Bread Crumbs In The Butter

I can top your worst day ...

We've all had bad days. I'm reasonably sure you're nodding your head right now.  

You might even be saying out loud "I once had this day where I walked out the front door and got shit on by a huge crow and it only got worse from there!"  

Heck, you might even be saying "I once had a day where I got stabbed by a two year old!"  

I can still beat you.  

Friday had potential. Because I work in Gatineau, Quebec, I had the day off to celebrate St Jean Baptiste Day. I didn't celebrate. What I did was shit all over it like the crow did to me a few years ago - which is how I admit to you that I have also been stabbed by a two year old.  

Let's back up to Thursday night to get the full picture. I play ball hockey on Thursday nights. Have done so for years. Every year John points and laughs at the bruises on my legs and reminds me that women who play ball hockey without protective gear are stupid. Personally, I think we are tough as nails. At least I used to. In the spirit of going for it and giving it all you got, I got a stick blade right in my shin. Not only did it hurt like the ring of fire only women will know, it left me with a sizeable
gash. Being a smart and responsible woman, I completely ignored my fourteen year old daughter and did not go to the ER Thursday night, I went Friday morning. The ER doctor simply shook his head, put some glue on it, gave me a tetanus shot and gave me crap for not going in when it was fresh. No chance of stitches or it healing nicely, but a huge change of a really badass scar!  

From there I went about my day thinking it couldn't get worse, and for a while it didn't. I had lunch with my kid and my mother, did a little shopping and stopped at the liquor store on my way home. Keep that last stop in your mind. I will need my purchases there later in the story.  

Why?  

Because on my way home I got into a pretty decent car accident. The details aren't of major importance (mostly because they make me look like a complete doof), but everyone is healthy and my truck is currently in the shop being appraised for damage. At first it drove fine, even though my front bumper was in the back trunk and my license plate nowhere to be found, but now we seem to be dealing with some mechanical issues that make it feel more and more like I may have really, really screwed us over.  

If that wasn't enough, don't forget I live in a small town. This happened on a reasonably busy street in that small town so not only did people who know me see me, a lot of people who know me saw me. I could see the fingers as they drove by. The questions of "Hey, isn't that the girl who read our magazines at the post office?" or "Isn't that your soccer coach from last year?" or "Isn't that the treasurer of the Catholic School Council!? What did she do!?"  

Like I said. Bad day, right? I didn't dare go out that night. Or attempt to operate machinery. Or start a grill. I didn't even try to brush my teeth! Who knows what I'd stab out with that kind of plastic!
 

 

 

 

40 minus 4

Did you know that's what they are calling 36 years old now? 36 is how old I will be this Thursday.

Honesly, turning 40 doesn't scare me. Neither does inching toward it ever so quickly. I have four children and I haven't broken one yet! Nothing scares me.

Besides, at 36 years old, I still:

• Have all my teeth and I've never had a cavity.
• I've never broken a bone.
• The boobs? Still firm and, most days, still pointing where they should be.
• I can laugh, cry and be frightened while maintaing decent bladder control.
• I can still go drink for drink with John. He'll even pass out way before I do!
• On occasion, I still get carded at the LCBO and Beer Store.
• I have been places with my fourteen year old daughter and been asked if we are sisters.  

Having said all that, and in the defence of time and age, I have found myself saying the following in recent months:

•   "What are those kids doing out at midnight?What are they doing on the street at 12:00am that they could be doing at 8:00pm?"
• "Those hoodlums!"
• "It's 9:30, I'm turning in. Goodnight."
• "Pass me the Tiger Balm?"
• "It's going to storm today, I can feel it in my knee."
• "God, the music in here is loud! I mean, we can dance, but what if we just want to talk?"
• "Oh here, I have gum and kleenex in my purse."

If anything, I take all of the above statements and consider them like this: I will always be well rested, I will never get mugged on the street at 12:00am and if you have to sneeze, I'm your clean-up girl. All that aside, I promise to never, ever,
use my spit and thumb to clean off any of your faces.

 

Glee - Part Two - In A Less Endearing City

Last year, we set out for New York City to see Glee at Radio City Music Hall. Remember that?

