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.

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:”