I am now THAT old.

This is the week. It's the week that I bought a high-end bird feeder so that I can watch the birds from my kitchen window and I discovered that, from the side, I have jowls. 

And then, as I headed to Shoppers Drug Mart to replace my bottle of Women 50+ multi-vitamins, I realized that my level of frugality rivals that of an octogenarian. 

Recently, when I had to stay at a small pharmacy for 15 minutes after my flu shot,  I was pretty psyched to discover Canada Style at Home magazine's Christmas issue - for $6.99! It's been easily a decade since I've bought a magazine. It's a blast from the past to my early days as a stay-at-home mom when I would open a magazine and be completely transported. 

Christmas is my jam. I'm that person who, in the dead of summer, if I find a Christmas store? Frickin' ECSTATIC! If I had the start up funds to RUN a Christmas store? Done. And not one of those crappy add-your-name-to-an-ornament stores. I'm talking high end - Patience Brewster Krinkles, Kurt Adler Nutcrackers, glass-ornaments-shipped-from-Germany shit. If you want to see me in a near-constant state of animated joy, catch me anywhere between November 12 and when David and Rissa go back to school after the holiday break. 

So, my trip to Shoppers for the vitamins, that literally list me as being middle aged, is just that little bit easier because I figure that I can grab maybe four or five holiday magazines and distribute them around my home so that if I ever feel the need? I can get a quick hit of Holiday Heroin. This will be great and economical, because I'd recently been on Amazon sourcing retro decorating coffee table books which were upwards of $35 a piece. Which, I'm sure that we can all agree, is too much.

I look at the magazine rack and I'm very happy to discover that there are tonnes of Christmas magazines. Hooray!! I will just grab up... this one... to start... and... 

When, may I ask, did magazines start costing $15.99? Or $17.99? I go from magazine to magazine and the cheapest Christmas magazine on the rack was $12.99. For a magazine?!? I mean, it's just a magazine right? Printed on paper? From a large organization like Better Homes and Gardens? Or House Beautiful or Oprah? Oprah's was $17.99. What the actual fuck? It's a MAGAZINE!!!

And then I start to doubt myself. Had I completely confabulated the $6.99 price from before?? From when I was waiting to see if I'd go into anaphylaxis from my flu shot? I don't think so, because I distinctly remember thinking that $6.99 was a perfectly reasonable price to pay for that magazine. 

And then I recognize that this it one of those 'unmet expectations' moments. Where you have an idea in your head and then reality doesn't match up with it and you freak the fuck out. So, I breathe in. And breathe out. It's all good. They're double or almost triple the anticipated price, but that's okay, because I'll just buy... two... magazines then.

Except I can't. I just can't spend almost THIRTEEN DOLLARS on a magazine! I have the magazine in my fully-sanitized hands - because we're still in the midst of a PANDEMIC -  and then I put it back and then I pick it up again and replace it. I just can't!

I look like a crazy person for the entire 8 minute walk back home. Gesticulating wildly - talking to myself. "Grumble, grumble, grumble... THIRTEEN DOLLARS?!? Grumble, grumble, grumble SEVENTEEN-NINETY-NINE?!?!?" 

So I get back home and I hop onto Amazon. My logic has me believing that spending $35+ on a hardcover coffee table book is now more than reasonable. (It's not.) I start sourcing coffee table books, because if I'm spending a ridiculous amount of money - it's at least going to be a hardcovered something. But all I can find are Country Christmas Crafts and Southern Living Christmas and Christmas Baking. I don't want to do crafts, nor do I want to decorate my plantation!! And I sure as shit do not need any more holiday baking recipes. And now I can't even find that Mid-Century Christmas book that had me all fired up to get the magazines in the first place! 

But then I get a brainwave! Maybe there are discounted magazines somewhere from the clearing houses!! 

Nope. 

Not for anything related to Christmas decorating. 2021's issues are still all $12.99 or more. Except for Style at Home, which seems to be the only... Except for STYLE AT HOME!! I google their publisher TVA Publications, and am thrilled to discover, that they offer back issues of actual, physical, hold-it-in-your-hand, magazines!!! I also discover that Style at Home does holiday issues for both November and December!! At a crazy discount from the original cover price! Seriously, the lowest priced issues are from Nov and Dec of 2018 and they are only $1.80 per issue!!! I put 7 holiday issues (one from 2021 at the completely reasonable full price of $6.99 and then two from 2020, 2019 and 2018) into my online basket. HAH! I have foiled the magazine robber barons and their exorbitant prices!!! And then I look at the shipping. It will cost $17.07. 🤦

But you know what? Even with that shipping charge? Totally worth it. I will get 7 magazines shipped to my door in 2 days' time and if I average out the cost of everything?  $7.83 a magazine. And that I am more than willing to pay. And I will be able to peruse those festive magazines as I watch the birds from my kitchen window while doing my jowl-reducing exercises.

