Monthly Archives: October 2013

29

Oct. ’13

Gravity, It’s Yer Friend

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So yeah, I got fired from my job today because of you, rat bastard internet, for giving me the forum to vent, rave, tell stories, lay my shit out, share my feelings because heaven forbid, someone might get offended. But! I still love you and have no regrets because I just don’t. I’m too old to be compliant and that job had a shelf life, let’s not kid ourselves. The last shift before I was sent to the principal’s office  manager for some protocol fuckery, I got into a staring contest with a can of white base Glidden paint and it won. It said: “I got you, bitch” and I was actually truly terrified for a few moments. I can’t be slinging paint forever! My knees will give out and my hands are wretched and I have a callous the size of a plum tomato on my pinky toe. What is my game plan? Existential angst times infinity, hookers, that is what I felt at that moment until I gave into popping another Fishermen’s Friend into my mouth. I had a lozenge salad on the counter at work that is comprised of Fishermen’s Friend, Halls, and Werthers. I was totally trying to go cold turkey on those things but I have an addiction, sir, and they make me feel alive and ready to pipe up and say the shit I gotta say.

That very same day my fate was sealed and I didn’t even know it. This blog is like just my dog, they both give me great comfort but they are both such assholes. I can’t take my dog for a walk without major embarrassment with her pulling at the leash and barking randomly like a crazy bitch and this blog does exactly the same thing. But I love them both so very much! And at night when my dog is asleep, she curls on my feet and makes sweet snoring sounds. So peaceful and serene. And I figure my blog, when it sleeps at night, does the same thing that Sandra Bullock is doing in that still from the movie “Gravity,” kind of just hovers and floats out in space. Maybe somebody notices and reads it because they just clicked on a link to “Kate Upton’s tits.” It’s so random, but they are my words and they are out there, floating and snoring out in the blogoshpere.

During my “suspension” aka pre-firing holiday weekend, I went to see “Gravity” at the Scotiabank Theatre downtown. I have to say, no one is less impressed at a 3-D cinematic experience more than me, kids. I have an astigmatism in my left eye so I am convinced the extra money is not worth it for my impaired vision. I can’t see peripherally and the the little zings of debris that pop out of the screen are too few and far between to make this a worthwhile, just saying, soooooo not worth the money, $18 and $20 for parking, that is just crazy town. You could totally get away with Netflixing this on your laptop. Yes I am getting old because I avoid the theatre but I don’t care.

But!

What an amazing, awesome, disturbing, inspiring movie though, 3-D glasses aside. Fear, anxiety, nausea, and dread and then some bravery all rolled into 90 minutes of nail-biting. I think everyone needs to see this movie when they are faced with the unknown. I know, it’s all relative, Sandra Bullock is floating precariously in motherfucking space, sucking up all the oxygen in her helmut and I am in the manager’s office, sucking on my very last Fisherman’s Friend, at that home improvement box store that will remain nameless, being terminated. She wins at fear factor but both of us need the spirit guide of George Clooney, some vodka, and a couple of parachutes.

Actually being fired was so strange and surreal that I wrote a poem about it, gather round, kids:

Waiting my fate

He is more than an hour an a half late

Did he say 9 or 10?

It’s 10:30 now, wtf?

I’m sure he said 9

He’s forgotten all about me which means everything will be fine

Wow, it’s almost 11

Maybe I should come back later, nothing rhymes with 11, yo I’m just going to go downstairs

Oh, there he is

Manager boss turning the corner with his Tim Hortons coffee cup in tow

His omnipresent rueful smile

Says he means business

He looks nothing like George Clooney

But a little Tom Hanks, kind of, but with lighter hair

Would not hit it, just saying

I stopped rhyming fyi because things are getting real

My mouth is dry and my hands are shaking

For some reason I am carrying a blank piece of paper

What for again?

