Category Archives: My failing sanity

Do not tiptoe through my tulips

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It’s so strange to think that a month ago, the ice and snow had yet to melt from the backyard; the whole space is now growing, greening up, and blooming. Every single day I am out in the garden, weeding and watering and just staring at my plants, marvelling at the Miracle of Nature, and every single day there is something new growing, greening up, or blooming. Every single day I find myself humming that song from Beauty and the Beast, there’s something there that wasn’t there before, which is actually way more irritating from an earworm perspective than having Ride Like The Wind stuck in my head for five days straight.

Everything is growing well with the notable exception of my tulips. All through the neighbourhood, tulips in all colours and sizes are riotously blooming, teasing me with their beauty. My own tulips – the few that were left after the squirrels ate most of them – are the saddest specimens on the planet, or at least in the neighbourhood. Not one of them has a bloom or even a bud; the foliage is all flattened down to the ground, limp and pathetic. My husband thought maybe it was the location of the tulips, but no. That doesn’t explain it since they are all around the yard in different sun exposures. Is something destroying them specifically? All the other plants are healthy and thriving. Maybe I’m just the worst tulip gardener in the city; maybe they are faulty tulips, maybe something is specifically targeting and squishing them. All I know is that I am doomed to never have tulip blooms and I should just cut my losses and expectations.

See? That’s what all my tulips look like, as if a small anvil dropped from the sky and flattened them. I just don’t understand my Tulip Inadequacy.

I suppose that’s enough on that topic; after all, I’m sure you didn’t come here to read about my Tulip Failures. Or did you? I shouldn’t presume anything. All I know is that Junebug (HI JUNEBUG) asked me about my “Mom Book” – the old-school agenda that I write everything in: appointments, chores, classes, meal plans, and everything else pertaining to my life. Well, Junebug, your wish is my command! Here is the book, which I purchase every year at Chapters.

Bonus shot of my pedicure. It’s a 16 month calendar – although I usually do the switch-over in November – and there is plenty of room in the back for notes, important numbers, business cards, and the like. I usually have all the pertinent school notices stuck in there, along with things like the dog’s license and various receipts for anything done on the house.

It also has each month set out, and I use this to record the classes that I teach, in order to properly invoice.

When I choose my new daytimer every year, I spend time thinking about the cover, and the design, and if it’s pretty, but frankly, it stays open on my countertop and I never actually see the cover so this thought process could be for naught.

Here is what my week looks like usually the week before: a few classes, what I’m going to make for dinner each night, maybe an appointment, some notes regarding school trips, and – in the case of this past weekend – an important televised event in the way of the ROYAL WEDDING.

Side note: did you watch it? I set my alarm for four and shot awake at 3:50, because my little-known superpower is waking up before my alarm goes off.

Anyway, the week often looks pretty bare until it starts. Every week I think “oh, it’s going to be a quiet week” and every week my days are full, full, full.

What I like about this particular layout is that there are squares for different family members, although I never actually use it that way.

Note the grocery list above. I am just going to tell you my other little-known superpower: very little food-wise goes to waste in this house, and it is entirely due to meal planning and compulsive grocery lists. That notepad keeps running lists for Superstore, Costco, Co-Op, and Walmart, and I deviate very little from those lists. I know many people rely on their phones for their schedules and shopping lists but I don’t know, I guess I need the analog version. I need to be able to WRITE IT DOWN.

That concludes my organizational tips for the day: WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN AND DO NOT DEVIATE. Come hell or high water, when I write down we are having a stir-fry for dinner, WE ARE HAVING A STIR-FRY FOR DINNER. I write down little chores that I need to do, even if I do them regularly, because it is eminently satisfying to look at everything written down for the day and know that I accomplished those things.

I’m too structured, I’m completely closed off.

But in a good way!

Well, I have “make hummus” written down for this afternoon and that hummus is not going to make itself, people. Have a wonderful weekend! xo

Lube, Oil, and Filter

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Something happened on vacation that was both eye-opening and a little unsettling: I was universally referred to as “senora.” Now, I don’t truly believe that an almost-43-year-old-woman SHOULD be referred to as “senorita” but it would be nice, is all I’m saying.

