Well, goodish, anyway.
1. Katie got a place of her own this weekend. It's a very cute little apartment; nearly half the windows face something other than a brick wall, and the orange tiles blend nicely with the gold appliances. She and I mostly busied ourselves hanging curtains and reorganizing her spice rack while Jason did the more "labour-intensive" (but less intellectual, so it all evens out) work, such as actually strapping a couch to his back and lugging it up 3 flights of stairs. He's awesome like that. Now, Katie has a get-out-of-moving-free card for giving birth, and I'm just plain lazy, so this division of labour struck us as incredibly fair. Plus, Jason tends to be over-protective of my back, which, 4 surgeries later, is no longer actually in need of any protection. But after that many encounters with a scalpel, you can imagine the mess of mutilation we call "scar tissue" is - something that Jason gets a nice, graphic reminder of every day in the shower, while I, not having eyes in the back of my head (yet), am able to mostly forget. So actually, nothing bad happened during the move. The baby was her usual non-fussy self, and I was my un-usual non-droppy self, so we were all feeling pretty proud of ourselves, but very tired, by the time Jason and I returned home and I somehow managed to projectile-fall down an entire case of stairs (13 of them). I don't remember slipping, I didn't have that half-second of impending-doom realization. No, I just suddenly said to myself "Self, you appear to be flying", quickly edited to "Shit, self, you appear to be falling!" And without once grazing any 13 of those stairs, I nose-dived directly onto the concrete floor below, where I sprawled impressively, but quietly. Not to worry, though. I'm all bandaged up, and my knee is back in its socket where it belongs.
2. Jason comes home the other night with a ticket. From a cop. So right away I think that obviously some new law has been passed, deeming powder-blue vehicles no longer worthy for the road (secretly, I tend to agree, but missed seeing this in the papers). I assume that this is why Jason has been ticketed because Jason is the most conscientious, safe, law-abiding driver on the road, bar none. When the cop behind him turned on his lights, Jason politely maneuvered to the side to let the police car pass, so imagine his shock when the cruiser pulled up behind him. Apparently, since the Toronto Police Services have nothing better to do, and since Jason was exhibiting such dodgy behaviour as re-filling his wife's prescription, a certain officer decided to run a check on the tags on Jason's plate, which admittedly, were good through the month of October, but. BUT, having run this check, he discovered that Jason's birthday was last week, and even though the tags are good for the whole month, he really should have renewed his license 5 days ago (on the national holiday during which the DMV is most decidedly closed to the public), and according to the officer who obviously had some quotas to fill, it's "technically" a ticketable offence, to the tune of $110. When Jason handed me the ticket, I cried. And as he patted my back and reminded me that I hadn't cried when I cracked my head open on the cement, I couldn't help but feel how unfair the world can be. That there are never any police around when people speed through our residential neighbourhood, how they're not around when I'm kept awake because a rash of burglaries means every second house and car alarm is blaring down the road, how the cops aren't finding the missing little girl, or the rapist, or the woman who killed the pedestrian in a hit-and-run the other day, but they're stopping guys like Jason who spend their days helping new mothers move and broken wives get better.
3. My friend Andy apparently lurks here more than he admits to, because when many of you urged me to give salsa dancing a second chance, he called me up and insisted I accept his invitation to some bar that I'm sure has a name, but I've forgotten it, but was described to me as "Toronto's premiere gay latin dance club", so thanks a lot, guys. In an effort to not duplicate the panty fiasco, I bought a new dress, Verrrrrry sexy, said Andy, who rolls his Rrrr's unnecessarily. And I thought what better way to enjoy my new dress than with some luxuriously soft legs. As you may remember, I have a hate\hate relationship with my razor. Even so, I have resisted the lure of waxing because, well, it's waxing. First, it has a terrible reputation*. True, it's become over-used slap-stick in far too many chick-flicks, or worse, "man attempting to understand women" movies, but still, this reputation is apparently not undeserved. But second, it involves a stranger applying oddly erotic unguents to the most intimate parts of my body, only to then rip out tiny hairs by their roots, thus witnessing my inherent weakness (and probably, some rather foul language). But I went anyway. And clearly, I shouldn't have. After I stoically withstood two flaming, merciless abuses by wax, the woman frowned down at me and said "No good" and left the room. I thought this message to be a bit cryptic, and so I laid there perhaps a bit longer than I should have, waiting, and trying to decipher, until I deciphered that at the very least, she wasn't coming back, and I put my pants back on. In doing so, I caught a glimpse of my poor right leg, which looked as raw and burnt as it felt, if not more. It was covered in tiny, angry red bumps, which gave the effect of a persistent and outrageously contagious rash. It was the receptionist who finally filled me in and sent me home. Apparently I was "the worst case ever", my skin was "violently sensitive" and the entire salon thought me an incredible fool for bringing my "unspeakable" legs to them in the first place. At home the rash had developed into welts and blisters, and worse still, I was unable to take a razor to the rest of my leg because my skin was so broken that it oozed and bled just from having the water hit it. Andy, however, thought that hairy legs were not a good enough excuse no matter how revealing the hemline of my dress was, so luckily I later threw myself down a staircase, dislocating my knee, which makes for a much better opt-out.
4. Jason gets one of those dreaded calls at work the other day - the manager on duty had better get himself to the ladies' fitting room, and quick. These calls are not uncommon, and so he braces himself for the usual outcome: some brassy-haired lady is going to scream her onion-stinking breath at him because her fat ass doesn't fit into their jeans, or some other really good reason for yelling at the poor guy who doesn't even make the jeans, just takes the blame for them. But there is no pear-shaped woman, or there is, but she's not riled up yet, instead, there is a mystery package in the corner of one of the change rooms, and it's exactly this reason why Jason makes as much money as he does. His job, by his own admission is 95% looking handsome and delegating, but there's that tricky 5% that you wouldn't envy for all the paycheques in the world. Today, a woman has taken a dump in his change room. It was evidently a rather orchestrated affair. As she tried on her clothing, she must have had the urge, and so, seeing how the public washroom is within plain sight of the change room, she instead decided to reach into her bag, and remove an ordinary piece of white paper, which she laid on the floor, squatted over, and shat onto. She then wiped herself with the tissues she evidently carries around for just such an occasion, and then she placed a second sheet of paper on top of her nice little pile. And then she took her clothes, and went to wait in line to pay. Now, if for whatever reason you just took a dump in a fitting room, you might be embarrassed, and say, leave the store. But not this woman. No, she left her pile, and stood calmly in line, apparently oblivious to the many employees now crowded around two very unordinary pieces of paper. There is really no hasmat training that prepares you for poop-origami, so Jason had to improvise (or rather, he gave some gloves and implicit instructions to someone else). But he took care of it nonetheless. And then he came home and had more beers than usual before dinner, because after a day like that, he deserves it, goddammit.
*Not that shaving does not. I mean, really, if you aren't familiar with my infamous shaving accident, read about it here. But I was prejudiced against razors even before then....in fact, ever since a friend of the family once described to me how she nicked her nipple while shaving her armpit. Ouch.
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