Category Archives: My failing sanity

Nicole’s Gone Kind Of Wild

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I got home at 8:00 last night from a weekend at the in-laws’, home to a mountain of laundry, an empty refrigerator, and the need to detox and/or go on a cleanse.  My poor body.  That is all I am going to say about that.   

This morning I reluctantly went to the grocery store, extremely dissatisfied with the continuation of my regular Monday routine: you see, during the spring break I went grocery shopping on a Saturday night.  Nicole’s Gone Wild!  People, I may never be able to happily go back to the old way again.  I have glimpsed perfection.  On Saturday night, I was the old person at the grocery store.  The place was filled with students: making complex decisions about prepared salads at the deli counter, cavorting through the produce section with just little handheld baskets, texting in the checkout line.  I felt like I had boarded a spaceship and had been planted on some far-off, strange planet where no one was complaining about the lineups or the price of eggs.  I eavesdropped on a young couple in the produce section, having a tense argument about which kind of tomatoes to purchase.  Which kind, field or roma?  There are pros and cons to both.  The discussion got a bit heated, and I headed to the cereal aisle, feeling footloose and fancy free since no one ever argues with ME about which tomatoes are superior.

I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to me.  It was hard to go back to the old way this morning, but, as I said, the cupboards were bare.

Have you heard about the Naked Face Project?  Here is what the women involved in this project are giving up for sixty days:

For sixty days, we will give up wearing any makeup, removing any body hair, altering our hair from its natural state (dying, curling, straightening), wearing uncomfortable feminine clothing (high heels, tight skirts), wearing jewelry (with the exception of wedding bands), painting our nails, using anti-wrinkle or anti-acne lotions, wearing deodorant, or styling our hair for reasons other than function.
I will not be partaking in this project, obviously.  Do not get me wrong: I deeply admire these women for doing so.  I have a number of friends who never wear makeup, who have hair that they wash and then leave it to dry naturally, and they look fabulous.  I peeked at the photos of the women involved and let me tell you, if I looked like they do, naturally, I would maybe – MAYBE – think about going sixty days without my regular grooming habits.  However.  I do not. 
1) Makeup.  The one time – the ONE TIME – I went to the school drop off with no makeup on, I had five separate people ask me if I was all right or if I was about to drop dead.  I prefer the general public does not immediately associate my makeup-free face with tuberculosis.
2) Body Hair Removal.  Oh, ha ha ha!  HA HA HA!  I can’t even go six weeks without a bikini wax, let alone not shave my legs or underarms!  I am a partial Scottish lassie.  Evidently my body was meant for the Highlands.  Not shaving for sixty days would pretty much have my neighbours wondering if a Yeti moved in.  Not to mention the unibrow and handlebar moustache that would result.  If ever I am incapacitated for some reason, I am going to need to hire out for a hair removal service so as not to terrify the children. 
3) Altering Hair From Natural State.  My hair right now has one-inch grey roots, and it’s only been five weeks since my last hair appointment.  My hair’s natural state is not good.
4) Wearing Uncomfortable Feminine Clothing.  Well, I might be able to do that one, but it depends on the definition.  I have lots of comfortable high heels – but would they be verboten?  They are comfortable but less comfortable than flats.  And what about tight jeans?  What about a bra?  The years have not been kind to my breasts.  Think partially-deflated water balloons.  Going braless is only acceptable to me if I am wearing a tank with a built in bra, but would that be included in the uncomfortable clothing category?  I have the depressing feeling that, with the exception of my pajamas and yoga clothes, ALL my clothes have some level of discomfort associated with them, yet I am so used to them that I don’t notice the discomfort.
5) Wearing Jewelry.  BUT I LOVE JEWELRY.
6) Painting Nails.  BUT I LOVE PAINTING MY NAILS.  Plus my nails are so brittle and dry that they peel right off without a good coat of lacquer.
7) Using Anti-Wrinkle or Anti-Acne Lotion.  Hey.  I’m almost 37.  I am at the awkward periomenopausal stage where I am in need of BOTH products.  I just found some miracle products that I love and that staved off a pimple prior to my in-law visit.  Since my mother-in-law is famous for gasping and pointing out any blemish that I may have, I am devoted to these miracle products and am planning an entire blog post to show my love for them.  (Spoiler alert!  Aveeno and Burt’s Bees!)  I would make out with these products if I could; that is how much I love and admire them.  In vain I have struggled.  It will not do.  My feelings will not be repressed.  You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
8) Wearing Deodorant.  I think my yoga teacher would die, and I do not want to be the cause of it.
Naked Face Project: FAIL.  Nicole will never Go That Wild.