Oh yes! So I could write a note

Saying I was here at 9

And you weren’t and it’s 11 and I’m going to go home but will come later like everything is N*O*R*M*A*L

He says (get this):

WAIT HERE FIVE MINUTES I NEED TO GET MYSELF IN ORDER

And now that I am writing this poem, I think:

WELL PLAYED, SLY, CONTROLLING, PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE DOUCHEBAG

Except my fate is in his hands and at the time I’m thinking:

FUCKING ASSHOLE I’VE BEEN WAITING TWO HOURS, SERIOUSLY?

Five minutes later, I have somehow accumulated some saliva

And grown some phantom testicles

That carry me up the stairs

To his office

Where he states my fate

***********************************************

I wish I was a better poet, maybe something to work on during my down time. Anyway, being fired is not a great feeling and being fired for a bullshit vague reason is even more perplexing but in the end, I don’t really care all that much because as I said, it was a job with a shelf life and a launching pad for other endeavours. Yes, that is how I roll with the punches, don’t look back, ho! I hate the expression “everything happens for a reason,” in this case, it’s probably true that I created my own fate. So there’s that to suck on. I’m really gonna miss my job, I cannot lie. I cried in his office and if it wasn’t for the graciousness of another manager, I may have left bitter and angry. I’m going to miss my co-workers and the little games we played to make the day more amusing. This was the good clean one called Word of the Day: Pick an odd random word like “horse” and the challenge is that by the end of your shift, you had to use that word to a customer in conversation. You need to bring it up with gracefully like; “Oh, this mahogany coloured stain you chose is the exact shade like of hide of the HORSE I had when I was an adolescent girl. Oh how I love to ride him, his name was Tyrell.” Hilarity will ensue, I promise, if you are five minutes shy of your shift ending and you haven’t said the WOD yet, literally, you will just look at a customer and say “horse,” “lizard,” or “snowflake” for no reason whatsoever and they will look at you like you are a crazy mofo. GOOD TIMES!

“You made the department fun and everyone loved working with you,” is what she said, “whatever you do, you will be great.” Which were kind and comforting words that made me feel a little less afraid when I walked out the door …She is my George Clooney…I need a find new space station…

As I left the dust and the smell of lumber behind me, I realized fuck yeah, I got my mojo back and no one can take that away. So there’s that.

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25

Oct. ’13

A Portrait of a Young Lady (Age 20)

img037That’s me at age twenty, what’s going on in my head, who the fuck knows. I seem kind of happy but I was probably worried about when some stupid French Canadian dude would call me on a rotary phone without an answering machine. Also it looks like was most likely trying to grow out a haircut which is the Groundhog story of my life and obviously had no issues with ironing clothes which remains the same a billion years years later. And if I do say so myself, I did rock the best eyebrows EVAR and too bad I didn’t have the technology back then to Instagram #demcaterpillars. They would have had twenty billion likes in the context of 1980s, #amirite #BrookeShields.

My daughter, Evangeline, is twenty and my new BFF from the Deep, Jessica, is the same age, both born in that industrious worker bee year of 1993.  Evangeline and Jessica are both off-the-charts smart in that way that modern children are: The wave of humanity that was born before 1980’ish have brains made of made with the consistency of moist popcorn and crusty cheese but the babies that came after that are intellectually embedded with industrial strength hard wire and that amazing expanding foam sealant, hence their ability to fix your remote control out of “closed caption” mode with their left hand whilst sexting their boyfriends with their right. I can’t even figure out which channel “Two Broke Girls” is on and if I did have a boyfriend, he would probably not want my calloused, gnarly hands near him. Those young hos sure know their way around the Shoppers Drugmart and Sephora in order to be all shiny and new, I am too goddamn lazy for all that, most of the time. However, both my 20-year-old mentors have convinced me to buy body butter in order to have soft skin, get bangs trimmed regularly, and actually brush the hair so it doesn’t shed every where. I have so much to learn from the youth, it’s just a matter of applying myself.