As a side note, the hostess for breakfast said brightly to me, “Hola, Senora Nicole!” and I was very taken aback since a) I did not tell her my name, b) the reservation for the resort was under my husband’s name and c) there were hundreds of people staying there, how did she know I was me? In fact, I asked her how she knew my name, and she said “It is your beautiful smile, Senora.” Which is lovely but still didn’t explain anything. The only thing I could think of was that she was at the karaoke party the night before and, well, I had a few numbers. If that is true, then a) my performances were memorable, and b) holy crap she must have worked a very long day as karaoke started at nine pm, and breakfast started at seven am.

Anyway, karaoke as an entertainment medium deserves its own post.

As I get older, I’m struck by how much more maintenance our bodies need; things that would have horrified me twenty years ago are now just part of my life and routine. I’m not even talking about things like facial depilation or constant root touch-ups, I’m talking about how, even after having had varicose veins stripped I have all new ones developing and have to wear medical-grade stockings on the plane so as to not die from a rogue blood clot, or, less dramatically, to not have sore and swollen legs after every flight.

People, you do not know glamour until you try to don or remove medical grade support hose in a public washroom. On the way to Mexico I wisely wore my sexy beige thigh-high stockings (pictured above) so when we landed in the 34 degree heat, I could remove them fairly easily while waiting for our luggage, “easily” being a relative term. On the way home, I had my full-length, pantyhose-style stockings to wear, but I did not want to die of heatstroke on the way to the airport. How hard could it be, I reasoned, to put them on in the airport washroom? The answer is: very hard. I’m sure the other passengers were wondering what exactly was happening in that stall on the left as I accidentally kicked the door, tipped over into wall, and inadvertently pushed my skirt – which I had removed to stand on to protect my feet from bathroom germs – out of the stall and into the middle of the bathroom. I emerged semi-victorious, with my pantyhose ending just a few inches from my bra line, wearing yoga pants to retrieve my skirt, noting that the other women were looking away rather quickly.

In the two weeks before our trip, I had three appointments set up, and all of them reminded me that while I feel very much like I am of the “Perennials,” I am indeed middle-aged. Although, I’m hoping to live a lot longer than 86, so maybe not quite middle-aged. In any case, these appointments were important and necessary, and please consider this your reminder to get them booked. For your reading pleasure, I have ranked them in order of agony, with 1 being the least and 3 being the greatest.

Mammogram

I know many women find mammograms painful and scary, and I would say that having the worst case scenario running through your head is the worst part. The first time I had one done, I was getting a lump investigated and not only did I have the mammogram but I also had an ultrasound on the lump, and I bit my lip the entire time to keep from crying. Now I get them done annually, and I find them to be not a big deal at all. There’s always the emotional “what if” factor, but in terms of physical comfort, I don’t have a problem with it at all. Perhaps it is my sad, deflated breasts, I don’t know. I do know that my doctor informed me that my breasts are dense. Dense! Let’s not belittle them. They’re just a little slow but otherwise fine. 

I have had great luck with mammogram technicians, who all seem young and perky and like they are choreographing the weirdest dance sequence ever. Okay now let’s lift! Lift here, yes, now turn away, your head too, okay, okay, now stay stay stay, oops, let’s lift again, and turn. Perfect! Stay! Yes! I have also – and here’s a hot tip for you – realized that if you have long hair, wear it up when you are getting a mammogram. Otherwise it can get in the way and things get even weirder in terms of choreography.

Another benefit is that you get to wear these saucy medical gowns!

Speaking as someone who has on more than one occasion – including very recently – put a medical gown on the wrong way, I appreciated the photos. But I did think it was a little odd; would people really not tie their gowns closed if they knew it was a single-sex change room? Is it only because it’s co-ed that we are supposed to not walk around with our breasts/ junk exposed? I mean, isn’t not flashing someone just a condition of living in a society? Well. If there is a sign – which was not there during my last appointment – there must be a reason.

However, I had some serious wardrobe malfunctions anyway. The gowns are in two sizes, depending on the colour, and the pink one they gave me is the larger size, which meant that even when I tied it as tightly as I could, the walk to the exam room led to a flapping open of the too-big gown, and some inadvertent exposure of the girls. At least it was just me and the technician, and so I was not called out for flouting the “close your gown” rules in front of elderly men or the like.

Pelvic Exam

I have had a history of doctors who couldn’t find my cervix and believe me when I say that is a very uncomfortable position to be in. I’m sure it’s there! I would joke, wincing with pain. After a very painful pelvic exam and pap that had to be REPEATED because the lab didn’t have enough “material to work with,” as it were, my doctor wrote a few notes down on my file and told me what to remind him of for the future.