***

ps.  Did you know that they make 'decorative' books? Which aren't books at all - they just look like books? You can stack them so that they make you look either well-travelled or festive.  Guess how much they cost in Canada? Go ahead. Take a stab.  $26.77 FOR A FAKE BOOK. You can't open these books. They have no pictures of Christmas or pictures of anything at all in them!! Plus, I just looked at the dimensions, and they're not even coffee table book size. They are 7.5" x 9.25" And they charge $26.77 for a single one. You'd have to spend over $100.00 to achieve the look below!!

The brain, she don't work like she used to...

As I'm writing, I know exactly the word I want to use. It means getting up, but in a sexy, Regency romance kind of way. Sort of like unbending, something akin to having a sexy lap. The word itself? Not a fucking clue.

Any of you know what the word is? Wordhippo did not immediately find it for me. And now, I'm on the cusp of a brain aneurysm trying to find the word as it hides in my hippocampus. Yes, I can make a pun, referencing the thesaurus site that I use, but I can't remember the fucking word.

I used to have a brain that held onto the minutiae of almost every topic. Who was the female lead in Arrival? Amy Adams! Have I seen the movie? NO! But I remember her face from the movie trailers. 

UNFOLDED! I think the word might be unfolded. "Sebastian unfolded his legs and rose." Maybe. Maybe not. It's on the tip of my brain and I can neither confirm nor deny that that is the word I've been searching for.

I have incorrectly purchased shampoo. Three times. THREE. With my crazy-ass curly, brittle hair, I infrequently use shampoo. I'm a big proponent of rinsing the crap out of my scalp and then slathering on the conditioner. As a result, I go through conditioner like... hotcakes? (That phrase isn't even appropriate for this particularly analogy. If my brain was working properly, I would know the exact analogy for my conditioner usage.) 

I recently began to slather on my conditioner and I realized that it was NOT conditioner, but rather shampoo. I went to look at my XL bottle of conditioner and it wasn't conditioner, it was, in fact, shampoo. I'd just purchased the wrong bottle when I went to Shoppers. So I went back and bought the correct bottle of conditioner, except that when I got home, I had purchased the large bottle of shampoo - AGAIN. So I got a refund for the bottle and went to get the proper bottle and, turns out, I purchased ANOTHER bottle of shampoo, which I then had to immediately exchange for conditioner. This means two things: not only is my brain collapsing like a black hole, I have apparently lost my ability to read.

I was searching for my red Pixie pants a while back. The new red pixie pants that I had bought from Old Navy to replace the red Pixie pants that were old enough to look a little faded and worn at the seams. I remember wearing the new pants. I knew I had bought them, but had no clue what had happened to them. The only thing I could think of was that the new red Pixie pants had wound up in a batch of to-be-donated clothes that had gone to charity. So I ordered another pair of red Pixie pants. 

On the day that the new red Pixie pants arrived, I was looking for something in the bathroom closet, and, lo and behold! At the back of the bathroom closet - which is deep, like we-have-pull-out-drawers into-the-eaves-to-utilize-all-the-space-in-the-closet deep - I find my original red Pixie pants. Not in the front. Behind baskets. In the back, back, back of the frickin' bathroom closet! How did they get there? Did I put them there? And if so, WHY?!? Are my family members trying to gaslight me?

There was another thing that makes me certain that I'm descending into early Alzheimer's and I. CAN'T. REMEMBER. WHAT. IT. IS!! But I do know that earlier today I had identified that other thing! Because I remember thinking, HOLY CRAP! Four things are a whole fucking lot! And yeah, I joke, and many other people joke about this, but when I've lost the plot... of my own existence? It scares the crap out of me. 

Also, I just started watching Young Wallander which has a Swedish actor (Adam Gustav Justus Pålsson) who looks remarkably like a taller version of another actor, a musical theatre actor, who also does TV and film. He played King George in the original cast of Hamilton. He's in Mindhunter. He was in the original cast of Spring Awakening and had guest spots on Glee - as Lea Michelle's potential boyfriend, I think?? He's in the new Matrix movie?!? All of which... I KNOW!! I remember all of these things! But I cannot remember the dude's name. And it has me balancing on the edge of madness.

So I just looked him up. It's Jonathan frickin' Groff. Sweet merciful Moses. 

Well, at least I'll be able to sleep tonight. And who knows? Tomorrow may well come and I might have forgotten all of this. Bright side!!