When I was twenty, I worried about boys, clothes, makeup, hair, my university education, in that order. There was no internet to educate or placate, and we, as a band of youth, didn’t really care about environmental issues and we didn’t have LOLCats or communicate in memes. We were a product of the plastic generation, we didn’t invent shit, that was the job of the Baby Boomer trail blazers, we tail-enders just went along with it and bought all the crap and then blithely rode the wave, until this happened:

Evangeline recently said to me straight up and in angst after reading all that Monsanto propaganda on the internet for the last couple of years:  “You ate all the GMOs that gave me asthma, eczema, and anxiety disorders.”

Me (always on the defensive): “But I only ate one Pop Tart ever in my life.”  I also ate a bazillion Cheetos and drank a milliton of Diet Coke when Aspartame first burst out of the rodeo, I am that old and that dumb. Ugh, who knew back then? She is absolutely right, I am arguably part of the worst, most feckless and mindless generation in the history of the human race, The Slackers suck balls.

The portrait of Evangeline at age 20 is that of a post-modern Rosie the Riveter out to change the world. I am just so relieved that somebody has a plan because I am way too lazy to even google what a GMO is…that wikipedia page? TL;DR.

And then there is the portrait of Jessica last Sunday night at work, her arse propped up on the Paint Dept drive thru fence, hovering over the tint machine, wearing plastic gloves and wielding a scraper, and whilst she gouges up the dried-up globs of colorant, you could totally see her mighty triceps at work. She is cleaning around the guts of the dispenser like a boss and then there is me, on the other side, spritzing a water bottle and just swirling magenta and yellow around with my bare fingers, creating “art” and then pretending it is makeup and smearing it on my face, wiping the rest orange bib. She yells at me: “FUCK KRISTIN! THIS IS NOT A JOB FOR YOU!”

They are the generation that will clean the mess and forge ahead. I do have some niblets wisdom to share but they are smarter than me as I am now and most definitely waaaaaay ahead of me when I was their age.

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and guide myself with my old lady smarts and then maybe I would have saved myself some grief. But whatever, everyone needs to learn from experience. It was a rocky road but it’s all good now, sort of. Or maybe I’m just used to the peril. But just for fun and blog fodder, if I had any wisdom for my younger self, I would send these pro-tips through the time machine:

1. About those boys that you waste so much time fretting over: Don’t worry so much if they call or not, you will forget most of their names anyway, I’m not even kidding. Remember that dude you dated at twenty? He was French and 3 inches shorter than you but that’s all you will even remember about him aside from his Jack Rabbit banging style. They will come and go, get used to it and for fucksake don’t get too attached.  You will have some good times and some wicked dry spells. Become more ambidextrous because that swirl and twirl thing you do with your right hand will get boring soon. Hey! Just had a million dollar idea: The Dildo of the Month Club! Stay stimulated by having a new vibrator in the mail every month. Genius. But like a true Slacker, I will do nothing about it.

2. Stay away from tequila. Every physical injury you will sustain is a direct result from tequila or shots or Jaegermeister. You will break your wrist, sprain your ankles tenfold, crack your tailbone, shave off your eyebrows (why did you do that?) and stub countless toes. You are so stupid and I can’t believe I still have to remind you to this day.

3. You know how babies and small children make you nervous? Guess what? Your maternal instincts will kick in and you will give birth to a girl and a boy. A million dollar family for you! You are actually going to be a kickass awesome mom because they will grow up to be smart, kind, and thoughtful young people who you actually like to have around. And it’s not because you got lucky, you cracked the code of effective parenting which is talking to them like they are smarter than you and not giving them a reason to rebel. So kudos to you. Your future self will be a great mom but! you will be a shit wife. Sorry about that.

4. You will have maybe 12 good hair days in your entire life. Maybe 14, tops. Sorry about that, too.

5. Thong underwear. Never even once. I’m begging you, do not pick up that Victoria Secret catalogue from the dentist office and start ordering lacy lingerie that you will never wear and will clutter your drawers and taunt you for years to come. LACY BRAS ARE ITCHY AND THONGS ARE NOT COMFORTABLE!