I followed those directions and this past test was not terribly unpleasant, although I did feel awkward, while on the examining table, blurting out Don’t forget I need the LARGE speculum! The green one! Green for go!

The large speculum. My feminine mystique takes a bit of a beating.

Dental Scaling

By far my least favourite, I have to steel myself just to make the appointment for dental cleanings and checkups. For one thing, it takes so LONG. I suppose I could cut down on coffee consumption, but life needs to be worth living, and my god, think of the children. I have excellent dental hygiene – I brush several times a day and floss daily, I use a water pik, I buy extra whitening toothpaste – and yet, the sixty minutes of scaling feels like it says otherwise. In fact, the hygienist told me that my favourite floss, the one that I use daily and love, is “fairly ineffective but better than nothing.” For the record, it is that easy-glide dental tape, because I cannot stand the feeling of strands of floss between my teeth. To me it is akin to chewing tin foil. Shudder shudder forever.

You’ll pry my easy-glide dental tape out of my cold dead hands, I tell you. Remember that study that said that flossing was ineffective anyway? I thought about it but obviously did not refer to it to my lovely and skilled hygienist because a) I didn’t want her to think I was lying about flossing daily as it is important to me, apparently, to be well-regarded by the health care professionals in my life, b) I don’t want to walk around with food in my teeth so I won’t stop flossing, studies be damned, and c) I don’t want to seem like THAT person who quotes random and possibly inaccurate things they read on the internet. So, I took the regular non-easy-glide floss samples without comment, not wanting to flout the hygienist’s advice. At the very least, they can be donated to a shelter, and hopefully the recipient will not also view it as akin to a mouthful of foil.

This winter has frozen my brain

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Do You Want To Build A Snowman

No, not really. It’s been the snowiest – or one of the snowiest? I don’t really know – winters on record, and frankly, I am at the point where I cannot even conceptualize a time where I won’t be wearing numerous layers and a coat that requires its own postal code. I cannot remember what the yard looked like without giant drifts of snow, and I am starting to forget what it was like to drive down the street. I refuse to drive down the our street due to the enormous snow banks and ruts – if a car comes in the other direction, one of the cars must somehow get somehow onto a snow bank in order for the other to pass. It feels like a recipe for disaster, and as we all know, automobile-related disasters can only end in dramatic tears and frantic phone calls to my husband who, inevitably, will be at work and unable to help. I shall not drive down my street until such time as I do not need a four wheel drive and/ or nerves of steel. I was looking at my closet yesterday and noticed all the footwear that is lying dormant. I know there was a time when I wore light shoes and even light boots, but I cannot really remember it. I’ve lost all perspective – haven’t I just always worn heavy boots every single day? The local meteorologists insist that the melt is coming, but frankly, I can’t imagine it. I feel like I’m in a much less-gory and not-at-all-incestuous Game of Thrones winter, which is destined to last until we all die from lack of food/ murder/ being killed by White Walkers.

I’d Rage Against The Machine But I’m Too Tired

I realized with a start that time change is THIS WEEKEND. Goddamn Daylight Savings and all the lies associated with it. The Alberta government – not for the first time, and certainly not for the last – was the cause of grave disappointment when they announced that they would not do away with the time change, because “everyone else is doing it.” I feel like my own mother, if everyone was jumping off a bridge, would you do it too? Are we all lemmings here? If EVERYONE thinks that time change is an antiquated concept, and that it really does nothing for energy savings, and that it is inconvenient and the cause of many car accidents and issues due to pure exhaustion, then why doesn’t EVERYONE band together and just agree to do away with it? Every single year I think this and I am sure that given that this ridiculousness has lasted this long, I will be in the Home saying the same exact thing.