All caulk, all the time...

When we moved into our house 7 years ago, there wasn't a master bedroom closet. Oh, there had been a closet, but it'd been situated in the room such that it blocked all the light from one of the two existing windows. So we'd ripped out that illumination obliterating monstrosity. In its place...? There was nothing. Ergo, there was no way to hide things behind a door, or a curtain or even a frickin' blue tarp. That was when our entire family recognized that I had an affliction. 

As I lay on the floor sobbing, my arms and legs desperately trying to absorb any emotionally grounding properties from the carpet fibres, it became immediately apparent that visual chaos makes me crazy(er).

So it shouldn't have surprised me, that in similar circumstances, I lose all critical reasoning.

This past weekend, we emptied our basement/cellar/dungeon so that we could take a long, hard look at what needs to be done, should we ever want to sell the house. Our house was built over 150 years ago. There isn't a foundation per se. There's rubble, some concrete blocks, dirt and gravel on the... let's call it a floor. At one point, in several places, the floor used to be about a foot higher. Someone had dug down, maybe for added head room? And then they never repoured a basement floor. 

This is the before:

This is the after:

Seeing this empty version of the basement? Joy.

Seeing the deck, which now houses all the crap from within the basement? Panic attack.

I should have known. I should have known by now, that THIS👆? This breaks my brain. 

David was downstairs, raking gravel and I found myself immobilized in the middle of this, unable to start purging because there is too much of EVERYTHING and IT IS EVERYWHERE. We have easily, eight different caulking guns. EIGHT OF THEM. Because why? Because in our dungeon of a basement, things have never been properly organized and categorized, so we just kept buying shit. 

There might be only two people living in our house, but we had 10 paint trays. There were bins WITHOUT LIDS full of electrical bits and plumbing bits and painting and dry walling and hardware bits. There were small appliances (that give no indication from their exteriors what their purposes are), tossed in with random trim scraps and steel wool pads, next to work gloves and twine. There were cardboard boxes that had been left to mold and rot. 

And here I was, standing in the midst of these mis-matched, unlidded, chaotic boxes of crap, unable to reach for anything on account of the fact that I was hyper-fucking-ventilating. And though all that stuff had been down there for seven fucking years and it had literally not been touched since we had moved in (apart from tools and Christmas decorations which have been used at least once a year), I couldn't just toss everything, because why? Because I was paralyzed.  

David came out to throw some stuff into the dumpster.

"How's it going up here?" he asked.

I shook my head. I suspected that if I tried to speak, I'd just burst into tears. I hate doing that.

An instant of impatience crossed his face, before he looked around the deck. And then he looked back at me. Really looked at me. 

"Hey," he said. "Hey. It's okay."

I swallowed and shook my head again. "I can't. I washed the shelves because they're just shelves. But these..." I indicated the dozens of boxes and totes. "These... They... THEY. AREN'T. ORGANIZED!"

"I know," he said, walking slowly towards me. I must have looked like a rabid coyote.

My hands came up, warding him off. If he hugged me now I'd need to be medicated.

"I can't," I said. "I know that it's ludicrous! It's fucking ridiculous! There are people in the world who have problems that are real fucking problems and I should just shut the fuck up and start tossing shit! I know that. But there are boxes that have electrical and plumbing and hardware in them and I don't know what we need to keep and what should be thrown out... because I can see it ALL!! If it was one drawer that I had to sort, I could do that. Fuck, I would LOVE doing one drawer! I excel at sorting drawers!! But this..." I gesticulated wildly with my arms. "This... This is... EVERYTHING!! And I know that ALL the tools and hardware and painting and Christmas decorations are going to have to GO. BACK. DOWN. Into that fucking basement and, and, and... by throwing out this ONE FUCKING LAVA LAMP, it's not even going to make a dent in all of our shit!!" 

"It's okay," he said. "What we're going to do is, we're going to take a break and have some breakfast." He held up a hand to stop me from arguing. "We're going to go in and eat. And we're going to have mimosas with breakfast."

"Mimosas?" I asked.

"Ish. We've got white wine, orange juice and sparkling water. After we eat, we'll go out again and you're going to sort through these three small boxes." He indicated boxes that had solvents and stain in them. "Only these boxes. You're not going to look at any other boxes."

"I'm not?"

"No, you're not. Because it makes you crazy. And we know this. And me leaving you up here to deal with all of this on your own was a bad thing..."

"But I should be able to adult on shit like this..."

"Hey." He held my face in his hands and kissed me softly. "We both know that you become unhinged when confronted with visual chaos. We both know it, but we forget - until we wind up in a situation like this and you lose your ability to cope as a human." He kissed me again. "Okay?"