Just call me Flylady

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I have a confession to make that may make me unpopular or perhaps even shunned from the community.  I’m going to take a deep breath and be out with it.  Here it is, my dirty little secret: my house is always clean, neat, and organized.  Now please stay with me a moment – this is not meant to make anyone feel bad or for me to boast about my superior housekeeping skills.  If THIS is what my life has come down to – boasting about superior housekeeping skills – then I may as well end it all right now.  Just writing superior housekeeping skills in relation to myself makes me want to stab myself and/or curl up in a corner and sob with the grimness of it all.

No, my clean, neat, and organized house is more of a function of a rigid, Type-A personality mixed with an extreme distaste for mess, with a side of minor germophobia.  I have never once left dirty dishes in the sink overnight.  I set out my outfit the night before I wear it, I write down the week’s menu and grocery requirements in my agenda.  The kids put away all their toys every night.  I do laundry every single day and I clean the bathroom three times a week.  If my mother-in-law was to show up on my doorstep unannounced, I would certainly have many emotions but shame about the state of my house would not be one of them.

Believe me, I would like to be less like this.  When I have people over for dinner, it’s all I can do to not jump up and start scraping plates and running hot water as soon as everyone is finished.  I have to make myself drink another glass of wine, just so I can relax and carry on a conversation like a normal person.  Tragic, no?  DRINK MORE WINE TO DULL THE CRAZY INTERNAL CLEANING LADY.

But it’s not like I have the kids’ toys alphabetized and on index cards, and it’s not like I’m making hospital corners when I make the bed.  Esthetically, I like things to be tidy, and so when my friend Hannah mentioned Flylady and sink-shining, I thought I should check it out.  After all, I DID have gross crusty stuff around the kitchen faucet, and there WERE some hard water deposits around the filter, and, to be honest, I kind of coveted her shiny sink (go read that link, and you will see why I love Hannah so much – her shiny shiny monument to her own insanity).  So I went over to Flylady to see what all the fuss was about – Flylady, who has this thirty-one day recipe to get one’s life in order.

Well.

It turns out that I have inadvertently been following the Flylady’s methodology for years.  Apparently I AM A FLYLADY, but without the housekeeping-tips blog.  Although I don’t leave little post-it notes full of positive affirmations around the house.  Who would do that?  If one is attempting to get control over household clutter, why would one clutter one’s house with post-it notes?  I can barely stand looking at my kids’ toys – little post-it notes all over the house proclaiming my awesomeness would be the death of my sanity, for real.  I also do not put on lace-up shoes in the house.  Who wears shoes in the house?  How do you curl up on the couch with shoes on?  Plus I don’t own a pair of lace-up shoes.  Other than that, though, I discovered, somewhat depressingly, that I am an unwitting Flylady.

I don’t feel fly, though.  I thought perhaps that if I had a shiny sink – as recommended by the Flylady as the first step to getting one’s life in order – then I would surely be fly as fly could be.  So I followed all the steps, hot water and bleach, scrubbing with a scouring pad and baking soda, using a toothbrush and a butter knife, then buffing and Windex-ing the whole thing.  I stepped back to survey the job.

Huh.  The sink was shinier, sure, but it wasn’t remarkable.  It wasn’t life-changing or transformative.  I could see my reflection, but in a fuzzy, warped, big-forehead kind of way.  I felt very let down.  FLYLADY FAIL.  For the amount of time and resources involved, I expected much, much better.  Flylady, you have disappointed me.  Or perhaps I have disappointed myself.  I do not feel that my shiny sink is a reflection of the love I have for myself.  I feel that it is a reflection of my own rigidity and craziness. 

But that didn’t stop me, today, from buffing it all over again.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

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As we pulled out of the parking lot at the gymnastics centre, with my frayed nerves and cupcake-stained children, I silently vowed never to host another large children’s birthday party ever again.  Truly, I think we are now past the age where I can allow my kids to invite fourteen children and still expect to emerge from the party with my sanity still intact.  A group of fifteen kindergarteners, or fifteen first graders even, is much, much easier to deal with than a group of fifteen children ranging in ages from six to nine.  Apparently I don’t like children as much as I thought I did.  I stood impotently among the chaos of the party room, as sugar-addled children chased each other around the table, arms flailing, screaming at the very top of their lungs.  I was powerless to stop it.  At one point it felt like the room was vibrating.  One little girl sat on a chair, with her hands over her ears.  I gave her a goody bag, and announced that anyone who was as calm as she was would also receive a goody bag.  Eventually things settled down and parents arrived, only a few arriving after the specified pick-up time.  As God is my witness, I will never host another such birthday party again.

