So Stupid You Just Have to Laugh

 Suzanne just sent me quick, kind email check-in, which tipped me over from my I-Should-Really-Blog state into Okay-I'm-Blogging state, particularly as I was just sort-of finishing dinner and I was thinking of Suzanne anyway. 

You guys, the amount of Stupid in this day would overflow the Stupidity line on any given bucket on any given day. I also just had to type the word 'stupidity' a stupid number of times.

I haven't been sleeping the greatest, and I was out of the over-the-counter sleeping pills that I often use on Sunday nights so I get a few hours before my early Monday library shift. I took an ancient Ativan instead (making all the good choices lately), tried to read and had some kind of demonic vision instead, fell asleep hard and woke up feeling super-weird. 

Got ready for work. Matt left a few minutes before me to drop the dog at my mom and dad's and head to work. I got ready to go and looked in the key bin and my keys were... not there.

Even when we're not down to one set of keys for the Rav (which we are because I lost my keys and got the fob turned off, that's on me, not in dispute) I had a thing about him not using my keys, because he is notoriously bad at leaving them in a pocket or THE VEHICLE and then I can't find them. But surely he wouldn't have kept them when he knew I had to go to work today? Surely not.

I remembered he used the Rav to do errands before our party on Sunday. He definitely had the keys.

I called my parents to see if I could catch him - he'd just left. I called his cell... no answer.

He couldn't answer but fortunately could see I had called, and came back to give me the keys. I didn't bother getting angry because obviously it was an accident, and it's hard not to get angry when you keep saying put them back in the bin right after you're done with them so this doesn't happen and then, you know, this happens, but I do stupid stuff too, so, not angry. But a little late for work and a little off balance.

Work was good. Monday is pretty much my calmest school and set of classes. I let an extra grade one class slip in because they had missed a couple of weeks of their regular class and they were grateful.

After work I went to the bakery, the drug store and the grocery store. I often just park in front of the bakery and grab my wallet from my purse instead of hauling my sizeable heavy purse in. After I paid and left the bakery I decided to just walk the little bit to the drug store, then thought wait no, I don't have my purse, then thought that's okay, I have my wallet. Got into the drug store, went to check my list on my phone, and swung my purse down to grab my phone because I.... did have my purse? *whimper*

Got drug store stuff. Got groceries. Paid for my groceries. Couldn't find my phone. I didn't even have the energy to freak out, just wrote down my name and number (landline) and asked them to call if it turned up. Which it wouldn't because naturally it was in the seat of my car when I got back to it.

Went to my mom and dad's to pick up Lucy. My mom was having trouble with Facebook. You know how dogs want you to throw their ball, but not to take it? No take, only throw? My mom is kind of like this with fixing her ipad or phone - fix it, but don't change anything or maybe don't touch anything at all, just maybe fix it by looking at it. No touch, only fix. 

When I got back to my car, there was a key just inside the car door beside my seat. I looked down at my school lanyard and the key was missing. But nothing was undone, so how did it fall off? By the Awesome Magical Power of Stupid, I can only presume.

I came home. I had taken chicken thighs out of the freezer. One of my friends mentioned honey garlic baked chicken thighs and I thought I would try that. I took the chicken thighs out of the fridge but they were still frozen. Crap, should have left them out before work. Okay, maybe I'll instant pot them, you can cook them from frozen. Instant pot says to sear them first. How do I do that if they're frozen? So I microwave thaw them a bit, then sear them - in a frying pan, not the instant pot because using the saute function on the instant pot hurts my wrists. Then I cook them. They smell good. They're done. I open the instant pot and remember that chicken wings and chicken thighs cooked in the instant pot taste good but we usually broil them to make them less soggy. So why did I sear them? And now I'm putting them in the oven anyway. And I thought 'Suzanne would probably never do anything this dumb'. And then I checked my email and saw her message and thought okay, I will share my stupidity stupidty stupdine stupidness for the amusement of all BlogKind.

Easter at my sister's was lovely. The drive went well. We stopped for lunch at one of the highway centres (they call them OnRoutes here because Ontario, ha ha, so clever). My dad is never very hungry at lunch and is never very forthcoming when asked what he wants. We went to A&W and were ordering and then saw the little Buddy Burger menu, so we ordered off of that. When the dude started filling a thimble-sized cup with coke we realized we'd gotten him the kids meal. 

He seemed pretty stoked about it

We had a nice chill Friday evening, then Matt and I drove into Hamilton to drop off food and supplies to Eve and take her out for lunch. 