"Okay," I sniffled. 

When your spouse gets you? Really gets you? Life becomes a lot easier. David's brain exists in a state of near constant logic. He reminds me to press pause so that I can see the order amidst the chaos. My brain exists in a state of near constant emotion.  I remind him to press pause so that he can see human emotion amidst the logic. Thank the Gods that we found each other.

Like wet dog and old towels...

I come down this morning - all ready to bite into the meat of the day. Wait. That sounds revolting. All revved up and ready to go?? Bright eyed and bushy tailed? Better? Worse? Or just more like a lemur?

While heading into the kitchen to make myself some breakfast, I notice that we did not put the cover on our patio furniture last night. There were violent thunder storms and torrential downpours last night. The sofa cushions now look like toddlers who went into the pool in their diapers.

"Crap."

We'd been good all summer. Every night, we'd covered the sofa with extra outdoor fabric that I had fashioned into water-resistant origami, something more upscale than a blue tarp. 

"Why can't we just use the blue tarp?" David had asked.

My eyes had gone very wide - the result of a near stroke. My mouth had opened and closed - I was a big-mouthed bass, ripped from the depths of a fresh water lake.

He'd held up a calming hand. "It's okay. It's okay. We won't use a blue tarp. It's okay my love... Just out of curiosity though, did a blue tarp ever hurt you in anyway?" He had then ducked when I swung at him.

And now, all my well-laid plans have been completely rogered. And not in that "Hey-it's-Wednesday-night-and-the-kid-is-back-at-university" way.  

Standing at the back door, gazing upon the now-amphibious cushions, I drag my hand over my face. I could just ignore them. I could ignore them and my day can go on as originally scheduled. I'd exercise, write a couple of chapters, do some web design, read a play for the character discussion I'm having tonight...  sigh. 

They'll get all mildewy and smell like wet dog and old towels. I look at the sky. Not actively raining at present, but still very cloudy. However, this could all be moot if I check The Weather Network and it forecasts...  Light Rain. Four inch foam cushions cannot dry in light fucking rain. And you can't put foam in the dryer, because Google says that it will either melt or start a dryer fire - not that our massive cushions would even fit in our dryer. For the love of...

3 HOURS LATER...

The cushions, now denuded of their covers and extra ass-squooshing batting, stand on end, draining upon the outdoor wicker sofa. I squeeze the cushions every 10 minutes, forcefully lobbying the liquid to leave its water-logged haven. The batting has been placed in the dryer on delicate, twice for each piece of batting.

And now? Now, the sun is out. And, according to the Weather Network, will be for the rest of day. And although I may never be able to open my hands again from the repetitive strain of deep foam squeezing, and I had to dictate this post, I'm sure that my newfound hand strength will come in handy. My super power will be grabbing villains by their lycra suits and shaking them until they surrender. The authorities will have to help with releasing said villains from my claw-like grasp - but I think I have a solid starting point for a new, and certainly lucrative, career.

Kev? Buddy. What did you do?

As I'm writing at the kitchen table, I intermittently glance out the window - enjoying flashes of flora and fauna in our backyard. The Engleman's Ivy lushly embraces the pergola, the grass is green, there are birds and squirrels, and... a... fox? As I lean to the side of my computer screen, desperate to catch a glimpse of the suspected fox, I almost fall off my chair. I see a fluffy orangey tail disappear around the bushes at the bottom of our yard.

Two thoughts immediately dance around my frontal lobe:

DID I JUST SEE A FOX?!?

HOW CAN I MAKE FRIENDS WITH IT?!?

I'm up on my feet and out the back door. Taking a calm breath, I nonchalantly make my way towards the bushes. I pause at the edge of greenery. I do not want to startle the fox. Our friendship should be predicated on trust and respect. Plus, if a fox is comfortable in our backyard, who's to say that there won't also be a deer, a family of racoons and maybe a couple of porcupines? All living together, like a John Lewis Christmas advert!!

THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!!!

I peer around the bushes.

There, not 20 feet away from me, in my very own backyard... huddling against the shed is... a... dog. A mixed-breed-tail-like-a-fox-probably-a-longhaired-chihuahua-crossed-with-a-corgi kinda dog. I register a moment of slight disappointment before bright-siding that I'm still pretty frickin' psyched to have the opportunity to befriend a new dog.

"Hey buddy! How are you?" I make no sudden movements. 

Now that I'm close enough to look at it properly, I'm pretty sure the wee beastie belongs to the alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep" from across the street. When I've seen it in the past, it's usually tied to the front stoop. It softly growls at me.

"It's okay buddy. You're okay." I take a slow step towards him. More growls.

