetts? SALEM, I confidently typed. Nope. There IS A Salem, Massachusetts, but it's not the capital. Just like there's a Charleston, South Carolina, but it's not the freaking capital. Who the hell has ever heard of Columbia, South Carolina? Well, a great many people, clearly, but I still think it's bullshit.

Eve came down once when I was doing the capital quiz the other way, where you get the capital and have to pick which state it belongs to. When we got to Oklahoma City, she said "well obviously it should be Oklahoma, but is it a trick? Are you supposed to overthink it? I'm suspicious." For Jackson she said Mississippi and when I said "do you just know that because of Uptown Funk?" she said "well I'd say no, but it's playing in my head now, so probably".

Pierre and Bismarck are North and South Dakota, but I regularly mix up which one is which.

We went on to the rest of the world and now I'm fairly confident that I wouldn't be one of those people who gets stopped on the street by Jimmy Kimmel and accidentally goes to war with South Korea.

"Don't bother learning it all", Collette said. "Just learn something weird like Kazakhstan". I TOTALLY KNOW WHERE KAZAHSTAN IS. AND Turkmenistan.

Still keeping my GPS, though. And don't ask me which way is North. Not sure how to improve that, other than to have a compass implanted somewhere.

Cats and Cattiness

For Joe (HI JOE) and Nicole (HI NICOLE), the Schrodinger's cat joke: Schrodinger is driving along and gets stopped by a cop. The cop finds his behaviour suspicious and searches his car, including the trunk. When he opens the trunk, he says "oh my god, there's a cat in here and it's dead!" and Schrodinger says "Well NOW it is!"

Today: slept too late, made myself go to the gym. Came downstairs from the gym, went to grab a grocery cart. As I was pulling it back, someone walked into me. I half-turned around, about to say sorry, and saw this older woman, obviously rolling her eyes and pissed off. Because she had walked into me, while I was pulling out a shopping cart, which is what people do with shopping carts. And she wasn't leaving or going somewhere else, which might have meant her attention wasn't on the shopping carts, because she then pulled out her own shopping cart.

So I looked back and saw her being a bitch because she had walked into me. And I completely lost any ability to be gracious. I yanked the cart out and pushed it into the grocery store and mumbled a stream of invective and very obviously didn't smile at her when we bumped into each other (figuratively) again at the green juice.

Then I tried to turn my cart into the pharmacy aisle, but my arms were noodly from working out and I bumped a rack and a bunch of chapstick fell off. And this young employee who'd been talking to someone nearby came to my rescue and said consoling things about Monday and picked up all the lip balm while I apologized profusely and sort of cry-laughed.

I guess I could take some kind of lesson from that. Like, if I'd gotten up earlier I would have missed being walked into by an asshole. OMG, you guys - what if I've used up my Canadianness? What if I never apologize to someone who steps on my foot again? I honestly feel like I've reached some kind of threshold. Fear me.

Sub-Blogging

A former friend just tweeted that she has serious reservations about the mental health of people who can't cope with Daylight Saving Time.

I can't say I'm terribly surprised - when someone routinely says mean things the shock value wears off after a while. It just made me stop and think for a moment. I do, in fact, have mental health issues, and I do find that Daylight Saving Time makes them worse for a little while. I feel off-kilter, more anxious, never sure I'm in the right place at the right time, and tired. Which doesn't seem that weird, really. We literally CHANGE THE CLOCKS. By some weird decree from on-high, we take this huge fiction that our lives are quite literally built on, and agree by another enormous fiction that it's different now. For about six months, when we'll all (except our wise, wise sister Saskatchewan) change it back. How can this not have some effect on many people?

So, yeah. Sometimes something is true and saying it still makes you a huge dick.

I always find referring to Swistle's post helpful in this trying time.

I remember the cruel realization when we had our first baby, that Fall Back actually DIDN'T mean an extra hour of sleep anymore. It just meant your kid was now crying to get up at five instead of six. I have teenagers now, and I still sleep like one, so at least we have that back.

I wish I could think of something funny to add, but it's raining and dark again, the house is a bloody mess and... well, it's okay. I'm going to clean up the kitchen, put out the garbage, then go cocoon with Eve upstairs and read for a few hours until we have to figure out what time we should be hungry.

Also, while Googling desultorily about the evils of DST, I found an episode of the Powerpuff Girls where the girls are so exhausted from all the superheroine-ing that they fall asleep in school and the teacher tries to get them banned from saving everyone. Then the Professor realizes that it's Daylight Saving Time and everyone sets the clocks back so the girls get another hour of sleep. Dammit, I was going to say that DST almost stopped the FREAKING WORLD FROM BEING SAVED, but now I realize it's the opposite. Well what do you expect, it's a stupid cartoon. I'll bet Batman doesn't set his clocks back.

Ripping Off My Witty Daughter for a Blog Post. So Not Cool.

My Facebook memory today was about Eve learning a Schrodinger's Cat joke from Bones and rehearsing it every day to tell to Matt when he got home from Japan (he's in Florida right now. He comes home Monday. Tuesday he leaves for Singapore. Things have changed so much. NOT).

I read it out to Eve and she said "oh yeah, and the other day we were talking about that thing where if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? I'm pretty sure if I ever take a philosophy class I'll never sleep again."

We also finally got her in to a chiropodist to order orthotics. She's had foot pain her whole life just like me, but we're lazy and procrastinate-ish and we kind of wanted her feet to stop growing to we wouldn't have to replace the orthotics every few months (lazy and procrastinate-ish and cheap, in plain talk). The foot guy said she had extremely tight Achilles tendons. She said "wait - are you telling me my Achilles Heel is LITERALLY MY ACHILLES HEEL?"