I am currently reading Anna Karenina, and I came across the following paragraph:

Between the Countess Nordston and Levin relations had
grown up such as are not infrequently met with in
Society, when two people outwardly remaining in friendly
relations despise each other to such an extent that
they cannot treat each other seriously, or even be offended with one another.
It occurred to me that this is the nineteenth-century Russian equivalent of passive-aggressiveness.  Oh, passive-aggressiveness, the ugliest of all negative character traits.  I feel this way, truly, but I find that I myself have taken on a very passive-aggressive attitude while shopping.
It’s the thing now for all stores, it seems, to ask for your email address every time a purchase is made, and that is something that threatens the remaining vestiges of my sanity.  My in-box is filled, constantly, with enthusiastically-worded newsletters from various corporations about there only being three! days! left! of whatever fabulous sale is going on right! now!  In a bid to control some of this raging-out-of-control in-box, I unsubscribed to all newsletters but am now in an awkward position whenever I am shopping.  At first, I tried a polite-but-firm tone with the salesperson, that no, I did not wish to leave my email address.  However, my polite-but-firm tone was overruled by the salesperson’s pleas, promises of good deals, and apparent need for demographic information; how that is obtained via email is beyond me but nevertheless I felt powerless to refuse.  I felt sorry for the salesperson who is just fulfilling their job requirements by asking customers for their emails.  And yet, I want no more emails. 
My solution to this problem is to give a false email address.  I feel a little skeevy about this practice, but yet, I have no better solution.  So I normally give a gmail address, usually with some variation of Nicole.  But then I started guiltily thinking about all the Nicoles on gmail who are, without their knowledge, being placed on various mailing lists.  I could just imagine some other Nicole opening up her in-box, thinking What the fuck, Old Navy?  I JUST unsubscribed from you!  Again!
I don’t know what to do.  Perhaps the next time I will use such monikers as onehotmama at hotmail, or babelicious at yahoo or maybe even milf at gmail.  Do you think they’ll be able to see through my ruse?

If the icy sidewalks don’t kill the elderly, I will.

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I am in a mood.  A MOOD, people.  It’s a good thing I am not armed, or have violent tendencies.  And lest we think that this is Daylight Savings Time related, it actually isn’t.  Wait, did you just correct me to say that it’s Daylight SAVING Time, not SAVINGS?  Well, prepare to be stabbed. 

I do hate to generalize a whole group of people, because I’m sure that somewhere out there is a senior citizen who actually is not completely befuddled by the U-Scan at the grocery store, and maybe there is even a retired person who does not complain when there is only one till open at said grocery store, but let me tell you, they do not live in my neighbourhood.  Or, if they do live in my neighbourhood, they don’t shop when I do.

I will say that I have all the time in the world for the teeny little octogenarian who is shaking as she counts out her change to buy her All-Bran and pound of butter.  That may be me one day.  I’m okay with that.  I’m also okay with helping the exeedingly confused old man find where the potatoes are located.  What I am not okay with is the new brand of seniors, the ones who are in their sixties and seventies and who are assholes, swimming in entitlement and without much to keep them occupied.

I wasn’t in the greatest mood while shopping anyway, since at the onset I had a very strange conversation at the strawberry display with regards to the on-sale, but non-organic strawberries in my cart.  I buy a lot of organic produce, but I buy non-organic as well.  I am at peace with what I feed myself and my children, but we live in a society, people.  If something seems offensive coming out of your mouth, then possibly it should be left unsaid.

Anyway, I lined up at the one till that was open, with my cart full of my usual weekly groceries, including organic and regular produce.  There were two people in front of me: a man and a woman, both in their late sixties, I would guess.  A couple – also in their sixties – came up behind me, and, seeing that there were OMG THREE PEOPLE in front of them, they shouted at the cashier.  Is there anyone else working here? they asked.  Upon hearing that the other cashier was on break, all hell broke loose.  First, the couple behind me huffily insisted that they would go to the U-Scan.  Even from my vantage point, I could hear the U-Scan clerk’s frustration at helping them.  No, don’t scan that item.  Put in the PLU code.  No, the first button.  THE FIRST BUTTON.  You need to put your items in the bag.  IN THE BAG.  NO, DON’T SCAN IT AGAIN.  They were still there, attempting to scan their own items when I left the store.  Karma, bitches. 