I reverse my step. "No worries, bud. You are O-KAY." I hunker down and make the typical "tch-tch-tch-tch" noises that one uses when one is desperate to attract an animal. The dog neither growls, nor does it scamper over to leap into my arms.

"Dude," I say. "Hold on a sec!" I run to the house where I have emergency dog biscuits. 

I grab a large-breed biscuit and snap it into three smaller pieces as I make my way down the yard once more.

"Hey bud," I say, holding out a piece of biscuit 10 feet away from the dog. "Do you want a cookie?"

It cocks an eyebrow at me.

"Cookie?"

The dog take two small steps towards me, wagging its tail. I take a step towards the dog and it backs up and growls.

"No worries. No worries." I step back and toss a cookie. The dog grabs it in mid-air, a canine pro. "Good dog!!"

I start moving towards the front yard. "Okay, bud, come with me. I'll walk you home." I toss another cookie, which is immediately scarfed up. "Good dog!" I hunker down and offer another cookie. The dog moves towards me, tail wagging and takes the cookie from my hand. "Good dog!! What a good dog!!"

I walk to the driveway. "Let's get you home." The dog refuses to set foot on the driveway. It looks at the driveway - past the gravel to the road - and then back to me with sad, frightened eyes before booting it to the back yard where it hides behind the bushes again.

Well, now it really seems like the dog doesn't want to go home. Which means that the alleged 'Pharmaceutical Rep' is probably a terrible owner. So I'm going to have to adopt the dog. OBVIOUSLY. Which might be a little awkward for walking the dog, on account of the fact that we share the street with the alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep." So that means that I will either have to spray paint the dog with Just for Men hair colour to disguise it... or dye its fur. Dying the fur will probably be a better long-term solution. First, though, I need to look at its dog tags so that I can use its proper name. For that I will need more cookies. I grab supplies from the house and head to the back yard.

"Hey bud," I say, crouching down to offer a cookie. The dog comes right up to me. We are now friends. I hold the cookie in my left hand and reach very slowly with my right hand to take a gander at the dog's tags. And that is when the dog takes umbrage at my forwardness and bites me. Twice. Because it didn't have the right angle the first time. 

"It's okay buddy." The dog  has retreated several feet away. "You're okay. You're okay. I'm so sorry, I should have not tried to look at that tag. I shouldn't have done that. I recognize that now." I glance down, happy that my hand doesn't really seem... to be... bleeding... that much.   I begin to suspect that the dog and I may not be destined for a long-standing friendship. I heave a heartfelt sigh. I probably need to head over to the alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep's" house and bring him back over here to get his dog. 

I cross the street. I'm about to knock on the door when I hear voices in the backyard. 

"Oh, hey! Hi," I say, giving a jaunty wave with my non-wounded hand. There are two men in the backyard. One is standing and looks like he's visiting his alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep." The other is sitting and looks like he is the alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep." Not that I should be making any assumptions about anyone.

"Is anyone here missing a dog?"

"I am!" says the seated gent. "Where is he?"

"He's uh..." I glance down at my hand, which I am keeping surreptitiously down at my side. There is now a fairly steady stream of blood coming from the bite. "He's in my backyard. Does he have his..." I look at my hand again. "Shots?"

"Yeah! Yeah, he does! Did he bite you?"

"Oh, just a wee nip," I say.

"I'm so sorry! He ran away last night during the thunder storm and he wouldn't come back."

"Awwwww, poor guy! No worries, no worries. Yeah, he's uh... he's in my backyard - he didn't want to cross the road with me."

We walk over to my house and head back towards the shed. There's the dog, looking very apologetic for having bitten me.

"Kev," the alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep" says. "Kev. Buddy. What did you do?"

Okay. The dog's name is Kevin. Can we just marvel at that for a moment?

The guy scoops up Kevin, who lolls in his arms, looking like a fox-tailed, teddy bear now.  My new neighbour thanks me profusely for my help.

"Any time!" I say. I then walk into the house to deal with the fallout from my morning adventures.

"David? Can you help me upstairs for a second ?" Upstairs is where all the First Aid supplies live.

"Sure! What's up?"

"I just have a minor dog bite," I say.

I'm in the bathroom rinsing my wound when David appears Kramer-esque in the doorway. "You have a what?"

"A very small dog bite," I say, gently applying soap to the wound. Now that the adrenaline of having saved Kevin has worn off, I recognize that I am feeling a wee bit of pain.

"Jesus! Heather that's a  BITE." He peers closer. "That's actually two bites."

"Two relatively small bites." I give him the scoop on the action he's missed. Once I finish recounting my Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, I proudly exclaim, "This is the first time that I've ever been bitten by a dog."