6. Brace yourself for Age 37. Your mojo goes on steroids. I can’t even tell you what to do because you are clearly out of your mind and you won’t listen anyway. Just a heads up is all and for godsake, wear at least some underwear when you are wearing a skirt. Oh my God.

7. You will maintain the brain of a 12 year-old pubescent boy which is awesome but you need to remember to stay out of the sun and take of your skin because you are going to become very vain about maintaining your youthful appearance. Fucking Botox is expensive! I know you don’t even know what that is yet but trust me, you better start a fund for that now because it’s 12 dollars a unit and you need at least 25 on your elevens. You will know what sort of math fuckery I am talking about in due time. Too bad Dr. Singh is married because he would have been a good catch. STOP SQUINTING, BITCH!

8. You know how in high school you got in trouble for drawing dirty cartoons in math class? This sort of subversive behaviour will be a constant in your life. You will find your voice and say things out loud that maybe you shouldn’t. This will lead to much embarrassment and cringe memories that will keep you up at night. But you can’t stop or shut up, it’s like some giddy force is compelling you to write a blog that reveals all your secret thoughts and share them over the internet for all to read. I do not know what is wrong with you but keep up the good work.

In the end, little ho, you don’t need to fret so much. You have a good family and you will make very good friends and keep some of them you have already have. Yes, you will be misunderstood by some people but don’t worry about them. They are the ones who when they read “Animal Farm” in high school thought it was a story of talking barnyard pigs, not a satyrical allegory of the Russian Revolution. Haters gonna hate and fuck ’em if they can’t take joke. But for the most part, you will find love and support from your close peeps and even some strangers from far way places in the deep, dark internet. Remember this always: You is kind, you is smart, you is important.

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11

Oct. ’13

The Sun is Bullshit

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The low winter sun is fucking with my circadian rhythm. It makes its way up over the roof of that newly constructed house across the street that chopped down the shade tree because it was “diseased” and then it streams through my stupid straw window coverings imported from Bali (but they go so amazingly well with my Japanese-inspired wallpaper from the U.K. that I spent an arm and a leg on, so I’m not replacing them, no way, no how, because hello boys, my bedroom looks like a hot jungle fuckpad where you want to want “Seinfeld” and I don’t have that no tv in the bedroom rule)  it would be okay if it just streamed through in a 45 degree north-west fashion and settles on a spot where wall meets ceiling but no, it hits the mirror on the west wall and then burns its fiery shaft of light into my face:2 “Wake up Sleeping Fugly, you have two hours of nonsensical ruminating about your To Do List before you go about your day slinging paint and tubes of caulking.”

1. Update Passport. Soooo, I googled like you should and I need to print out application and get photo. My hair is out of control. Get haircut, too? No, that’s too much. I just need to get one of those “wands” that make those loose curls that Carolina and Jessica have. I am so jelly of their lids. Bitches with their shiny hair and nimble fingers and it’s not like they have time on their hands, they work at the Depot, too. They get up extra early to do this. I am telling you, this new generation are the worker bees and they will save the world with their practical know-how.

Waking up early would be good and natural if I had a regular schedule but some days I am slinging said cans of paint until 11 p.m. and when I get home at 11:30, I am wired for cocktails and monkey business, ie trolling through Facebook and gossip sites whilst the infomercials are on. On those days I’m lucky if I get to sleep by 2 and this is not natural for me. They also started to give me random morning shifts that begin at 6 a.m. which means waking up at a shocking 5 a.m., Lord Jesus, there’s a fire, but I complained so hard that I have noticed they are no longer on my schedule. I CAN’T POOP SO EARLY IN THE MORNING AND I DEFINITELY CANNOT POSSIBLY EVER IN A MILLION YEARS LAY SOME PIPE AT THE HOME DEPOT PUBLIC WASHROOM SO UNLESS YOU GET A PRIVATE ONE LIKE AT STARBUCKS, I WILL HOLD IT IN ALL DAY AND BE CRANKY TO THE CUSTOMERS! Sometimes when you tell people something straight up, they hear you and so the good peeps at the HD seem to be respecting my shitting regime according to the schedule, knock wood.