Almost exactly one year to they day, we made our way to Toronto to see Glee again. This time at the Air Canada Centre. To be honest, Toronto is a dank cesspool of rude people and horrible drivers, so you won't get a gushing review of the food or the atmosphere from me this time.

What I can give you is a tale of a six foot tall brunette and her big haired bestie getting caught on You Tube pushing aside an elderly woman to put her hands on the sexy bad boy of the Glee Cast. With new quotes!

Actually, that pretty much sums up my weekend right there, no? Lucky for you, I don't know when to shut up.

We hit the road at the buttcrack of dawn and once again, wet our whistles with kazoos. I promise, this is what Christina told her daughter we were playing, when what we were really doing what downing airplane sized bottles of Bailey's.

Witness:

Cheers!



And Chug!



The ride to Toronto was filled with an awful lot of horribly politically incorrect comments, one so bad that the vehicle went silent and someone uttered "Shit just got real in here, yo!". Know what it was not filled with? Unscheduled pee breaks. My bladder was not happy, but Lianne didn't have a potty like Christina did and we made good time, so it all balanced out in the end.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Christina unapologetically picked up on the 401. She absolutely did. She managed to spur on a preppy soccer dad driving a white Acura, with his kids in the car! Not only did he notice us, he actually came up with poses every time we passed him. Poses I like to call "The Pensive Douchebag" and "Stretching So You Can See My Man Boobs Asshat".



Take that, perv!                               

We arrived at our hotel and know what we didn't do? Eat.  

Know what we did do? Drink. And shop.  

So we were dizzy and broke by the time we got back to the hotel room, which is probably why I lost my bank card in downtown Toronto on a Saturday afternoon, but worry not, I had just replaced the other bank card I lost the day before. I was covered! Let's never speak of this again, and if you tell John, I might cut you.  

Let's fast forward through the booze shakes and hairspray as we got dressed for the show and get to the part where we hijacked a limo. And when I say hijacked, I mean, we walked out of our hotel and jumped into a limo as fourteen Boston Red Sox fans argued over the best way to get into said limo. See ya suckers! But not before we also take the totally endearing Kevin with us.  

This is Kevin.
 



Kevin was just a baby. Kevin also asked us "So do you girls go to Ottawa University?".  

And what did we say? Not "Oh, can I have your number you naughty little piece of man-flesh?"  

No No. We old ladies just sighed and said "Awwwwwww!"  

Blame the booze and lack of food.  

Back to our story. The kind of scary, but very lovely limo driver dropped us off at the ACC so that we could pick up our tickets at Will Call. We knew that there would be some sort of goody bag involved, but imagine our, well, GLEE, when we were handed programs and FANFUCKINGSTASTIC WARBLER TIES!! We were also given our tickets and it turned out, we were being separated into a trio of three and a duo of two, nowehere near each other. We decided to pick tickets out of a hat at random. This is where I am convinced that the grace of God was with me. I not only had an angel on my shoulder, but said angel was humping a leprauchaun while using unicorn wings to floss her teeth. It was that divine intervention that put me in the
seat I was. Keep that in mind as you read on.  

On to the show!  

I reluctantly paid $40 for three beers and decided I was too poor to drink in Toronto, so that's where my boozing ended. Didn't matter, the show was about to start! 

And what a show it was. For two hours we were entertained with a show that didn't quite kick the intimacy of the Radio City Music Hall show, but it did provide more feast for the eyes and ears. The Warblers absolutely killed "Teenage Dream" and "Raise Your Glass" - to the point where I'm sure I got whiplash from jumping up and down.

Highlight of the show though? Fondling Puck (aka Mark Salling).  

He began Fat Bottomed Girls from a makeshift stage in the middle of the floor, a few rows back from our fourteenth row seats. I was seated two seats from the aisle and happened to notice that as he stepped off said stage, he was making his way toward my side of the aisle. I think I actually said to Christina (who was seated next to me) "Where is he going!? Is he on his way here!" 

And he was. 

The math was quick and calculated. The speed with which he travelled when applied directly to the ratio of people between me and him forced me to quickly surmise that I was going to have to perform a heinous smackdown to get my hands on him.  