"Which, given how often you approach animals, is a fucking miracle," says David, grabbing antibiotic ointment and some gauze. He looks at the expiry date. "November 2012? Seriously?"

"The good thing is that we don't need antibiotic ointment that often," I say. 

David is now in full-on trauma physician mode. He finds another tube of non-expired antibiotic ointment, then pulls my hand from under the water to generously apply it to Kevin's love bite. It immediately starts bleeding again. He cuts off 6 feet of gauze and wraps my hand. I now have a club for a hand. David looks manic.

"Did Kevin have his shots?" he asks.

"Yep. That's what his owner said."

"The drug dealer from across the street? That owner?"

"Alleged!" I say. "We don't know for sure why he has so many visitors come to his door at all hours who only stay for 2 minutes at a time."

After I'm bandaged up, I call my doctor's office and confirm that I've had a tetanus shot recently.  (You know, just in case the bites get infected by all those Kevin mouth germs.) BOO YEAH! 2019 BABY!! Then, Dr. Google tells me that I should  keep an eye on the wound and look out for signs of infection. Check. Doing that right now.

When I tell my friend Meaghan about the incident, she stops me when I get to the part about going to find the dog's owner.

"Excuse me? Instead of going inside to give yourself much needed First Aid for dog bites..."

"Just two small ones!"

She rolls her eyes at me. "Instead of taking care of your BLEEDING DOG BITES, you cross the street to the DRUG DEALER'S..."

"Alleged!"

She snorts. "You go to the ALLEGED drug dealer's house, whom you have NEVER met and you make sure that the DOG'S okay??"

"Kevin was really traumatized. I scared him."

"Did it ever occur to you that you should go inside and get David to go to the drug dealer and you should have gone to do First Aid?"

"No." 

"You're out of your fucking mind."

***

One month later... it strikes me that I never did have proof of Kevin's rabies vaccine. It also strikes me that I haven't seen Kevin out on his front stoop in the last month. There is a small part of me wondering if Kevin has perished from rabies.

I walk across the road and knock on the door. No answer. I knock again. Maybe they're out back. I walk up the driveway. The alleged "Pharmaceutical Rep" is talking on his phone with his back to me. 

"Excuse me?" I say. He doesn't hear me. "Excuse me?" Still nothing.

Then, I see Kevin. He is neither foaming at the mouth, nor staggering wildly. He's just walking by the deck, looking pretty unconcerned with the world at large. He doesn't see me. I don't want to stress him out, so I back down the driveway. Very pleased that I won't have rabies.

***

20 minutes later... You know how sometimes a thought just gets stuck in your head? I suspect that I'll be wanting to catch a glimpse of Kevin in another month's time.

***

2 weeks later... I've seen Kevin outside again  - pleased to report that he is still not foaming at the mouth. 

 

Full Contact Hide and Seek

"We're going to play a game when we get home," Rissa says, in the midst of our after-dinner  walk.

"Are we?" I query.

"Oh, yeah," she says.

David immediately concurs.

"What kind of game?" I ask.

"Hide and seek? Sardines?" she jokes.

"I could get on board with Hide and Seek," I admit. I haven't played it since Rissa was little and she would hide behind the curtains, giggling so much that the fabric would shake.

David is looking pretty excited, but he manages to tone down a manic grin. "Hide and Seek would be okay," he says nonchalantly.

Once we're home, the three of us stand in the kitchen, ready to get down to it.

"Okay, is it Sardines or Hide and Seek?" Rissa asks.

Me, personally, I never played Sardines. With only three people, I imagine it's not as entertaining as, say, with 6 or more. "I'm feeling more Hide and Seekish," I say.

David rubs his hands together, already getting into the spirit. "Ground rules? Are we using the yard as well?"

"No!" Rissa and I say simultaneously. "Inside only!"

"Agreed." David now resembles Vizzini from The Princess Bride. "Who's it first?"

"I'll be it," I volunteer. "How much time do I have?"

"A minute?" Rissa suggests.

"Sounds good."

"You go outside," David says. "Face away from the house and count out a minute, and we'll hide!" He has turned into a 10-year-old.

I head out to the back yard and start my count. "One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three..." By the time I get to 31, I figure that I've given them way too much time already, so I skip the 'one thousand and' part and just revert to counting double digits out loud. I reach 60 and turn to open the door. "READY OR NOT, HERE I COME!!" I yell. My base age is now about eight.

