Random Thoughts 2015-07-25

Really, I have nothing. Nothing at all.

Except maybe cloudy thoughts, which match the weather today, swirling in my head, trying to come up with something to write.

Hey, didn't I get that book, the one that gives you 600+ things to write about? (Looks around house. Mentally.) Yeah, I'm not sure where it is, so maybe tomorrow I'll do something from that.

Have you seen or heard of that tidying book that will change your life? the life-changing magic of tidying up: the Japanese are of decluttering and organizing by Marie Kondo. It's awesome. I did clothes. Then I did toys (added that category). My kids' toys. Hmm. Maybe I should do my toys next...

The next topic is books. I will do the kitchen first.

I got married last weekend. Officially, not common-law-y. Someone at worked did that finger-shame-on-you thing because we've been "living in sin" for 9 years and 2 kids already. Maybe I was a virgin until last weekend? With 2 kids. And toys. Yeah, maybe not.

Then same person tsk-tsked all the single parents in his neighbourhood. I told him life happens, and not everyone is perfect. Mentally I may have been telling him to fuck off a little.

It's noticeably darker earlier at night, now. Sure, we can convince the kids to go to bed a little earlier now, but it's also harder to stay up later ourselves. Not that we're ever not tired by nine, anyway, so moot point, perhaps.

I'm trying to find out if we can house chickens in our backyard. The egg-laying kind, not the alarm-clock kind. What I read in the bylaws, and what "friends" tell me are two different things, so I'm going to see what the city tells me.

I was out of my office for 2 hours yesterday, and left my phone in my office. My mom phoned me six times while I was out. Six. One message. You know what she wanted? To know what kind of pizza she should get for the boys etc. Really? My grandmother has a terminal illness and you phone six times about pizza? Then when I was checking the message, she phoned a 7th time to tell me that she ordered whatever and was going to pick it up. Seven. Seven times about pizza. So not an emergency. Fucking freaked me out a little. I hope that should something happen to Grandma, she'd think to phone work if I didn't answer my cell phone.

Erg.

I should water my orchid. Every time I do I must put it back facing a different direction because it's spiraling nicely. Kind of like my life. Not out of control, but definitely not in a straight line, either.

I haven't done a BMBR lately. I have been reading. Hmmm. Tomorrow.

I'm looking out my front window right now, and I'm kinda wishing that I could see in to the neighbours' windows. No reason. Just bored.

The Benefits of a Good Poop

A friend of mine recently got married. She was pretty mellow throughout the whole lead-up with one minor Bridezilla moment.

All the girls in the wedding party were sitting around tearing apart off-the-shelf bouquets to rebuild into works of art. A couple people kept coming downstairs to ask the bride-to-be a million questions. It was actually only a couple of questions, but apparently it was still annoying to the nth degree.

We were actually thinking that perhaps a reality TV crew would be popping their heads out from around the corner at any moment, when BTB says, "I have to go poop. Be right back."

Maybe it was the discomfort that was making her crazy, and maybe it was the poop that wasn't allowing the caffeine in the coffee to be absorbed, but whatever it was, when she got back, she was happy and alert. And once again mellow.

So, if someone's ever suddenly really bitchy and uncomfortable-looking, they may just have to poop.

When All You Need Is Some Chocolate

The other day was one of those long, difficult and confusing days that only year end/tax season can give you. The kind of day where you're already trying to not cry because of some family drama (over a cat of all things), and by the end of your workday - for your day job - you're going to have three hours of extra bookkeeping to do at some point tonight - you're feeling like you've been through only the first of several wringers in a commercial laundromat.

So when Hubby called to request that I stop on the way home to get cream for the coffee, and some munchies for the game, and suggested that I get a treat for myself, I thought, ooh. Lindor chocolate.

I stopped at this Save-On Foods on the way home. Don't be fooled by the misnomer, by the way. I picked up the cream and some potato chips, and I wandered around until I finally found the bulk bins that house the Lindts. It took a while because I had to go through the book aisle to find them. Poor me.

The dark chocolate balls were on sale (exciting!) and there was a NEW flavour, citrus, which sounded tantalizing. The citrus balls were not on sale, so being the honest soul that I am, I wrote down the bin numbers for both chocolates.

I made my way to the express till, the line up for which was only slightly less long than those of the other ten tills that were open. Which is all of them. Every single till was open, and they were all at least five people deep.

And, I got the new girl.

Usually this isn't a problem. Usually.

Since the chocolates were the most important purchase, they were the first on the belt. I dutifully informed the cashier that one number was for the dark chocolates and that the other was for the citrus. She put the two dark balls on the scale and punched in the SKU. Then she punched in the SKU again. She was reaching for the one citrus ball when I pointed out that she'd just charged me twice for the dark balls. It even displayed so on the till screen.

"But there are two," she said with a perplexed look on her face.

"They're sold by weight, not by each," I replied. "And you just sold them to me twice."

The look of confusion only increased as she looked at the screen, and read back to me the per gram amount as if it were the amount I were going to pay. "See," she said. "It's only that much, and there are two."

At this point I realized three things:

1. She did not understand the difference between sold by weight and sold by each, nor that if it was by each, she wouldn't have had to put them on the scale.
2. She didn't even know how to read her till.
3. I was not in the right frame of mind to try to explain any of these concepts to her in such a way that would a) teach her b) without making her feel like a useless idiot. I wasn't even in the mood to bring over a supervisor and hold up a long line of tired looking folks just so I could have a fucking chocolate.

