Bonjour, paresse

Day five...of the 40-day challenge.

Posters in my lobby have been announcing today's fire drill for a couple of days now, but that doesn't make me any happier about it. It asks for our "participation" (and I'm guessing they don't mean flashing my middle finger while yelling my favourite obscenities off the balcony) but this is the equivalent of 3am for me. I will be asleep, in the best part of my sleep. And they plan on jarring me awake, forcing me into a pair of pants, and having me stumble down flights and flights of stairs with a squirming dog in my arms and knots in my hair and mascara smudges down my cheeks. Not cool. And I'm guessing if they tried this at actual 3am, there'd be some dissent. But there's just no respect for the night worker. God damn.

But then they didn't do it and I got all riled up for nothing.
I even wrote that whole above paragraph for nothing.
:)
Yes, I am so ridiculous, thank you for noticing.

So after a good little sleep, I woke up to my lovely Rory's visit. She's my friend because she's awesome and pretends to like my stories and doesn't mind taking silly pictures with me. She's my best friend because she doesn't mind my addiction to crystal light and she goes along with my whims as if they make sense, even though we both know they make nothing of the sort.

She amusedly watched me do my groceries, and wisely didn't comment on my lazy selection of fruit from the pre-cut section. She retrieved her shoes from wherever Herbie attempted to hide them. And there was sushi, and girl-on-girl stories, and eventually, even a walk by the wacky apartment I wrote about yesterday.

Our favourite pasttime is to sit lazily\indulgently on my balcony, tops off, and drink daiquiris. Or margaritas. Sometimes martinis. This may have been our first alcohol-less visit, but it was okay. Rory is "supportive", which probably involves at least a little behind-the-back laughter, but what else are friends for? Instead of having a drink together, we drove to a gas station where I had my first gas pumping lesson, which is just as important as a driving lesson, actually, only nobody ever gives them. A zillion years ago, I pulled into a gas station with good intentions. I left 10 minutes later, probably red-faced, definitely humiliated, and with a still-empty tank. It didn't go well. I've never been back.

So today was good for a lot of reasons, not least of which is the fact that I've once again been cheat-less. I'm sticking to it, with a little help from my friends.