I look around the main floor. Under the sofa, in the laundry closet, behind the chair and a half in the living room. No sign of anyone. I head upstairs. I peek in the bathroom - no one's in the deep soaker tub. All the while, I'm trying to figure out where I will hide for the next two rounds. I go into Rissa's room. I check the left closet both sides... nobody. I check the right closet, left side... nobody... I open the right side and move some of Rissa's clothes...

"Crap!" says Rissa. "I can't believe you found me so quickly!" She's bummed. 

"I mean, really, there are only so many places that we can hide in this house." I commiserate.

We head to my room and check out the closet and under the bed. No David. We check under Rissa's bed. No David. We head back downstairs and check in the laundry closet again. No David. No David under the kitchen table, or under the sofa or ottoman. He's 6 feet tall, and inflexible - he can't just hide anywhere. We both look at the slanted door that leads to the basement. The gravel-and-dirt-floored-may-as well-be-a-dungeon... basement. With cobwebs and musty humidity. I open the door and see dirt on the basement stairs.

"Oh, for the love of... The basement is disintegrating," I say. I want to close the door immediately so that I don't have to deal with the crumbling "retaining wall" that is shored up by what now looks like the bow of a small dinghy, but originally would have been plumb and square timber. Both the cats flash past me and begin exploring the tiny crawl space under the living room. I trudge down and sweep off the stairs, contemplating how much it will cost to shore up the crumbling foundation-esque parts of the basement. Fuck. So much for wiggle room on the credit line.

I peer behind shelving units. I look up into the crawl space under the kitchen. The mid-summer smell from the basement is pungent. I emit shudder/gag noises as I walk through a particularly wide cobweb.

"Is he down there?" asks Rissa.

"I'm not seeing him." I peer around once more and brush off the dirt on my feet and head back upstairs. We go through the entire house again, not finding him. When we start positing that he might be in the dishwasher, I realize that I may have to OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE his ass. 

My innate competitiveness does not want give up yet. I'll have to check out the basement again. I open the door. David is standing at the bottom of the stairs - grinning madly.

"Where were you?" Rissa and I ask.

"Under the living room," he says smugly, brushing dirt off his body. 

"Of course you were." But then I smile. "On the upside, you're the one who put the dirt all over the stairs, so I don't have to worry about fixing the foundation."

"True." He's fairly dancing with superiority at this point. 

"Okay, you're it now," I say. I'll show him. I'm going to hide someplace so unexpected, that he will NEVER find me. "Give us a couple of minutes."

He heads outside. Rissa runs upstairs and I look at the corner kitchen table. With the table cloth for coverage, if I were to bend myself around the corner bench, I could be pretty hidden. But I have only two minutes. Now, what I should do is move the table out of the way, situate myself in the corner and then pull the table back over me. What I do instead, is attempt to get my 53-year-old ass between the table and the bench - which doesn't fit. I am now wedged between the bench and the table edge and I can't move forward and I can't move backwards. 

I try to use my shoulder to heft the table to give myself some extra space to maneuver, but it's just too heavy to move with one shoulder. I have zero leverage. I kick out. One of the chairs hits the floor. He'll know that I'm there if he sees the chair. He's going to find me immediately. I try to edge towards the corner but my linebacker shoulders are way too big for the space I'm in. I'm trapped. I'm trapped, and time is running out. I start to hyperventilate. Three seconds later my hyperventilation is morphing into something much more panic-driven.

"Help!" I yell. "I'm trapped! HELP!"

"I'm coming!" Rissa yells. 

"HELP ME!!" Logically, I know that I'm not going to die trying to hide myself on the corner bench under our kitchen table, at least not in the time it will take to be un-wedged, but my flight or fight response does not know that. 

"HELP!!"

"Okay! It's okay!" Rissa is racing down the stairs to me. She tries to move the table that remains wedged on my hips and shoulders.

"OW!! OW!!" 

"Sorry!"

By now, David has heard my shrieks of terror and he yanks open the door. "What's happening?"

"I'm TRAPPED!!!"

"Oh." I can picture him trying to work out the geometry of the situation.

"TRAPPED!!" 

He too, tries to pull the table off of me.

"LIFT IT! LIIIIIIIIIIIFT IT!!"

"It's okay, it's okay!!!"

They lift the table and I manage to scramble to safety. In the aftermath of my near-death experience, I am laughing in near hysteria. David and Rissa are just regular laughing. At me. As I rightly deserve. 

Before we finish our three rounds of Hide and Seek, I have bruised most of my right side from my first failed hiding attempt, wet my ass from lying in the soaker tub and put my neck out trying to hide behind the living room curtains. David has scraped his body scrambling into the crawl space under the living room before almost suffocating under forgotten pants in the bottom of our closet. Rissa, a Hide and Seek champion, hid in her closet in relative comfort both hiding rounds, blanketed by her purple terry bathrobe. 

