Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

A few weekends ago, I was up in Oshawa helping clean up my late grandfather’s house in preparation for selling. It was one of those unique situations: due to Mel needing to drive a friend out to Niagara that weekend on a family emergency, I was on my own for transportation. I didn’t complain, of course. Commuting up to Toronto was nothing new to me, as many of you already know. Hell, I made at least a bi-monthly habit of it back in the day when I was at college. Every other weekend, if not 3 out of 4 weekends each month were spent nabbing the Greyhound and not sleeping for two straight days.

And so, that particular Saturday night after my shift ended, I hopped onto a Greyhound bus and caught a ride out to Toronto. (Before you Torontonians angrily decry, “Wait! You were in TO and you didn’t tell us?!”, please bear in mind I arrived in Toronto at 10pm that night, left with Gary for Oshawa at 8am the next morning, and he generously volunteered to drive me straight back to KW afterwards. I spent a grand total of ten hours in the city, and most of that was spent desperately catching up on sleeping. There will hopefully be another day soon devoted to fan-gatherings as opposed to familial duties. ^-^ )

It was very surreal to be on the Greyhound heading out to Toronto. I didn’t realize it until I settled down into my seat and saw the darkened city lights out the window, but I have not done that commute for over a decade. A decade.

Feel old yet? I do.

At least the trip was akin to getting back on a bicycle. I knew all the stops the bus would make along the way, and as expected I passed out 5 minutes into the ride, not waking up until we were in downtown Toronto. A lot of time may have elapsed, but my body still remembers my favourite bus-riding pastime.

All this brings us to my grandfather’s place in Oshawa. My aunt Kathy and uncle JP were already there, and Margaret stopped by later on in the morning. I helped out wherever I could, lugging some of the heavier items out into the garage. And the three of us strongmen managed to wrestle the heavier-than-it-looked entertainment cabinet out of the living room, so I’m glad I could make it down.

Now one of the things I took advantage of being there was laying claim to a few things that caught my eye: some plates, a few mementos from my childhood, a blanket or two. Towards the end of our visit, I also noticed a really nice leather coat in the front entry closet. This surprised me, since I had assumed most if not all of Grandpa’s coats had either been already claimed or donated to charity. I asked Kathy about it, and she said she wasn’t sure about the coat, but I could try it on to see how it fit. (I was close to Grandpa’s physical build.)

I tried on the coat and found it to be a marvelous fit. Even with the sleeves a little shorter than I’d have liked, it was a good jacket and I hoped that no one else had already laid dibs on it. So, coat still on me, I walked into the living room and asked, “Say, this is a great coat! I’d love to have it if no one else has claimed it.”

After a moment’s pause, Margaret looked right at me and said with a hint of surprise and disbelief in her voice, “That’s my jacket!”

Um…oops? In an attempt to dispel the sudden awkwardness of the moment, I immediately flashed her a sincere smile and said, “It really is a nice coat.”

To which Margaret retorted, “I also have a bright red jacket. Do you want to try that on too?”

Gary, Kathy and JP couldn’t say anything; they were laughing too hard.

So there you have it: after months of apparent quiet, Chaos-no-Baka returns in full, infamous glory! I have a suspicion that I won’t be living down that particular moment for quite a while. But with any luck, I can properly distract you from giggling at my stupidity with this link: www.pmsbuddy.com (Which tells me that today is a low-level PMS threat day.)

Labels: Chaos no Baka and the leather coat of embarrassment

posted by Phillip at 7:08 AM

 


As of when I began to write this, Mel and I were in Connecticut, though usually we aren't commonly found down there. (This naturally requires a quick hello out to Sean, who is usually in Connecticut but wasn't for the duration of our trip. Were I to possess a fedora of my own, I would doff it in your general direction and wonder how we manage to end up being near each other’s ponds when the other’s not around.)

This blog entry obviously is a good indicator that we survived the trip there and back, as well as everything that happened in between. And many, many anecdotal things did indeed happen…and I was for the most part unable to blog about them while being physically down in CT. At best, you know that seniors take their casino bingo games very seriously.

VERY SERIOUSLY.

It scared me. But that’s like jumping into the middle of the movie without any surrounding context. This requires a little bit of rewinding…as well as my need to grumble about how I have to adapt to typing with a different sized computer keyboard yet again.