We dropped her at the library because she's a studious little bunny, and when we got back to London my sister and I and my mom and my niece went to the neighbourhood pub for cocktails while the men napped and watched various sportses. I had a jalapeno paloma that was delicious but made me cough, so my niece Charlotte traded me for her classic margarita, and then I got a less jalapeno-y paloma. Then we all went a bit tipsily next door to the grocery store to get breakfast sausage and Charlotte and I were looking for turkey bacon because she doesn't eat pork and then she started making rude gestures with a giant Polish sausage and an older woman passing by gave us a disgusted look and my mom couldn't stop laughing and my sister booked it to the cash trying to pretend she didn't know us.

It was nice enough to sit on the back deck on Sunday, and then I hung out with my niece in the attic reading my book and watching silly Youtube videos because I don't care about curling. Charlotte let us have her bedroom which was so generous, and I drugged myself to sleep every night so that went okay. 

On Sunday my professor invited Eve over after church (actually invited her for church, but Eve managed to amend the invite to after-church), where she was pressed into service by my professor's granddaughter who adores Eve, into reading her the very seasonally appropriate Twas the Night Before Christmas, while she ate her Easter lunch. Then they did matching tattoos.

Everybody was fine for the drive home, and then we got to my parents' place and Matt (who was driving their vehicle) and my dad (who was beside him in the passenger seat) couldn't find the garage door clicker, and my mom lost her mind and we were all exhausted and I was just staring at the driveway because I didn't even know what the frigging thing looked like, and then Matt flipped the visor and realized it was still clipped to it, they were just looking at the wrong side of it. Into every day a little stupid must fall, it seems. 

I'm going to answer Suzanne's email as soon as I can get back into my email platform, which I really need to switch because it has this tiresome habit of autofilling my password which means the password is absolutely correct, but it says it's not four or five times before it lets me in. If I was smart, I would change this right now. But I'm going to go eat my one-dish, three-pan, two-cooking-method chicken first. 

Eastering While Anxious

I said I was going to do a few posts in a row about things I'm self-conscious about. The next one was going to be medications. After that.... thinking.... checking drafts folder.... oh, it was about Lucy. I'm going to do them, but I don't think today. Today I just want to get another post in before a week or more goes by to preserve the habit.

We're going to London Ontario to my sister's for Easter. This is wonderful because I love my sister and her husband and her kids, and I love us all being together. This is only a tiny bit stressful because I'm bad at traveling and I don't love sleeping in a bed that isn't mine, and we're driving down with my parents and my mother is a wonderful, wonderful woman who doesn't have much of an ability to roll with things and says things in anxiety that she doesn't realize can be hurtful to other people, which causes me a bit of anxiety about traveling with her. 

It's also a tiny bit sad because Angus can't come because he's coaching four games this week-end, and Eve can't come even though we'll only be an hour and a half away from her, because it's end of term which is even worse than exam time, because everything is due by Wednesday. Matt and I are going to drive in to Hamilton on Saturday and deliver food and the mountain of stuff my mom has baked (because she is wonderful) and hugs and Easter chocolate. My niece and nephew are both coming home for at least a day or two, so that will be fun. 

(Funny aside about this. On FaceTime last night Eve said "you know my housemates are usually pretty into prioritizing mental health over marks. But I asked them 'what if I just said Fuck It and went to London this weekend' and all their eyes got really big and they said 'are you crazy'" so I think I probably can't come." Fair enough then).

Angus had a bit of a rough time last week - professors sounding off about students being unprepared and not coming to class (at the students who actually came to class, seems a little counterproductive but okay), the team not doing well - so I sent him an Easter tin of cookies and brownies from Mrs. Fields and he was very happy to get it. 

We had a freezing rain event yesterday, which pissed me off even though I know April in Ottawa is no guarantee of spring-like weather. I stopped to get a couple of things at the grocery store after work (butter and milk and buttermilk, which amused me to no end), and I couldn't get to my cloth grocery bags because the trunk was frozen shut. My poor friends Sasha and Dani don't have power and are having PTSD from the last windstorm that knocked out their power for multiple days - HI SASHA, HI DANI, sorry the universe is being such a massive douche to you. 

Photo credit Dimitra Zouzoulas, Greek Goddess

The weather in London is much nicer, which is wonderful but also probably means I'll be too hot all weekend and I don't really know what to pack. Okay okay, I'll stop complaining. At least it's not over any borders so I can pack my weed pen.

Latest perverted autocorrect story: I was texting with Angus about his living situation next year. He is in something called the Circle Apartments which two roommates he doesn't like - they are unfriendly and untidy. He's been saying he will probably get a place with a guy from the basketball team he is friends with. We've just been calling him Basketball Guy, but a couple of days ago Angus texted that they were going to look at a place and would probably lock it down next week. I said "Basketball Guy?" and then thought I should probably stop calling him that so I texted "Name?", except it autocorrected to "Babe?" and I had to hastily reassure my son that I am not, in fact, invested in whether his roommate next year is a snack. 

Happy Easter, everyone. May your eggs be colourful or chocolate or not all in one basket or whatever. 

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.