On the upside, the 1/2 hour game provided a full cardio workout for both David and me. Yes, our heart rates were raised mostly in terror and we required nightcaps to calm ourselves down afterwards, but I'm still calling it exercise.

Middle-aged crazy woman

"MOTHERFUCKER!" I exclaim vehemently (and quietly - because I'm in the backyard and our adjacent neighbours have kids and I don't want them to start randomly yelling MOTHERFUCKER, and then attributing it to the middle-aged, crazy woman whose backyard abuts theirs.)

"What?" asks David, looking up from his computer programming on the outdoor sofa

"This," I say, pronouncing the syllable with vitriol, "is not big enough." 

I brandish a white metal cylinder - with lid - that I purchased at Dollarama. It was going to be my "Bug spray and firepit lighter" cylinder. But the fucker is NOT. TALL. ENOUGH. The top will not close. The top isn't even close to closing. My $3.00 purchase that, a half hour before, had produced a gleeful, money-saving grin, is now the wrong size and I am obviously a moron for having purchased it!!

"You are not a moron," says David.

"Did I just say all of that out loud?" I ask.

He gives me an Aardman Animation grin with a side of shoulder shrug.

"Why don't you get yourself a drink and come out and sit in the fresh air?" he suggests. "I'll grab the smaller bug spray that will fit in this lovely new hiding container."

I stomp back inside and prepare to make myself a Caesar with the litre of Clamato that I just purchased from Dollarama along with the aforementioned failed container. I've never made a Caesar before. I'm pretty sure that there's Clamato and vodka. Which, thank the Gods, I have. I can finish off the bottle of vodka... in the freezer so that I don't have to open the new one... I open the freezer door. MOTHERFUCKER!! We already finished that vodka. When? When did we finish it? How much vodka have we been drinking? I dig into my internal calendar and think about the vodka... MOSCOW MULES! David made Moscow Mules the other night and he pours heavy. That's why the old bottle is finished.

Well, that, and the fact that we've been drinking like fishes since the beginning of the pandemic. About 6 weeks ago, I decided that I would no longer drink on weekdays because the whole "nightcap" situation was getting out of hand. This week I fell off my Radio Flyer wagon. This week I lost my mind. I've been weepy. I've been irrationally angry. I've French-kissed the depths of despair in the back of a Plymouth Duster. If I was still having my period, I would say that I have PMS, but I'm in menopause now and the lifter hills and inclined dive loops of that particular roller coaster have mostly levelled out for me.

Except for this week. This week, I have failed at EVERY. FUCKING. THING. Except for over-dramatization and hyperbole. 

I've been doing a lot of shoulders back and deep breathing this week. I've been compartmentalizing impending panic attacks. I put them way, way back... in the back of my bedroom closet, behind the filing box of old correspondence, behind the superfluous Christmas pillows, behind the clothes rail, behind the curtain, past the bed, behind the bedroom door, past the "loft space," up the stairs from the kitchen... deeeeep into my cranium, where they stop me from hyperventilating most of the time.

I went for a walk today, and when I got home, I wasn't sure where I had walked. I'd walked myself into a state of hypnosis or early onset dementia. Did I walk across the bridge? I'm not sure. Did I see people on the boardwalk? Was I even ON the boardwalk? Yes, I must have been, because I walked past the West Beach. Didn't I?

Now, to be fair, I was using my wireless ear buds for the very first time today, whilst listening to Marc Maron's WTF, so I was definitely distracted by his interview with Tom Jones - which I highly recommend. Maybe that's all it was. That's why I can't remember 25 minutes of my walking route. I know where I started and I remember different points along the way, and, given that there are only a few alternatives to get from Point A to Point B, I must have taken one of them, which would definitely have me walking along the boardwalk. 

And maybe, just maybe, my freaking out should be completely expected given that the mental exhaustion of living through a pandemic takes its toll on everyone. Even those of us who are fortunate enough to love our spouses and children, and love spending extra time with them... But all I really want is to be able to have play dates with people other than them now. I want to hug a person I haven't had sex with or given birth to. (I should have maybe phrased that with more specificity.) That's what it comes down to. And for some reason, this week, on the cusp of returning normalcy in Ontario, all my compartmentalizing has caught up with me. 

Which means it's time for that drink... and perhaps instead of meeting any number of self-defined deadlines - a finished chapter, a completed outline or brand new song lyrics - I just drink that fucking drink and sit back with a Regency Romance with a side of historical smut for the added endorphin rush. Then, tomorrow, I can reboot. Because if life, right now, still isn't normal? Why should I expect to be?