To the poor lady who got shoved aside, the lady who tolerated my many bathroom breaks and embarssing Woo-Girl episodes, I apologize. I am sorry that I pushed you aside, climbed on your chair and possibly gave you a concussion with my elbow. I would do it again in heartbeat, but I am deeply sorry.  

Then it happened. I reached out and (not-so) gently placed my hand upon his sweaty arm. Like a fool, I just stood there, staring at my hand in wonder when Christina and Lianne yelled out "Look! He's serenading Zizes RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!"  

So I climbed back up on my chair, threw my hands in the air and screamed like a girl who has just been given a time machine back to the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. 

The rest of the night and most of the next day was a bit of a blur, the highlights include almost cutting a bitch who cut in line at Cora's when all I wanted on this earth was a cup of coffee and some pancakes, shopping my ass off at H&M and pretty much losing my shit (in a very bad way) when we ran into some clowns who were there supporting a downtown Toronto marathon. Thank God I wasn't running - cause it would be uncomfortable and embarssing to run with poopy pants, know what I mean?

 

 

 

 

 

You're Not Cool Enough For This Ride

Carpool driving is some funny shit.  

I don't know what I thought carpooling would be like. I suppose the only thought I ever gave to carpooling was the McDonald's commercial (or was it Subway?) where they are offering some sort of special early morning deal and the driver is whispering into the little voicebox so as to not wake his passengers. I never got that part. Why doesn't he want to wake them? Is it so he can avoid buying them all coffee? Can he not afford the $4.00 it's going to cost him? If that's the case I daresay all of his carpoolmates are not sleeping, they're pretending to sleep to pass the time until they can all convene around the water cooler and come up with ways to kick the cheap bastard out of carpool altogether. You know they're all going to end up driving in the soccer mom's filthy, dog smelly minivan, but they don't care. Coffee for all!  

Point being, besides craving a Sausage McMuffin, that commercial did little to foster me any sort of concrete ideas about what it would be like to share such a small space with two other people for two hours a day.   

I have to say, eight months in, carpool is comic gold.  

I suppose the best recipe is to find people with whom you share a sense of humour. I can't imagine how the couple I drive with would fare with a stone-faced, perfectly serious A-Type personality. Thankfully for all involved, they ended up with a potty-mouthed, way too cheerful for 6:30am, A-Type-when-it-suits hooligan. I say thankfully because they are exactly the same as me. Well, I wouldn't call the male third of our little trio "cheerful" so much as "tolerable, with a side of hilarious snark".  

That and they handle the constant dinging and keyboard clicking from my Blackberry with grace and style.  

One of the highlights of our morning includes the running commentary of the folks we encounter on the road. I never realized just how freaking weird people can be, and dude, I worked at a rural post office! It astounds me to no end what people will do when they think no one is looking. So, it is the responsibility of whoever is not driving (and I never drive so I always get to play!) to provide commentary of who we see, where and what they are doing.  

It's not unusal to hear something along the lines of:  

"Check out the green Honda in the centre lane, license plate AWRL 926. Girl has on a sailor hat and is picking her nose with a fork!"  

Or  

"The man in the grey Hyundai is talking on the phone. I'd say, because it's illegal, we should tell the cop in front of him, but it's a Fisher Price phone, so I think it's safe to say he's got more to worry about than being distracted as he drives." 

Or  

"Is that girl in the read minivan wearing a tinfoil hat?"  

Or (and my personal favourite) 

"Chantal, that guy in the truck is checking you out again, switch seats and clothes with Darryl and let's really mess him up!" It's like a Chinese Fire Drill, only no one exits the vehicle and way more people are inappropriately naked on the highway. Mark my words, if things don't work out with John, I won't end up online dating, I'm going to meet my soulmate on the 417. He'll be wearing suspenders and carry a plastic pig with him wherever he goes, but at least he won't be lonely while I'm at work, right?

This long-winded post is all to say that for a small fee every week, my morning and afternoon is filled with a good deal of hilarity, and I'm sure something I can focus on as I set out to write at least every work day. It shouldn't be hard. I haven't even touched on the conversations they have while they think I am napping. Or the fact that little people make Kim so giddy we actually have to avoid a spot where we know one waits for the bus because she can't get through her day otherwise!