Awkward Is As Awkward Does

This week I had my annual physical, and my doctor’s office was very accommodating when I mentioned I was a little tight on time. I got there a few minutes early and the nurse promptly weighed and measured me, and took my heart rate and blood pressure. I was quickly escorted to the room where I was asked to change into the robe. I glanced at the enormous robe, momentarily forgetting which way to put it on. Does it tie in the back or the front? At that exact moment, while I was standing in the freezing room, completely nude, the doctor knocked and started to open the door – thinking, probably, that he was helping me out by not making me sit idly in the freezing room, but instead starting the checkup right away. I appreciated his promptness but, as I said, I was standing there naked, so I asked for just a moment, please. Does it tie in the front or the back? I remembered from my mammogram a few years back – when I made the wrong choice – that that gown tied in the front. Were we doing a breast exam today? Maybe? Front or back, front or back, just make a decision. I quickly pulled it on and tied it in the front just as the doctor knocked again and walked in. It was immediately apparent that I had, gravely, made the wrong decision. The doctor looked at me quizzically as I awkwardly said I couldn’t remember which way to put the gown on. “Well,” he said tactfully, “Usually it’s the other way.” USUALLY. Like there are other women out there desperately holding the gown together at the front, showcasing their complete lack of medical gown intuition. There were a few awkward moments when the doctor was testing my reflexes and listening with his stethoscope. Wardrobe malfunction! I am not generally a shy person and the doctor has seen it all before, but still, there is something unsettling about unexpectedly flashing the doctor while just sitting on the examining table as he asks questions about general energy levels and if I’m still getting my periods.

That’s One Way To Get More Business

With all the snow, and the usual thawing and refreezing cycle, sidewalks and parking lots have been absolutely treacherous. A few months ago I came across an elderly woman who had just fallen and, subsequently, broken her arm while walking on the sidewalk. She was just sitting there on the sidewalk, waiting for the ambulance to arrive. If you can make it down the sidewalks without such calamity, you need the agility of a mountain goat to climb over the huge snowbanks surrounding them. Walking the dog is becoming an adventure, is what I’m saying. The other day I saw a man slip and nearly bail right in front of a chiropractic/ physio clinic. Sheer ice…right in front of the clinic.

All The Ladies In The House Say HEY

Happy International Women’s Day! I may not still have my posters of the Feminist Manifesto and the fish on a bicycle, but the principles are still there (automobile-related incidents notwithstanding.) Keep on keeping on, you beautiful women. Let’s continue to lift each other up and support one another. xoxo

How To Be A Better Person

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Did you realize that TODAY is March 1? How did that happen? Well, time keeps on ticking and meanwhile it keeps snowing…but I’m not going to go there today.

What I was thinking about is that today – MARCH 1 OMG – marks two months from traditional New Year’s Resolution beginnings. Did you make any resolutions this year, and, if so, how are they going? My own resolutions ran the gamut from the somewhat vague – focusing more on single tasks, practicing more patience and mindfulness, being grateful every single day for the amazing gift of LIFE – and the concrete – squeeze in more movement every day, read more, play the piano once a week – and I’m happy to report that I am doing all those things. Well, the piano doesn’t always get played weekly but I did learn how to play the theme song from Cheers, which has been a goal for a long time and, frankly, is not very difficult. I could have done that years ago!

My resolutions, such as they are, are a work in progress. This isn’t like the time I resolved to learn how to bake bread or use my decorator tips or how to play Where Everybody Knows Your Name – it’s not a One and Done thing. I think that one of the great benefits – and part of the appeal – of New Years Resolutions is that they make us BETTER. Whether our resolutions have us paying better attention to our physical health and wellness, or to attaining or honing a skill, or to becoming better equipped emotionally to make the world a happier place, there is generally a common theme: we want to be better people. We want to be better, we want to do better.

This is the premise of my friend Kate Hanley’s latest book: How To Be A Better Person. You may remember that Kate is the author of Stress Less, which I reviewed last April with an anecdote about becoming curious instead of furious when a delivery man became incredibly angry with me. How To Be A Better Person is similar in format to Stress Less, and reads like a combination self-help book and checklist for life. There are over 400 simple ways to make a difference in yourself and the world, each with a little box beside it so you could, presumably, check one off each time you achieve them. I did not do that, but I did dog-ear each page when I thought hey, that’s what I can write about. Don’t judge me! It’s my book, I’ll dog-ear if I want to. But there were so many good little nuggets in there that my book is now one big dog-ear. I could write a whole blog series on this book! I’ll try to be succinct.

The book is broken up into eight sections: See the Positive, Connect With Your Feelings, Be Healthy, Show Love, Give Back, Stay Committed, Work Well, and Let Go of Your Stuff. I will admit that I liked the Be Healthy section the best, because I was already doing literally everything in that chapter: eating lots of fruits and vegetables, drinking lots of water, doing yoga, moving more, getting outside no matter what the weather (thank you Barkley for the motivation on that one). But I think the other chapters, that felt more difficult when it came to self-awareness, are more helpful.

