October 27/13

There are just some places that I would rather not go.  Like Legends Records on Wellington.

This place is in a basement, which doesn't actually bother me.  This place sells ridonkulously over-priced records, but it's got a massive inventory thank includes things I'd never find around here, to that's something that can be overlooked for the right album.

No, what bothers me is the whole joint stinks.  Etienne thinks it was just the lunch of the sales guy, but I did ask him if it smelled bad the last time he was there, so I don't think the lunch had anything to do with it.  The place smells like old chives and rotting onions.  This does not encourage me to return.

Beware the stinky record store...

...Wish you were here.

October 26/13

Do you ever eat in a restaurant alone?  I do.

There are times when Etienne is busy or out at work, and I just don't want to cook (or I don't have proper groceries to do so), so I'll find a place to go that we don't normally to (usually because of a lack of food items for his special diet), and order food that I don't tend to have at home.  Like bacon.  I know that the smell of bacon is the one thing that triggers him--he likes the smell of it, but won't eat it, so I don't torment him by having bacon for myself in the house.

This afternoon, I needed food, and he needed to go to the store, so we went our separate ways.  I headed straight to Zak's because I can get all-day breakfast and indulge my desire for bacon.  It didn't matter that I don't want the rest of the breakfast in particular, especially because my normal breakfast of tea and toast covers 25% of what I'm served at Zak's--I just wanted my bacon.

But enough about bacon.  Because this is supposed to be about dining out alone.  I don't actually mind it.   I tried bringing a book a couple of times, but I just felt weird, like I was trying to live up to some goofy stereotype about dining alone.  The truth is, I'm good to just sit and hang.  Watch the world go by.  In my little shorty booth for two.  Hey, how's it going?  So, you got the rye bread, huh?  Yeah, I'm a white bread girl.  Hey, are you divorced?  Are you just spending time with the kids before you have to head out to the hockey game while the co-parent takes care of things, or is this your scheduled visit time?  Yeah, I know...it sounds weird, but honestly, people-watching is just amusing.   

So yeah.  Obviously, it doesn't bother me to be alone at a restaurant. 

A bar, on the other hand...well, hell, that's just awkward...you feel like the lone gazelle at the watering hole, wondering not if, but which one of the starving predators will pounce.

Next time, I'll have to try the new Pho place (or hell, the old Pho place) to see if it's to my liking before I try to take Etienne there.

Still, in spite of all of this...having company is nice too :)

Let's grab a bite soon...

...Wish you were here.

October 25/13

Fancy, where the fuck have you been?

Well, living a half-life of unsettling and resettling.

We've moved.  With little fanfare and a lot of headaches, stress, aching backs and strained muscles and patience, we stopped being residents of the Golden Triangle, and became residents of the Market.  It's a long, complicated, rage-inducing story, but if we could write the book on how NOT to do a move, we would.  We spent most of September in packing and painting mode, and most of October in unpacking and settling-in mode.  I've thought about coming back to the blog on many occasions, but by the end of the day, I'd usually be tired exhausted and it's taken a lot of energy to try and settle into the new place with a new routine.

So it's strange that I have so many things every day that I could share here, but the one that pushes me back is my non-relationship with my father-in-law Etienne's dad.

I'm a difficult person, and admittedly, I set high expectations for people in my life, so I have trouble dealing with it when my expectations have created problems.  I own my part in this failure, and I'm often sorry for it, though there aren't usually opportunities to say so.  So if we've had any rifts in the past over it, I'd like to apologize.  I'm a work in progress, and I hope that I'm moving in the right direction.

Etienne's father and I haven't connected.  The fact is, our personalities clash. I always tell myself that I should work on improving the relationship because I don't want to be the cause of any troubles or rifts between father and son, but then something happens to upset me, and I'm back where I started.  There are so many reasons why I would not receive a seal of approval: I'm older, divorced, don't want children, and that's just for starters.  I'm also an atheist, an anglophone (to be fair, these are more about my own insecurity than anything that has been reflected in interactions with the father), and I'm strong-willed.  Ultimately, we come from different worlds, and there isn't much common ground to build a relationship on.