The second thing that happened when the admittedly slow-moving cashier (whose name is – I kid you not – Adrift) said that the other cashier was on break was that the people in front of me, evidently strangers, started bonding in the way of prisoners everywhere, united against the man.  Oh, the woman said, raising her eyebrows, things certainly have changed.  Times certainly have changed since our day, haven’t they.  The man agreed with her.  This man had only a flat of bottled water, and he said snappishly to the carryout woman – who is herself a senior, but evidently not able to afford to retire since she is working as a carryout at the grocery store – that he needed four more flats of water.  Could she run and fetch them for him?  He could only carry one flat at a time.  THAT’S WHAT CARTS ARE FOR, MOTHERFUCKER.  It occurred to me to say that but I pride myself on practicing patience and compassion, and so I stood their with my ujaiji breathing, focusing on the “Best and Worst Beach Bodies!” magazine in front of me. 

Well, once the carryout woman went to fetch the four flats of water for this overly-entitled man, he and the woman took up complaining again, keeping with the “times have changed” theme.  We didn’t even get a break! the woman said.  You know who else never got a break?  Children working in the Cape Breton coal mines.  Were you one of them?  No?  Then shut the fuck up.  Inhale, exhale.  Inhale peace, exhale happiness.

Well, they sure don’t make it convenient, do they? the man commisserated as the old carryout woman came back with a cartful of flats of water, for this dreadfully inconvenienced man.  And that, dear reader, is when I snapped.  I just couldn’t hear any more.  I have had it with seniors complaining about waiting in line at the grocery store.  I have been pushed far enough.  It’s nine thirty on a Monday morning – what else could you possibly have to do?  Do you need to rush home to watch The Price Is Right?  Maybe you could complain that Bob Barker isn’t on there anymore, or that your favourite soap opera was cancelled.  Maybe you have a busy day of calling in complaints to the city about your neighbours.  I don’t know.  All I know was I could no longer be silent. 

I cleared my throat, and said, very slowly and clearly, Everyone is in a hurry.  But really, what are we in a hurry for?  Five minutes here or there isn’t really going to affect anything, is it?  Is it REALLY?  Then I looked them right in their beady, old eyes, with my eyebrows raised into my hairline and a slightly psychotic smile on my face.  I stared them down; I did.  They both quietly looked away.  Giving someone the “furry eyebrow”, as my children would tell you, works.

I pushed my cart full of bagged groceries past the poor U-Scan clerk still helping the couple figure out how to type in the code for bananas, past a man who clearly should not still have a driver’s license parking his boat of a car in the handicapped space, past a woman who was shaking her head over the courtesy parking for pregnant women (In my day we certainly didn’t get special treatment just for expecting a baby!).  I think the “furry eyebrow” may now be a permanent part of my face.  I had better smile, quickly, lest my face freezes like this.

Love Sandwich

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I was so excited to open up this month’s O Magazine, and not just because it contained Adam Glassman’s spring fashion look book – which turned out to be a disappointment, anyway.  Sorry, Adam, a silky pajama top is NOT work appropriate even when paired with a pencil skirt; and let’s not even get started on orange and/or yellow pants.  No, I was excited because it was the First! Ever! Food Issue! and on the cover – right on the folded over part – was….STEDMAN!  And inside was an interview with him talking about what Oprah cooks for him – including, but not limited to, something that is called a Love Sandwich.  The recipe was not at all what came to mind when I heard the words Love Sandwich, it wasn’t anything even remotely slutty or Kama Sutra-ish.  The Love Sandwich, anticlimatically enough, involves a panini press, basil, tomatoes and avocado, among other things.  It does not involve anything bedroom- or Gayle-related.  Actually, minus the turkey and scallions (shudder), it looks pretty yummy.  I wouldn’t mind a Love Sandwich.

I was so excited to see Stedman on the cover that I was vibrating a little; I leaned over on the couch to show my husband, who responded in a puzzled way.  Why, he wondered, did I look like that?  Baby, it’s not every day one gets to see a narwhal.

Sometimes it is like he doesn’t understand me at all.  For example, I discovered that this weekend – yes, THIS WEEKEND – is the start of Daylight Savings Time and, as usual, I started to go off the rails.  My husband responded in an irritated sort of way, saying that I was being a) overly dramatic, and b) irrational, which made me respond in a “No, YOU’RE overly dramatic and irrational” kind of way, complete with hanging up the phone. 