For example:

If there ever was an Important Parenting Reminder, it would be this. We are all walking our own paths, and no one can do it for us. This is HARD though, when it comes to parenting, but so very important. This reminds me, a bit, of that famous “Your children are not your children” poem from Kahlil Gibran, which you can read in its entirety here. “And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.” How often do we think of our children as extensions of ourselves? Their failures become our failures, their successes are our successes. Sometimes we may even find ourselves living vicariously through them, through our own dreams and visions, and those dreams and visions may not have any import to them. Of course we must show we care and give them tools to make good choices, but those choices are theirs and theirs alone. This is so difficult, particularly when our children are different from us. Actually, it’s difficult when our children are similar to us too, as we can really take to heart their experiences and way of thinking. Their lives are their lives, and they must live them. I mean, think back when you were a teenager – you had choices to make and consequences to live with, and those decisions were yours and yours alone. We must let our kids do the same – even if it kills us!

Which brings me to this:

Sometimes my kids will be telling me something about their day, and I will become panicked about a small detail, whereas they are calm and cool. Clearly, this is my own issue and I’ve made it about me, and not them. Triggers – we have to learn what sets them off and how to deal with them. Just like I know that I cannot eat even one potato chip or else I will be scarfing down the entire Costco sized bag in minutes, a trigger can lead to regrettable outcomes.

But, it can also lead to good outcomes if managed properly. I was at Costco on Monday and as usual, the parking lot was a disaster; not only are there giant snow piles taking up parking spaces, but the usual “corral, what corral?” mentality was rampant. My friend Janet (HI JANET) always says that weekdays at 2:00 are the Magical Costco Times in terms of lineups and general busyness, but unfortunately 2:00 means that there are four hours for people to leave their carts willy-nilly all over the place, and on Monday there were many carts scattered throughout the lot, taking up parking spaces and generally destroying my sense of Parking Lot Feng Shui. Do I talk about shopping carts too much? Probably. But clearly this is a trigger for me; I can stand in long lineups with patience, I can let people go ahead of me, I will take a spot farther from the door to free up others for people less mobile, I will smile and chat happily with the staff.

But when it comes to seeing people walk their carts over to where ten other carts are scattered in the parking spaces and leave them, when the CORRAL IS RIGHT THERE, OMG, IT’S TEN STEPS AWAY, well.

I weep for humanity.

But as Kate says in the book, use it as a reminder to do something nice for yourself. For the amount of time I spend grocery shopping, I will be able to do many nice things for myself when I see disasters like this. Maybe I should book a pedicure. As it was, I put my bins in a cart – when you can’t do a lot, do a little, says Kate – and I practiced my ujjayi breathing as I went into the store. I bought two packs of my favourite cherry tomatoes, I smiled at a cute baby and his mama, I practiced gratitude for the ability to buy healthy and delicious food for my family.

And then I glared at a perfectly-able person shoving his cart in the direction of a bunch of other errant carts, causing a pool-table ripple effect of carts, some coming close to hitting parked cars. I glared and glared, and then, like a crazy person, gave a giant smile to another person who was actually returning his cart to the corral. GOD BLESS YOU, SIR. I hope he felt my positive vibes and I hope he had the best Costco Karma ever.

Three Dozen Reds

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I often get pitches in my inbox to feature Tips/ Products That Would Interest My Readers, and I could have the Pleasure of Writing About Them Free Of Charge, and, of course, these are not things that I do. However, on occasion something pops in my mailbox that I find myself enjoying so much that I HAVE to share.

In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, I received a few pitches to write about romantic things like dealing with late-winter plumbing issues or the differences between water softeners and water filters, and are these people actually spying on me? Am I on camera right now?

But the email that really stood out was the one with the subject title “Eating Pizza In Bed Is Top Relationship Deal-Breaker!” I stared at that subject title for some time; I didn’t want to click on the email because I desperately wanted that to be true. The TOP relationship deal-breaker. Not incompatibility, not infidelity, not differences in managing personal finances. EATING PIZZA IN BED.

Sadly, I did click on the link and further, this was a relationship deal-breaker in terms of pizza eating, not the intricacies of human partnerships, and although it’s been some time since I was in the dating world, I can’t remember having any issues with how people eat pizza and how pizza consumption would affect my feelings towards them. Unless, I guess, that person shoved an entire piece in their mouth and proceeded to have a conversation while chewing, but that applies to any kind of food, not just pizza.

