Photo of my rack

Well, okay, since you ALL want to see my amazing rack:

It’s beautiful!

Look at the well-designed cutlery section. GAZE AT THE BEAUTY OF PRACTICALITY.

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There are lots of benefits to living in a senior-heavy community: my children are doted on by my neighbours because they are novel on our street, someone is always peeking out their window and willing to report suspicious behaviour and/ or unsafe parking, and lawns and gardens on our street are generally very well maintained. One of the main drawbacks: parking lots. Parking lots in my community are terrifying: there’s always some old man in a giant boat of a vehicle who can barely see or walk backing aggressively out of his handicapped parking stall at the Co-Op, and if you’re not constantly on high alert your chances of getting run over are close to one. I am loath to patronize certain shops that share a parking lot with the nearest Safeway/ London Drugs/ chiropractor, because driving through that lot feels like I am taking my life into my hands. The combination of elderly drivers and impatient university students feels deadly. But when the parking lots are snow-covered, well, that’s when shit gets real.

Today I went to the nearest lab services to get some routine blood work done. As I drove around looking for a spot, I realized something strange. Instead of rows of vehicles two deep, there were vehicles everywhere. Some rows were one car deep, some were two, and all of them slanted off in strange directions. There was really no rhyme or reason to it. Some cars were parked in the middle of what should have been two front-to-back parking spots. It was the least efficient parking I have seen in my life.

This photo does not do it justice. Can you see how tight it is for the car to drive through, and then how the line sort of shifts over to prevent people from parking? It was weirdly chaotic. Now add a bunch of elderly drivers in the mix and you get terror in the parking lot.

The parking lot was small potatoes compared with the actual lab. It was full of irate old people and three very ill-looking young women. I actually considered taking one of the medical masks offered at the desk for people with cough and fever. There is a dad at school pick-up who has lately been showing up wearing one such mask, and I’m curious to know if he’s ill or just trying not to get ill.

Anyway, the way the lab works is that it takes appointments, which can be made online or over the phone, and if there is time they will take walk-ins. I am fairly risk-averse, and so I always make appointments, and cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would try to walk into a lab with such a policy. And yet! One should never underestimate the anger of the old man who is forced to wait for his blood work. One such fellow was shouting at the receptionist because he phoned at 10:30 and they said they had space for him at 11:00. It was 1:30, and the receptionist was trying to explain that they did have a cancellation 2 1/2 hours ago, but now there was a wait. Another old man kept loudly muttering that his daughter had made an appointment for him at 1:20, and now it was 1:30, and why the hell did anyone even make an appointment if they had such a casual disregard for his valuable time. At that point, he did get called in, and I could hear him complaining about the ten-minute wait all the way down the hall.

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Did you watch the Super Bowl on the weekend? I sure did, and I deserve the Good Wife Award because I wore this:

And then the Patriots won. Coincidence? More importantly, there has been a ruling from the CRTC that bans Canadian broadcasters from simulcasting during the big Super Bowl commercials starting in 2017. Those of you in the US are probably puzzled right now – you mean you can’t see the multi-million dollar commercials that are an integral part of the Super Bowl experience? That’s right. Instead we see commercials for the local plumber who is famous for his tiny dog, Dino the Toilet Dog, or “live on location at a furniture warehouse” commercials, or commercials for syndicated television programs running on that channel. And while that might not seem like an issue in the grand scheme of the world, it is an annoyance nonetheless. My Super Bowl prediction for 2017: at least 50% less yelling at the television by my husband and others like him. There will still be yelling, but it will be game-related.