I want to encourage father and son to maintain a relationship--I know that as people age, they find comfort in their relationships.  I've also seen enough fences mended around me to know the benefits.  Furthermore, I was pretty traumatized when Rod's father suddenly past away, knowing that theirs was a close, loving father-son relationship cut short.  Family matters a great deal to me.  Mine, though not the model of a Norman Rockwell painting, is my rock, and I know despite the distance (both physical and emotional at times), we'd walk through fire for each other.  I don't want Etienne to have regrets about family, which compels me to work on bettering my relationship with his family.  Hopefully the French lessons will help bridge a lot of the gap (Oh, yeah, BTW, I'm in French classes), but the rest comes down to there being enough to at the very least build a creditable, polite relationship.

So all of this to say that in recent weeks, things have been said or inferred which indicate that I am facing an enormous amount of work with the father, and I have to be aware that because I can't "convince" his son to get married, I might be facing a doomed task.

Knowing I can't win them all (and frequently don't), there's not much more to do or say...just have to get back to work.

Because family matters...

...Wish you were here.

September 4/13

So much aching.

I'm exhausted.

Can barely bend over anymore.

Last night, I was in the office for a few hours, just trying to pack the books, but damn if my progress got stopped by an assessment of my box stock.  You see, when I moved here to Ottawa, I packed all of my stuff and labeled my boxes (mostly so as not to confuse my things with my ex's).  And when I moved from my apartment in the building next door to our current place, my packing was almost completely contained.

Etienne's...not so much.  He didn't move with boxes.  He moved with bags.  And suitcases.  And tupperware storage containers.  And bags.  And bags.  He didn't have as much stuff as I did, but it was not fun trying to move him out of his place because of the lack of boxes.  Last night, I was coming to the realization that I probably needed an additional 10-15 boxes to properly pack his stuff.  I abandoned my efforts and decided to re-group and finish today.

You might be wondering why I'm packing so early, given that the move is still three weeks away, so I refer you back to posts from the last week of August for an explanation.  Basically, it goes like this: we painted our walls, and in order to avoid some stupid, way over-priced charges, we're priming the walls ourselves myself.  So I need to pack up each room just to get the stuff out of the way so I can prime the walls, and I decided in order to preserve some sense of sanity, I'd do a room per week. 

Bathroom?  Check!
Kitchen?  Check!
Closets?  Check!

I slave away because I'm cheap and poor, I hope that my labour will reduce the bill for moving out.

So, tonight was Part II.  And it kicked my ass.

I went downstairs and pulled all the unmarked boxes I could find, and brought them upstairs.  Then I went to the Pub.  Hey, a Hypoglycemic Girl's gotta eat.

As soon as we came home, I headed in.  I'm still estimating the need for another 5-6 boxes, but I know where to find those.  The only ones I'm not in charge of are the ones Etienne will use to transport the vinyl collection. 

The office is approximately 95% complete.  After a poorly scheduled viewing appointment tomorrow evening, I will put Etienne to work moving furniture, and then bust out the primer.  A second coat if needed on Thursday, and the Office?  (Will be) Check!

I'd love to pay a professional company to do this, but I'm so broke!

I need a massage...


...Wish you were here.

September 3/13

I didn't have a solid sleep last night, so when 7 am rolled around and I had to get up and go to work, I wasn't the most alert camper.  In fact, I'd say on a scale between alert/aware and state of R.E.M. sleep, I'd say I was somewhere around the state of a three year old fighting off a much-needed nap.

This was the state I was in as I sat there in my cubby, trying hard to concentrate on finishing a big project that I've been nerding out on for a few weeks now, when at 10:35 or so, the power suddenly went out.  It's almost as if the universe was telling me I had no business being at work when I was operating like a cranky toddler.

This isn't the first time the power has gone out at work, but when I went to the windows to scope out the situation, I noted that the other buildings in the complex also didn't have power.  This meant that there was a problem with the whole grid, and not just an isolated incident, as has been the case in the past.  The outage lasted for almost an hour and a half, and in that time, we all did what we do best in a power outage.  Chat and wait for news on whether we'll be sent home.  It's not like we could do much work; the computers were out, and the lighting wasn't exactly conducive to studying, reading, or doing boring stuff like filing and sorting. 

I think that senior management was getting close to sending us home, because in a massive complex like that, it's not just the lack of computers that affects our ability to work; there's also the loss of the air circulation system, which makes the air quite warm and stale, and lunch starts to become a real concern, whether brought or bought.  If the whole grid was indeed out, there'd be nowhere to go get food, except across the river in Ottawa, and packed lunches made of perishable items stored in the fridges would be imperiled if the outage is lengthy.

But damn if the power didn't come back on just at noon, and after lunch, it was back to work.

I just couldn't catch a break today...

...Wish you were here.