The other deal-breakers were listed as picking the cheese off the pizza, not eating the crust, asking for anchovies and/ or pineapple on the pizza, and eating pizza with a knife and fork. I plead guilty to the last one, because I am one step away from becoming Mr. Pitt, but we order pizza about once every two years, so it’s a pretty moot point. We have homemade make-your-own-pita-pizzas weekly, though, and I always use utensils; my husband still likes me so I think I’m okay.

But really, who eats pizza in bed? Who eats anything in bed? This might be my own personal thing but I like my bed free of food particles. Those duvet covers are a pain to wash and I don’t want to be dabbing remnants of pizza or anything else off of my pillows. I swear, even if I was a married lady on Downton Abbey, I would prefer to come down for breakfast rather than be served a tray, although if that was the case, someone else would be dealing with toast crumbs or Kashi cereal in the blankets. Still, it’s the principle of the thing.

I would kick ANYONE out of bed for eating crackers, make no mistake.

Years ago I read one of those click-bait articles that was titled something along the lines of “The One Thing Successful People Do Every Day” and that one thing was making their bed. I am a huge proponent of this and my kids have been making their own beds for many years, which apparently bodes well for their future successes. I literally don’t understand why people don’t make their beds – no judgments here, I just don’t understand. It takes less than two minutes, it looks neat and tidy, and at the end of the day, I want to get into a nice neat bed, not a jumble of sheets and blankets.

To me, THAT would be a deal-breaker, since I don’t think a non-bed-maker and a bed-maker could really live together in harmony. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe they could make it work, not unlike a gardener-and-flower relationship. I mean, my husband deals with the fact that I cannot handle the TV turned up past a certain quiet volume, and I deal with him folding the tea towels in halves instead of in thirds, so who knows? We all have our relationship crosses to bear, I guess.

Well, this post certainly went a different direction than I had intended. I had intended to write about Valentine’s Day, and how some people place a lot of importance on it and others scorn it, and what happens when the twain meet? My friend and I were talking yesterday of Valentine’s Days Past; she worked in a grocery store and remembers hordes of men rushing in at 5:30 pm on The Day to buy crappy grocery flowers. I remembered one year visiting my parents in Palm Desert and my mom and I went shopping. I wanted to buy some bras at Victoria’s Secret – this was before the chain came to Canada – and the store was flooded with men, with crazed, desperate looks in their eyes. I didn’t make the connection until I realized it was February 14, and noticed the salesgirls had their hands full choosing probably inappropriate items and ringing up gift cards.

For me, Valentine’s Day is a nice excuse to make heart shaped baked goods – this year, a raspberry cake and sugar cookies – and to relentlessly tell my husband I choo-choo-choose him.

This year, though, he ordered me three cases of red wine, which is probably the greatest gift ever given in the history of mankind. Unless, I guess, it was four cases, but that seems excessive. I sent him texts with the bee emoticon so I am just going to say that I got the better end of the deal.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day, my friends. May your wine be rich and plentiful, and your pizza be delicious and eaten with a knife and fork at a table, just like god intended.

Bonus Barkley-on-a-snowy-day picture, just because I love you. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day (a day late!).

Theory of Behavioural Economics and How It Applies To Shopping Carts

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We are having a Winter Storm and Snow Event in Calgary today; there is so much snow and the roads are treacherous, so my class today was cancelled. I am enjoying the novelty of having a forced day at home; my husband even took the kids to school as the van was stuck in the garage. It’s kind of nice to have to slow down and just putter around, but it will be even nicer to get back to regular programming, as it were.

Yesterday I went to Superstore for groceries – Wednesdays are my Designated Superstore Days – and it appeared that the entire quadrant of the city was there, stocking up before the Big Storm. It was a tiny taste of what must happen when there is a big East Coast storm or a hurricane; I couldn’t believe the craziness at 11:00 in the morning on a Wednesday.

As I laboriously shoved my heavy cart through the snowy parking lot, putting all my weight into it with my torso nearly parallel to the ground, I recalled a conversation I had with Jake during the Christmas break. He had accompanied me to Superstore, a rare occurrence, and he wondered, in passing and in a very casual, making-conversation kind of way, why we had to put a loonie in to get a cart.