Anyway, last week to get around the early shifts, I worked 9 straight days, splitting my shifts up. It was a lot of math (can’t go over your allotted hours!) and dick-wrangling with some furious text messaging and now as a reward for a job well done, I have two days off in a row, which feels like an eternity. I have nothing pressing to do EXCEPT for the fact the yesterday before my afternoon shift, I washed my sheets and my sneaky cellphone hitched a ride in one of the pillowcases. I have to contend with its drowned corpse but I don’t even hardly care, fuck it, I’m going phoneless. Normally such a boneheaded careless move would have sent me off the edge, spiralling into such a panic that I would be high-tailing off to an Apple store in my pyjamas and #nomakeup, sweating and standing in line for a hundred and one years for an appointment at the genius bar. While waiting, I would concoct a twisted pack of lies about how my phone just up and died! but! maybe possibly it got splashed with water that somebody else sprayed on it when I wasn’t looking. I am such an asshole sometimes, and as a retail slave, I hate customers who make shit up like that. The other day a lady came into the paint department and stated: “I just washed my windowpane with water and all the colour off. Blue. All the blue came off.” (and yes, she was Polish)

And I: “Really? Was the paint dry?”

And she: “Yes the paint was dry. All the blue came off.”

Then me: “You painted your windowpane blue?”

She: “Yes. All the blue came off. With just water”

Me: “Water? Really, just water?”

She: “Yes, just water. The blue came right off. On the rag.”

Me: “Okay so you painted your windowpane blue and you let it dry and then the paint came off when you washed it with water?”

She: “Not the paint, the paint stayed on but the blue came off!”

Me: “But the colour is infused into the paint, so if the blue came off then the paint went with it. Maybe you didn’t prep  the surface properly before you painted?” (P.S. when I paint, I do not prep shit except wipe off dirt with my elbow, I slap paint on anything and it stays there for years. What exactly is your problem, asshole on the phone calling the Depot when you should be 1-800ing the HELP 24-hour Hotline number clearly written on the paint can? Maybe you people need to stop neurotically picking at your walls and then complaining about the product when your own surreptitious subterfuge is at play. It’s not the paint, it’s you and your busy fingernails, OCD, do a solid and go volunteer nit-picking some lice out of the kids’ heads at your local rec center.)

And then she exploded: “MY HUSBAND PAINTED AND I CLEANED! AND THE BLUE CAME OFF”

Obviously there was some other issue going on in her household. The rest of the conversation went on for so long that I actually became bored. I hardly ever get bored. Frustrated and Lonely are simmering on the back burners of my emotional stove and Crazed Out of My MInd and Horny As A Teenage Boy in a Campground are boiling away in the front, pretty much on any given day. Boredom is not allowed on my menu. If you constantly bored, you should probably let yourself fall from the tree and go walk into traffic.

So I had to shuffle her along because she was clearly more insane than any Home Depot associate should ever have to deal with BUT! this is why I love the Deep, the crazies make everything seem like you are in a distorted reality. Every day is like an acid flashback, such wow, it’s probably all the dust and chemicals in the air. And wait, she really did say WINDOWPANE, remember that, hippie hookers? Whoa, maybe I am hallucinating everything, including this blog.

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I need a battery recharge and hang out at home in the dark for the day. BUT there’s more to do:

2. Make appointment for “annual” physical…has it really been 3 years? I probably have dust-induced cancer, scared. But I have no phone yet so I can’t possibly call, cancer will have to wait.

3. Get Car Wash. I wash my car like you bitches go to the nail salon, I take pride in my box. But not today. Just rain already. I hate you, Sun. Go hide behind a fluffy cloud. But not Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White OC-130 because I don’t want to see that on my Day Off either.