September 2/13

This afternoon, we fled the apartment briefly and headed for the Market, the only place where things would be open today. 

As an aside, I really miss being out west where a lot of places are open on holidays.  I know the arguments, about hourly staff having to work, etc. and I've worked my share of holidays in retail, and I know it sucks, but at least I was raking in the time and a half (or on some occasions, double time), so I put aside the suckiness and enjoyed having the extra cash on hand when needed (and it's always needed!).

Anyway, before we even left, we were both aware, courtesy of the Weather Network App, that storms were heading our way.  Hell, the app even told us that we should expect the show to start after 3 pm.  So when we walked out into the darkening skies, we both had our umbrellas.  I'm from Vancouver...if the weather forecast tells you there's a high probability of rain, you bring the umbrella or a rain jacket. 

Well, we were among the only smarty-pants in the Market apparently.  At 4 pm, when we were in Road Trip, and the sales girl was talking to me and another customer about how scared she is of storms and that she didn't bring an umbrella.  She gestured at mine and told me I was smart.  Excuse me for sounding arrogant, but duh.  We were just about to walk out the door when the sky opened up and all meteorological hell broke loose.  Nature turned on the fire hose, and for good measure, put on a hell of a light and sound show too.  At that moment an enormous flash of lightning and booming crack of thunder let us know the storm was directly over head.  It made a family of four walking by actually jump and they bolted into the store, but not before the youngest girl freaked out and ran elsewhere, causing the parents to have to run after her and bring her in, already soaked after 10 seconds in the rain.

Etienne and I just looked at each other, said, "We have umbrellas", and walked out into the chaos.  While our feet and legs got wet, the rest of us was quite dry and comfortable, and seriously, only hip-waders would have protected our legs at that point.

Storms amuse me, not just because of the awe they inspire, but also because I just can't believe how many people I see unprepared who then seem so surprised when these storms actually happen.  As predicted.

You silly, soaking wet souls...

...Wish you were here.

September 1/13

Happy First Anniversary, The Daily Wish You Were Here! 

And to celebrate, I've dumped my heavy-ass, stupid filing cabinet!

Several years ago, my ex and I purchased this filing cabinet because, while I'm somewhat more organized, he was a clutter-bug, and his papers lying about were getting to me.  We selected one based on looks and how it would fit into our apartment at the time.  When we went to buy it, we learned that we were buying the heaviest fucking filing cabinet known to mankind.  While this shouldn't have been a problem for us given my ex's unusually large stature, it turned out to be an enormous pain in my ass (and shoulders and legs and arms and all over) because I was dumped off at the lobby with it, and had to struggle hard to get the large, awkward box upstairs and its contents put together.

When we divorced, I guess I "won" the damn thing because I was the more organized of the two of us, and so it got on the truck with me and wandered across the country to Ottawa when I moved here.  Since then, it's been a heavy fucking reminder of how much I hate moving.

Well, this time, I decided the big bastard wasn't coming with us.  So very early this morning, I got up, reserved a Vrtucar, and by 10:30 am, I had purchased file boxes and binder, ready to sort and pack the contents of the cabinet, and kick the beast to the curb (literally).  The emptying part wasn't even easy.  The beast only locks at the top drawer, and the position of it slopes slighting down in front, so bottom three drawers have been known to slide open.  Almost as its parting revenge, the drawers were in full throttle, and one of them caught my knee in a way that I'm not sure a piece of bone hasn't chipped off in there.

After it was emptied, it sat in the hallway for a while, until we decided to get it over with.  Except we live on the second floor, and if you think hauling that beast up is a bitch, try hauling it down.  With Etienne at the bottom bearing the weight, I tried my best at the top to guide/carry it, but it's enormous size and weight weren't compatible with my slight frame and stance.  I was useless.  We got it to the bottom, and just as I feared getting it down the small stairs and over to the curb, some 15 feet away, one of the downstairs neighbours came out and asked if we needed help.  He's a taller guy, stronger, so of course I took up his offer!  In a matter of seconds, the damn thing was on the curb.

Because of it's size and weight, we wondered how long it would be out there.  For small things we've put out, they've been taken before we even have a chance to blink, but this beast can't simply be picked up and carried off.  Well, within 3 minutes, I noticed a couple out there, examining it with serious intent.  The man tried to pick it up to test the weight, but he found out quickly that it was a challenge, so they walked off.  About an hour later, we looked out the window, and it was gone.  Fair thee well, you big, heavy bastard.

The joys of moving...

...Wish you were here.