I’m sure that Jake didn’t realize that his casual musing would lead to a Can Opened Worms Everywhere situation, but that was the result. I told him that if people are forced to make a returnable deposit on something, then they will behave in a completely different manner than if there is no natural consequence to their actions, see also: bottle depots. Without an economic incentive, people rarely behave in a way that benefits society; I was this close to describing the Invisible Hand And How It Can Be Applied To Shopping Carts, but one only needs to spend thirty seconds in a Wal-Mart parking lot to examine this phenomenon.

Or Costco. Costco! The Costco parking lot is constantly the Land Of The Lost Carts, but a few weeks ago I was startled to see this:

What is the appropriate punishment for this crime? I mean, the least that could have been done was to do what every other lazy Costco shopper does when eschewing common courtesy and morality and shove it to the side, rather than blocking an entire coveted parking spot. I took the cart myself and at the end of my shopping, lovingly returned it to its corral, thinking you’re home now with your family, in a not at all unbalanced way.

A friend of mine gently pointed out that possibly that cart was left there for my use by a postpartum-y mama with other crying children in the car. Another friend said that perhaps there was an emergency or illness. Certainly, those things could be true. I am not a monster. I realize that there are extenuating circumstances that could result in a cart not returned to a corral; when I am at the Co-Op I always offer to return or take a cart when I see an elderly person leaving it to the side, and I even keep the passive-aggressive tone out of my voice. Here, let me take that for you. I offer to help new mothers and I take carts back myself, not – obviously – for the glory, but for my own Parking Lot Feng Shui.

It certainly can be the case that it is sometimes not physically or emotionally possible to return the cart, even if the person got the full cart that far, and pushing an empty cart is much easier, particularly, in this case, when there is a perfectly clear and dry parking lot. So, my compassionate and empathetic friends may be right.

However, I don’t think so. I think that this cart is just the most egregious example of a terrible epidemic of laziness and thoughtlessness, given that the entire parking lot was full of errant carts. In fact, I think that there were more carts outside of the corrals than in them, and there are, I should point out, corrals conveniently located in nearly every section of the parking lot. True, there may be a small number of people who are just unable, but those people are not even a patch on the giant quilt of non-returners.

I weep for humanity.

Interestingly, this has even been studied by anthropologists, which makes me feel better about my own weird obsession. My friend Simona (HI SIMONA) sent me this article, and what stands out is this quote:

I don’t return my carts on principle. Although I also don’t block parking spaces – I put them on islands and curbs. My assumption is that if the cart wrangler could get a better job, he would. So I’m doing my part to keep him gainfully employed.

This sentiment is gross. It reminds me of people who throw garbage on the floor of a theatre so that the janitors have a job to do, or people who make giant messes of sweater displays so that the salesgirls won’t be bored on the job. Why don’t we all just pee on the floor of public bathrooms so that the cleaner can keep busy, or throw trash out the window so convicts will be able to pick it up on their work-release programs? LET’S KEEP A LITTLE HUMANITY, HERE, PEOPLE. The cart wranglers STILL HAVE TO TAKE THE CARTS FROM THE CORRAL INTO THE STORE AND THAT IS NO SMALL JOB LET’S NOT MAKE IT HARDER ON THEM.

It reminds me of when I was a teenager and I had a job at Pizza Hut. The two managers, I can see them still: Tim, with his sandy, curly blond hair and tiny stature, and Dave, with his slicked-back black hair and sweat stains on his shirt. Both enjoyed a general asshole demeanor. Neither of them could have possibly been older than 28, but they were both getting Managerial Bonuses for running the Pizza Hut with minimum staff, so every weekend was a complete gong show that would result in customers reaming out the cashiers (me) for their pizza taking too long or their table not being cleared quickly enough. Every single weekend we would deal with complaints that sometimes made me cry with their vitriol – and yet, we were always short-staffed. One might say that the short-staffing meant that the teenage staff was gainfully employed, but it was awful nonetheless. Tim and Dave, you were terrible.

But this brings me to a question: why doesn’t Costco retrofit their carts to be coin-operated? You can bet, with the certainty of Adam Smith, that the carts would be returned and peace would return to the parking lot.