"Take them off," I said.

She looked perplexed again. "Just take them both off."

She did, and she managed to scan everything else in without too much trouble, and I know what you're thinking: so you had to pay for some chocolate twice! How much difference could it really be? Buddy, Lindt isn't cheap shit. It makes a huge difference!

Anyway, on my way out I thought I'd stop by the service counter and say, "Hey, so, some training for your tellers before you throw them to the wolves by themselves on an express till at the just-got-off-work rush would probably be cool." But the line up there was even longer.

So I left and walked out to the car, and just as I was starting it Hubby phoned to see if I was okay (because I was taking so long. Stupid book aisle). I said yeah.

"Are you crying?" he asked.

"I needed some chocolate," I said. "And I didn't get any."

I then related the whole story.

"Just come home and have some supper," he said.

So I did. And afterwards he went online to fill in the customer satisfaction survey, which was requested at the bottom of my receipt by the way. I eventually got an automatically generated "we'll get in touch with you" emails. I'm still waiting. . .

Random Thoughts 2015-06-10

You can buy a kid a really cool remote-controlled car, or even a BMX bike, but he's still going to: see if he can cram his 5 year-old self into the box the car came in.

Monday's Muse 2015-06-01

The kids in my son's preschool class!

Who wouldn't want to read a book written by four-year-olds? I mean, it would be non-stop action, full of creativity, a conversational dream, and it would be full of so many plot twists, the Networks would sit up and take notice!

Swimming with Little Old Ladies

Last week I was able to go swimming at the public pool before work. As in, Hubby had the day off, so I didn't have to take the kids to daycare, so I could have slept in, but instead I chose--chose--to be at the pool at 6:15 a.m. On purpose.

There are three four types of people who are at the pool at opening time, and they can easily be identified by the lane or zone of the pool in which they congregate.

1. Dedicated, fit, "Advanced" swimmers who are able to swim an Olympic length over and over and over again without ever looking like it's an effort. These people are actually in the minority, and their zone is the Advanced swimming lane. That's not my group.

2. The Aqua-Fitters. These ladies are rocking the leisure pool with excellent coordination and range of motion, and they never look like they're going to expire at any moment. This isn't my group.

3. The "Intermediate" swimmers. The Advanced swimmers are way too fast, and the Leisure swimmers are way too slow. The Intermediate swimmers set a nice pace that is nothing too strenuous, but at the same time isn't a Sunday Drive. There may be a rest at the end of every lap or two, but the pace is steady and true. I thought this was my group. I was very, very, wrong.

4. The "Leisure" swimmers. These sharks little old ladies--and when I write little old lady, you should be reading Driving Miss Daisy--look like they are out for a Sunday Drive. No, really. They bob along the Olympic length of the pool doing something that is a cross between the doggy paddle and treading water. They are, in fact, quite literally treading water in an upright position, but their arms are paddling just enough that they are actually moving forward. This should be my group.

I walked to the lap pool, looked at the Leisure Lane, saw the bobbing, and thought to myself, too slow. I'll be mowing those poor women down.

Okay, maybe a little back story is in order: I remember being an awesome swimmer. I couldn't run to save my life, Sports Day at school was an embarrassing form of torture, I could maybe fake one push-up if I was on my knees, but put me in a pool and my weak little arms could pull me along faster than all the fit kids could swim. Swimming was easy.

So, I'm thinking, at this point, that just because a (tiny) broken bone in the bottom of my foot has kept me essentially immobile for the last two years, swimming should still be easy. I should be able to do a few front-crawling laps in the Intermediate Lane no problem.

I was wrong. I was wrong like a four-year-old is wrong when he thinks it's okay to teach his younger brother that it's okay to flush toilet paper rolls down the toilet (full or empty--either way). I was wrong like the Church was wrong when it excommunicated people for thinking that the Earth was round.

I was wrong like a fat, 40 year old woman who had two kids in her late thirties and whose life just kept getting more and more sedentary for various reasons is wrong when she thinks, hey, I used to ride my bike to the recreation centre, work out in the gym for an hour, then swim a few laps, then ride my bike home to do yoga on the lawn for half an hour or so, then maybe go horseback riding for a few hours, so how hard can this be?

I front-crawled for half a lap before my brain realized that I may actually drown in this really freaking big pool. There's a bit of a feeling of safety when your laps aren't Olympic length. When they are, and the "shallow" end is still over your head? The edges are so very far away. I had to back-stroke for most of my swim just so that I could breath!

I did manage two full laps (one lap being there-and-back), but I'm pretty sure that the little old ladies out-lapped me. The old men in my lane most certainly did.

I'm going again this week.

Monday's Muse 2015-05-18

The Voices in my Head.

They come up with some pretty interesting stuff.

Like, how to use "like" in a sentence properly, if you, like, grew up in, like, that decade that was like, a couple decades ago.

They also have this thing going in a New Adult novel where an assassin and an unaware innocent meet and fall in love and overcome all kinds of odds and emotional dysfunctions to make things work, except get this: the assassin is the girl!

Actually, I might get cracking on that one.