It’s true, as my husband pointed out, that my children did adjust fairly quickly to a three hour time difference in Maui and again at home, but it is also true that the week following the “Spring Forward” is a crabby one, given that children are unable to sleep at their regularly scheduled time and then must be woken up at their regularly scheduled time, contributing to a sleep deficit which leads to HELL.  ASK ANY TEACHER OR CHILD CARE PROFESSIONAL.  Even if my children do adjust to the time difference, I shall still rally against it, in solidarity with mothers everywhere.  It is antiquated, it is unnecessary, and the first person to say “but it’s so nice to have light in the evening” I shall stab.  Or, if I don’t physically stab them, I shall stab them in my mind and then give them the furry eyebrow.  Where I live, in a couple months it will be light until TEN O’CLOCK.  I think that is more than sufficient.  I wake up at 4:45 am, I do not care about light in the evenings, thank you very much.   

Now I’ve got myself all worked up again.  I need to go out and buy myself a panini press; I think a Love Sandwich may be the ticket to happiness.  There is pepper jack cheese!  And avocado!  Mmm.  Baby.  Love Sandwich.

Just Like Bogie and Bacall

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Jake stayed at school for lunch today for the very first time – excepting, of course, Fridays when the kids have a “nutrition break” at their desks and then are dismissed at 1:10.  But today he is at a Lego Club meeting – there IS a Lego Club – and is the first of my children to voluntarily eat lunch at school.  You read that correctly: I do not share my friends’ angst about school lunches and the packing thereof; I live five minutes away from the school and so the kids come home and eat peanut butter and other contraband items.  I’m happy to have them home at lunch, they are happy to come home at lunch, but today it feels like Jake is all grown up now, in no time at all he is going to be leaving home and calling me on an infrequent basis.

It’s enough to give one just the teensiest bit of a heartache.

And yet, I do not wish my children were younger and that I could relive those years.  Sure, it was fun to be able to go to the zoo or the science centre any day of the week, and sure, it was fun to make up plans about what we could do that very day, and sure, it was fun to take the kids for a walk down the street so they could jump in puddles and become soaked and admire the neighbour’s collection of vintage cars that he was ostensibly restoring.  Actually, no, it wasn’t.  There were many long, boring days when I cleaned up paint from crafts and when I veered between each child when they went in opposite, hazardous directions at the playground, but I’m in a place now when I can think of the zoo and see the excitement from seeing elephants and getting those little Dibs ice cream things, and I can gloss over my entire, full-body exhaustion from pushing the heavy double stroller and from packing dozens of snacks and diapers and pullups and bottles and sippy cups and changes of clothing.  I can gloss over the potty-training episodes in public bathrooms, or the germophobic feeling of horror watching the kids using those little phones that tell the stories of the animals in that particular enclosure.  It’s like I’m scrapbooking in my mind: I’m remembering sunny, happy pictures of eating lunch at the picnic tables and talking about gorillas and I’m pasting over the thirty minutes it would take to get the sunscreen applied and the shoes on.  “Going To The Zoo!” is what I’m writing in bubbly stencils in my scrapbook mind, adding lots of happy stickers.

I don’t wish to go back in time.  We took the red-eye home from Maui, and this is what happened: the boys ate snacks and read books while waiting to board, they slept on the plane and woke up on landing, despite having only five hours of sleep they non-grumpily waited in line at Customs and then helped gather all the luggage at the carosel, they rode happily in the taxi home and carried their booster seats into the house, they went to bed and slept for another couple of hours, getting up cheerfully when I woke them up.  Here’s what I observed other people, people with much younger children doing: chasing their kids in the waiting area to tire them out, plying the screaming toddlers with sippy cups and soothers on the plane, walking around on the plane trying to get the babies to sleep, looking like a zombie in line for Customs, holding a sobbing, inconsolable little one.  I wouldn’t trade places with them for the world.  I love how my kids are so interesting and fun and relatively reasonable and self-sufficient and full of cool ideas.  But I came across this picture of them at age two and three:

And this one:

And then this one, from age 10 months and 27 months:

And suddenly, ANGST!