Making the days count

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This week, you guys, this week has been full-on Crazy Town Banana Pants, in terms of my schedule. I am trying so very hard to, as they say on inspirational posters, not count the days but instead make the days count, but my goodness, I’m looking forward to my Neighbour Wine Date tomorrow afternoon (HI TARYN). Don’t wish away time, I say to myself several times a day, Live in the moment; wherever you go, there you are, and I’m even driving myself crazy with these platitudes. I am trying, though. Every morning I wake up and run through my schedule in my head, thinking of the interesting opportunities in the day to come, and endeavouring not to think “How am I going to get all this stuff done?”

Yesterday I was on a full-day field trip with the Grade Sevens, and I learned something very important: junior high field trips are much, much better to chaperone than elementary school ones. By “better” I mean “easier” since I think it’s just an insurance thing to have a certain adult-student ratio, but the adults literally do nothing at all. It was relaxing, if not particularly stimulating. However, I did learn something about sustainable agriculture and the future of farming, and I also learned that Kenya’s currency is the Kenyan shilling, should that ever come up in a Trivial Pursuit question.

The bus wasn’t even too bad; certainly it was better than the myriad elementary trips I went on. For one thing, either the group is smaller or the bus is bigger, but children were not expected to sit three to a seat, and I could sit by myself without having a random child breathing their hot breath all over me while showing me something neat in their backpack, as I work hard not to throw up. The bus driver only screamed once, which feels like a win.

And today is Robbie Burns’ Day! Every single year someone asks me if I’m going to have haggis, and this year was no exception. Well-meaning people will tell me, in the kindest and most helpful way, that there is such a thing as vegetarian haggis, but really, that only makes the idea marginally better for me. So no, I am not going to have haggis. To paraphrase Mike Myers in So I Married An Ax Murderer: In fact, I think all of Scottish cooking is based on a dare.

I also think that Scotch tastes like burning. But then, I’m only half-Scottish. A British friend was quite shocked when he found out that I drink tea without milk, and then shrugged and chalked it up to my barbaric Scottish ancestry.

So things have been busier than normal this week; I never like to complain about being busy because a) I like to be busy, and b) we’re all busy. At least, I SAY that we are all busy, but are we? This morning I was listening to the news talk radio (don’t judge) on my way back from dropping the boys at school. The station is giving away tickets to see Michelle Obama. She will be speaking to an audience of about 5000, but today, when tickets go on sale to the general public, there will be only 1000 up for grabs. Therefore, these tickets are hot. I mean, not hot as in STOLEN, but hot as in much desired.

So the station is giving away tickets, and listeners could call in for a chance to win. The first caller was a self-described huge fan of Mrs. Obama, and she was a big admirer of her role and accomplishments during her time in the White House, but in order to win a pair of tickets the caller had to be able to give the name and description of one of the four initiatives strongly backed by the former First Lady. She was clearly caught off guard and stumbled about healthy eating, but unfortunately that wasn’t specific enough to win the tickets. The second caller immediately named the Let’s Move initiative, described how it targeted childhood obesity, and won the tickets. The radio host asked if she was excited to see Michelle Obama speak, and the woman said, “Well, let’s just say I’m not a fan of Michelle Obama. I don’t really like her at all. But I’d like to hear what she has to say.”

Me, in the car:

This is when my “well, we’re all busy” theory goes up in flames. Clearly, we are not all busy. Clearly, some of us have way too much time on our hands. We all like different things. We all enjoy different people. We all have different perspectives. I don’t care one way or another what you think of Michelle Obama or any other person in the world, except perhaps if that person is the current president, and then maybe I do care what you think. The point is, why? Why, why would you spend time – an entire evening of your life – seeing someone who you do not admire in the least? Why would you spend the time, the drive in the car, the parking costs, the energy, on seeing someone you actively dislike? Not to mention why would you spend time calling into a radio station to win tickets when people who really would like those tickets are also trying to win?

“I’d like to hear what she has to say” – I have one word for you: YouTube. Or, you know, read a review in the paper.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life – Mary Oliver

We have a limited time on this earth, I think about this all the time; we really do – platitudes aside – need to make it count. What will you do with your wild and precious life? Sometimes, frankly, it feels like what I am doing with my one wild and precious life is grocery shopping, but I will tell you this: I am not spending my precious time and resources to be in the same room as someone I do not like. That happens frequently enough, involuntarily. Frankly, it’s hard enough to find time to be with people who I actively enjoy and want to spend time with.

Well, it takes all kinds, as my grandma used to say, and does it ever. Does it ever.