Grab that online Delorean, crank up the Jigawatts and have those tires squeal to the sound of 88m.p.h, because we’re leaping back to the Wednesday of last week--the day before Mel & I left for CT. Why are we going that far back? Well, sadly it’s key to properly understanding what happened the next day.

So…Wednesday. If you’ve been keeping up with this little bit of nowhere (and if you are, then you’re doing a slight better job of it than I am, and I’m the blogger, dammit!), then you know that on Tuesday I received that joyous notice from Head Office about the entire store needing to be rearranged *before* Sunday. With my absence guaranteed for the weekend and 4 days following it, I lamented in the knowledge that I had to change around the store before I left. (Because if Head Office surprised my store with a visit while I was gone, they’d forgo that pesky earth logic and bitch about it…and I’d be forced to call my vacation shirt while I stalked down the Montreal and shoved a 29” Air Canada suitcase up each of their asses...sideways.)

In a feat of sheer awesomeness, suicidal tenacity and utter stupidity, I literally rearranged half the store during my Wednesday shift. While everything looked a little rough round the edges, I managed to switch around all the luggage, all the bunks and the entire wall o’ purses. That night, I was very tired.

Which brings us to Thursday: the day Mel and I were departing. I had to work the morning shift, with the plan to leave mid-afternoon. Everything was packed. I had done all I could. I was exhausted from the previous day, but I was ready to face the world. But first, a bowl of cereal.

Mistake number one right there, folks.

The milk had a slightly off-kilter taste. By no means was it riding the train to funky town, but one taste and I knew it had at the very least bought a first-class ticket. This level of unpleasantness I’ve stomached before without incident, so I thought little of it and ate my cereal.

Two hours later, and I was paying for my arrogance and Head Office’s silly Visual Merchandising demands. Oh, how I was paying. I have never been so grateful to have a bathroom in the back of the store, because I abused that poor thing. I honestly believe too that on any other day, I’d have been fine, but my sheer exhaustion proved to be my immune system’s undoing.

Numerous stomach purges later, I was somehow able to stand and finish receiving our (beautifully small) stock. The afternoon shift employee was also very understanding in letting me stand around and try not to vomit on customers.

Soon enough my shift ended…and Mel embarked on an 8 ½-hour car trip with me, the plague monkey, sitting next to her. Mind you, being able to sit down actually helped. By the time we were halfway done with the driving, I was more hungry than sick, and a quick stop for a burger cleared away the last vestiges of Funkytown du Lait.

The drive down was long...oh, how New York state drags on...but the border crossing was swift and ridiculously simplistic. Earlier on, Mel had double-checked with the border authorities regarding what sorts of papers we might need for Shady's papers. And the man on the other side told in no uncertain terms, "Ma'am, I have been working here for eight years now, and quite honestly, it will be easier for your dog to cross into the US than your Canadian husband."

I guess that means if the border guards get extra prickly years down the road, Shady will be the one riding shotgun and I'll be hiding in the backseat. “Why no, officer, there are no Canadians in this car! Just a cute, cuddly puppy!”

However, on a slightly morbid note, we ended up passing through the Buffalo Airport area about 2-3 hours before that passenger plane went down. It's not exactly a nice news report to walk into once you reach your point of destination.

During the drive, I stayed proactive in staying awake by discovering the wonders of Red Bull. Now Mel tells me that Red Bull may very well be made with bull bile…which does certainly explain why it tastes like ass…but damned if it’s not effective in wiring your brain back into modes of higher functioning. I very much intend to drink Red Bull again if a long drive or late night’s ever in the future.

We arrived at Mel’s mother’s house late on Thursday night.

For better and (mostly) for worse, Mel’s mom had managed to do something unpleasant to her back, resulting in her needing to sleep on the couch in the living room. So Mel & I got unexpectedly upgraded to the master bedroom for our sleeping arrangements. In the end I think this was a good thing, as Sammy the Ambiguously Gay Schnoodle wasn’t prone to barking/crying at night once we went upstairs.

Sammy was certainly happy to see us again, as evidenced by how much time he spent with Mel or myself. And he and Shady were mostly civil with each other. There were times she wanted to be alone and he wanted to play, and we were forced to play peacekeeper, but this time around Sammy was learning that Shady didn’t want to always play, and Shady seemed to resign herself to the fact that Sammy wasn’t going to magically disappear and leave her in peace.