This angsty feeling was exacerbated by the fact that I’m finally reading Room, and by page 22 I had to get reassurance from everyone I know who has read it that it all will end okay, otherwise I would burn the book and spend the rest of the weekend curled up in a corner, crying.  I am not yet finished, but I haven’t burned the book yet, so I suppose that is a positive sign.  I did spend much of the weekend feeling moody and emotional, much to my husband’s puzzlement; was this moodiness due to my period?  WHAT MOODINESS????  AND GIVE ME SOME DAMN CHOCOLATE.

So that was my weekend.  On Saturday morning I saw a friend had written on Facebook that she had spent Friday night listening to her boyfriend play guitar; it sounded all blissful and romantic.  Here’s what I did Friday night: I drank half a bottle of wine on the couch in my pajamas, watching reruns of 30 Rock and then, incredibly, an informercial about love songs of the eighties, and that entire CD collection – entitled “Easy 80’s” – could be mine in only six payments of $26.99 (plus shipping and handling).  I was singing along to the informercial.

Actually, it WAS pretty awesome.  I mean, drinking wine in your pajamas is kind of the ultimate in comforting, and I’m sure my husband loved my rendition of Key Largo.  I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The book fair is over. Where’s my corkscrew?

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I was watching Modern Family on Wednesday, dying of laughter at what was referred to as “Satan’s Trifecta”, with Claire, Haley, and Alex all on the same “cycle”.  I laughed at poor Phil’s angst as I ate handful after handful of trail mix, wondering how I could possibly still be so hungry.  I wondered how, this week, I have been simultaneously exhausted yet unable to sleep, achy and tired and completely off my game.  I blamed it on the book fair, the minor case of the sniffles running through our house like a mildly annoying housefly, and the incredibly irritating personalities of others.  I did not blame it on myself.  I did not realize until a certain “aunt” came to “visit” much earlier than normal that there may have been something else going on.  Suddenly, it all made sense.

On a related note, a friend sent me an article entitled “Incompetent People Too Ignorant To Know It” which seems not only extremely accurate, but also extremely nerve-wracking.  Am I incompetent and unaware?  I don’t think so, but then, how would I know?  It’s enough to induce a breakdown of sorts, although the idea that stupidity breeds lack of awareness really does explain a lot about society.  Did I mention the book fair?

Speaking of breakdowns, Mark had one last night.  He was completely inconsolable because, he said, he was WAY BEHIND everyone in the class in math.  This struck me as very odd, since he is very good at math and also his teacher, a few days after we had returned from Maui, had assured me he was all caught up.  However, with the hysterical breakdown right in front of me, I wrote a note to the teacher and spoke with her prior to class, hoping to have a solution to the problem.  She was completely puzzled.  He wasn’t at all behind.  He missed a few worksheets when we were in Maui, but he scored very well on the unit test, and so she had given him the option to either a) forget about the missing pages, or b) complete them at his leisure.  Whichever option was fine with her.  Apparently Mark’s breakdown stemmed from his own standards, which were being compromised due to lack of time.  To say that he takes after his mother would be an understatement. 

Did I mention the book fair?

This week it seemed everyone was talking about Leap Day and the joy of having an extra day, which puzzles me.  It’s not really an extra day, is it?  It’s kind of like how we “gain” time during Daylight Savings.  It’s not really a gain, people.  Even if it is, somehow, an “extra day”, it’s an extra day in February, one of the bleakest months of the year!  Well, not for me, because I was on vacation, but I think most people would agree that February is, indeed, a bleak month.  This is not to say it isn’t fun to think of all those people who get an extra special Leap Year birthday – that’s kind of cool.  But then, I may be a little bitter since I spent Leap Day at the book fair for seven hours. 

There were some cool erasers, though:

For the rest of the day, I was singing “Don’t stop! Believing!  Hold on to that FEEEELLLINININGGG”.  My girlfriend who was volunteering with me that morning told me that her very first concert was Journey, which I thought was exciting and reminded me that MY very first concert was INXS.  The Devil Inside!  That was back in the day when you could see an excellent concert for under twenty dollars.  This also reminds me that The Grapes of Wrath – who I saw in concert for about twelve dollars and whose member Tom Hooper I had an astounding crush on – are rumoured to be GETTING BACK TOGETHER.  I’m a little nonplussed.  That just seems, for some reason, kind of depressing.  But maybe it’s just my current state of mind (“will you ever find your peace of miiiiinnnnndd?”).

My current state of mind being exacerbated by the fact that I spent all week in a windowless room staring at this scene, answering myriad questions regarding the price of various posters and erasers.  But that’s enough about the book fair.  I’m even boring myself.  This goes back to the original question, amended: are boring people too boring to know it?