My whole whacked out schedule is messing with my mind, making me forgetful and my inner clock is out of sync, and it used to be so precise. Every day is one big lump of day and the nights are spent dreaming of dispensing paint and giant Game of Throne-style orgies where the dudes have penises shaped like donuts and churros and nothing quite fits inside…help me.

So today on my first day off after 9-day acid trip, after being woken up by the Sun’s mighty laser boner at 6 a.m, I set out to do some chores like figure what to do about out my phone, buy Kleenex which is so pressing that it by-passes the To Do List. I have a motherfucking cold that I have been ignoring and has turned into an actual illness, possibly lung cancer. Okay,I have been watching too much Breaking Bad in one sitting. Also, it turns out during my Home Depot 9-day dust acid trip I have forgotten to eat for at least a week and as I walk to the car, my pants are literally falling down with each step.

“Go buy some new pants, Peterson!” Colleen yells out from the porch next door. I have unconscious anorexia! What a trip! The thought of shopping fills me with fear and dread. And true confession: I HATE that when I lose weight it comes off my ass first, then everything literally goes tits up. My boobs and middle pudge need to be tempered, not my butt. I had a trainer who would always say about weight loss and gain: “First one hired, last one fired” when it came to the myth of “spot reduction.” In other words, fat is the boss and in my case my butt is the minion, just an unpaid intern and my tits are that asshole Donald Trump. This makes me unhappy. I will never twerk proper. But today, I have other fish to fry, fuck new pants, body issues and definitely fuck the dead phone, the couch is yelling at me; “MAMA HURRY UP AND BRING DORITOS!”

Also as I am getting into the car, Colleen tells me I need to watch the show “Derek” on Netflix.

4. Watch “Derek” on Netflix. Best day EVAR: I watched the entire Ricky Gervais series in the darkness of my living room whilst the asshole Sun shined its last bit of bullshit rays on the falling leaves of autumn, who cares how nice the day was…bring on the darkness! And if you haven’t seen or heard of this show, GET ON IT NOW, it is so good. It’s funny and it’s sad at the same time. This is the fine balance I am striving for in writing and why I spew this shit out in a public forum. The acting is amazing. If I tell you what it’s about, you might go meh, no want to watch that, but it’s Ricky Gervais! And he’s playing an autistic 50-year-old man who volunteers in a nursing home and it’s shot like “The Office,” how could it not be brilliant?

After I watched the final episode (there are only 7 20-minute episodes so it’s only about 2 and a half hours total, you can do it too in one sitting too, my antsy ADHD friends) It reminds me that Getting Old is scary and is way on the bottom of my To Do list. But first:

5. Visit Parents. Tomorrow on Day Off Part Two, I will contend with getting a new phone. I have made a civilized on-line appointment with the Apple store in the Upper Canada Mall (no wait list!) where I will just say “it stopped working” and nothing else and they will give me a new one for $169 and I will suck it up. There will be no drama or panic attacks. I will also visit my parents who live in this brand spanking new retirement home that has a confusing cruise ship vibe when you walk in, it makes me a tad bit anxious when I go there: Is it the Love Boat or the Titanic? But then Julie bounces into the lobby with her clip board and then phew, it’s “The Love Boat,” exciting and new, come aboard, we’re expecting you. But it’s a tad too serene for my taste if I’m going to park there, it could use a bit of Ricky Gervais and his misfit buddies performing Duran Duran on the Lido Deck. Just saying.

And as I am writing this in the dark I have an epiphany:

5. Get Light Blocking Blinds For the Bedroom Window. I can keep my dumb straw curtains but have shades underneath! But then why would I do that on my day off when I can do that at the Depot on Saturday? And possibly that hot dude from the Flooring can cut them for me and then it wouldn’t seem like a chore and I can maybe practice my flirting techniques before I dry up and turn into drywall dust. Bitches got to multi-task at all times.

Here’s a clip from “Derek:”

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