However, by the end of the week, Shady refused to go outside with Sammy. At best I could coax her to the stairs leading down to the front entry, whereupon she’d lay down and give me the most unimpressed stare ever. I’d take Sammy out, and the instant he was back inside and racing up into the living room, Shady would saunter down to the landing and head straight outside.

Ah, our fuzzy little diva.

Now comes the part where I get to regale you in the ever-popular segment that I like to call: Random Things That Happened Down In Connecticut.

I destroyed everyone in two consecutive games of Trivial Pursuit. (Though to be fair, the dice was against poor Mel, since she could never seem to roll onto a pie space.) And perhaps it’s because I’m now older and have gained more knowledge& experience, but the 20th anniversary game edition, while updated with new questions, seemed to be disturbingly easy. Oh well, I can always watch Jeopardy to get my intellectual ego knocked back off its pedestal.

I never did find the soundtrack to Repo: The Genetic Opera, even though Hot Topic claimed to have it. Instead all I ended up with at that store was a menacing display of Twilight Merchandise that threatened to devour me if I broke eye contact with it.

Mel & I helped her sister make hand-rolled sushi, a first for all of us. Though in all fairness, she and her sister worked on rolling everything while I washed & boiled the rice. And nothing exploded or melted either. Amazing…

I discovered that sometimes you find the strangest deals ever at Walmart. The local one near Mel’s family had the Inu Yasha season 6 DVD box set…for $30. Yes, I did a double take too when I saw the tag, but I price-scanned the damned thing and it came up at $30 for the entire season. It’s pretty crazy, considering any place you can find it in Canada has it retailing for about $100.

The family dinner conversations were beautifully inappropriate, ranging from bowel movement softness to rude noises to sexual innuendo. Please keep the following fact in mind: for once, I didn’t start or contribute to any of these.

While wandering one of the higher-end malls (that area’s equivalent of Toronto’s Yorkdale Mall), I found a store that had a façade remarkably similar to the beach house / cabana design of Banana Republic or Ambercrombie & Finch. Intrigued to see what sort of clothes they had, I ventured inside. A brief layout of the store: the front landing split into three long corridors, with the central one sunken in by about 3-4 stairs, and they all merged back together for one room at the very back of the store. The young lady standing at the front landing smiled at me and asked if I needed anything. I smiled back and said I was just browsing. She gave me an odd look. Perhaps that should have been my first clue. I ventured down the central aisle, which looked like a very chic cross between a Victorian study and a nightclub. Then I noticed the lingerie. And the ladies underwear. And the enormous bra display at the back of the store. Well, that suddenly explained the odd look I had received going in. Needless to say, I backpedaled out fairly quick.

Which brings us to Today’s Lesson: lingerie stores can have very deceptive store fronts.

Beyond that, there was the usual familial togetherness and goings-on. Soon enough, it was the Thursday of our departure, so we bid everyone a good-bye and packed up the car. For this return trip, we somehow managed to fit a large suitcase, a duffly bag, a 32” flatscreen TV, a Christmas tree in a box, plus ourselves, the dog and random other gifts into our Yaris rent-a-car. I have mad organizational skills. (And yet I still suck at Tetris.)

We were nervous about getting stopped and/or harassed at the border for all the obvious stuff we had in the car. Turns out we had forgotten one crucial thing: this is Canada Customs we’re talking about. We answered exactly 3 questions before getting waved along. My ID never left the car. Mel had to stick her Permanent Residence card under the guy’s nose before he even seemed to car. Not that I’m complaining, but wow, that was lax.

This catches us up with the present. I returned to the store and discovered that while it needed work, it wasn’t the unmitigated disaster I had been bracing myself to walk into. As of today, I’ve revamped everything the way I want it to look (with a few, small nip & tucks left to finish) and even caught up on all the backlog paperwork from my time away.

Sadly, it’ll probably take longer to square away everything in the apartment. But until then, this is me signing off and promising you that for my next entry, it’ll either be the Chaos-no-Baka tale or the Very Virile Book Report. And I promise it’ll show up this week.

Mostly.

Probably.

Maybe.

Labels: This tag contains equal bits of Connecticut and lingerie and Sammy the Wonder Schnoodle and tainted milk

posted by Phillip at 4:27 AM