Death by Raincoat

Thunderstorms in the morning.  I'm dressed like a Popsicle: lime green umbrella, bright pink rain coat, yellow rubber boots.  Rain coming at me sideways as I walk to work.  I'm wet from mid-thigh to the top of my boots.  It takes me all day to get dry. 

It's bank day.  A couple of cheques to deposit and bills to pay for work.  I start the trek downtown.  No longer raining, but for a couple of drops here and there - sun threatening to break through the clouds.  By the time I get to King Street - the day looks to clear.  I'm waiting in line for the business teller.  Five minutes pass.  Another five.  Now I'm feeling a little woozy.  It's past snack time and I don't have a snack on me.  What's the rule Heather?   Always have a snack.  I can feel my shins begin to sweat in my rubber boots.  And then I notice that my ass and upper thighs, covered by the rain coat, are self-basting.  The underside of my breasts threaten to become a viaduct. 

I hold onto the queuing pole.  I unzip my jacket.  It has these two little grommets under each of the armpits - you know - to help you breathe while sheathed in plastic - but I don't think they're working. Would it be wrong to completely strip down to my underwear? I think that's the only thing that might stop me from passing out.  

I feel my throat.  It's clammy.  Clammy isn't good. Clammy, for me, usually immediately precedes... great, the little dots of light have come - dancing around my peripheral vision.    I bend my knees slightly, wiggle my toes.  I won't pass out... I won't pass out.   I'm muttering to myself.  Stop muttering to yourself Heather!  They'll think you're crazy or a bank robber.  Holding on tighter to the pole.  Looking straight into the security camera.  I am not a bank robber.  I'm just hot.  Scrunching my eyes shut to stop the dancing dots.  Then popping them open when the world starts to tilt. The teller is beckoning me forward.

"Strange weather today."

"Mmmm... hmmm..."  I place my bills on the counter.  Don't pass out.  Do NOT pass out.

"Well, at least you were dressed for it."

"Yep.  Little warm now, though."  I think I have sweat pooling into my boots now.

"I can imagine.  Those raincoats don't breathe very well, do they?"

I nod in assent, my own breathing now shallow.

"Well, I think you're all good to go here."  She hands me the bills, I somehow manage to throw them into my bag and stagger to the door.  As soon as I'm out the door, I whip of my jacket, matador-esque - nearly blinding myself when the drawstrings with their little pink plastic tightener thingies come up and whack me in the head.  I'm a sweat zombie, insensibly stumbling down the sidewalk. 

Death by raincoat.  That's how they'll describe this when it gets into the local paper.  I gulp in lungfuls of air - desperate for oxygen while still doing my best not to hyperventilate.  I flap the hem of my shirt - airing out my wet stomach.  I glance down at the potentially womanslaughtering garment.  Where were the airing out holes?  Where were they??  Under the armpits.  Two grommets in each.  The grommets were there, but they didn't go through the lining of the coat.  Holes in the outside rubbery part of the coat, yes, but not all the way through.  This was not a breathable jacket!  These exterior grommets were decoys!  I'm clutching the armpits in a murderous grip - threatening to strangle the coat when I hear...

"Love your boots!!"

I glance up, and there's my friend Henry, all dapper in his sweater and complementary tie - looking cool and British and not like he's going to pass out from heat exhaustion.  He smiles and waves.  I wave back and cross the road to say hello.  By the time I get to the other sidewalk, my breathing has calmed, I'm no longer dizzy.  I look down at my boots.  I love them too. 

So there I was... naked, running with scissors...

Stompy.  I was SOOOOOO stompy.  Throwing blankets and sheets down to be washed.  Stomp.  Stomp.  Stomp.  David and Rissa exchanging "What the hell is happening?" looks below in the kitchen.

The panic had beset me while still in bed.   I'd looked up at the ceiling with the skim coat of drywall compound taunting me - just waiting to cover the entire room with its fallout of dust.  I shot a terrified look over to the closet wall.  Plastic running the entire length of the wall reassured me - the clothes might be safe.

I then glanced at the carpet.  Oh God.  Carpet and drywall dust - we were doomed.  The taper/mudder was coming back that day - there would be sanding - I had to find more floor coverings. I had one rotten sheet that covered 10 square feet.  I had to find more plastic.   Where was more plastic?!?  We didn't have enough plastic to cover the entire floor!!

My head shot side to side in panic before I spotted, in the corner, a bunched up pile of plastic.  Okay... Okay... this might work. If I could just get to the corner... but I couldn't, because our under-the-bed containers (that had been moved when we shoved the bed to the centre of the room), were in my way.    And a box full of completely superfluous shit was in my way.  And there were clothes on the chair just sitting there.  And what about our bedding?!?   

That's when, still naked,  I'd grabbed all the bedding off the bed and threw it down the stairs.  I ran back to our room and grabbed the plastic sheeting that we'd pulled off to be able to sleep in the bed overnight and laid it over top of the now-bare mattress.  I grabbed the first under-the-bed container, defying the strain in my bad shoulder and hefted it towards the stairs.

"DAVID!!  David I need you!!"
(Now I'd morphed into Inigo Montoya.)

David appeared at the bottom of the stairs.  His eyebrows raised at my nakedness and apoplectic state, but he said not a word.    He met me half way up the stairs, stepping around the previously thrown laundry and took the container from me.  I ran back up the stairs to grab the 2nd container, which I carried downstairs myself.

More looks passed between David and Rissa.  I knew I was behaving irrationally.  I knew that.  Could I stop it?  No.

I moved the superfluous shit box.  I grabbed the plastic sheeting.  Scissors!  I needed scissors!!  Where were the fucking scissors?!?  I was giving myself whiplash trying to locate them in the room.  I launched myself across the bed when I spotted the errant tool on the dresser.  Armed now, I cut the sheeting in two pieces - one could go at the head of the bed and then other at the foot.  What about beside the bed?!?  The one side had been covered by the stupid rotten sheet - but there was still the other side!!  We didn't have any more plastic.  Old sheets!  Where were our old sheets?  I had no fucking clue - probably hidden in the eaves of the now-sealed wall of closet.

I raced to Rissa's room.  I was now naked, running with scissors... I opened Rissa's blanket box.. no sheets.  But there was an old plaid polar fleece blanket.  "HAH!"  I ran with it back to my room and used the scissors to cleave it in half.  If I put them end-to-end that might just do!  Yes, that'd do.  The floor was mostly covered.  The drywall dust wouldn't hit the carpet, but if someone - say a taper/mudder of near gigantic proportions was moving around on these haphazard pieces of floor covering... TAPE!! I needed tape!  Painters' Tape, I found out, does not stick to plastic.  DUCT TAPE!  I needed duct tape.  By the time I was done, there was a patchwork quilt of pastic sheeting, a rotten sheet, cut up blankets and duct tape covering the majority of floor that was within drop distance of drywall dust.  Then, then I took a breath... and apologized to my family.

p.s.  Turns out?  According to our taper/mudder... plastic sheeting? Not the best bet when you then might want to walk on the area.  Better idea?  Floor underlayment paper.  Thankfully, he had to take another day for the mudding to really dry, so we had time to visit the home building centre and do this after work yesterday...

p.p.s.
Peri-menopause and home renovations don't mix.

To spin, or not to spin...

My body is such an over-achiever.  It's racing full-on towards decrepitude decades before the norm. The good news?  I'm like those Sentinels from X-Men: Days of Future Past - I am able to adapt with every challenge.  My Achilles Tendons ache when I wear 4 inch heels?  Not a problem!  3 inch heels it is!  My neck goes out when I apply a rough plaster finish continuously for  3 hours?  Not a problem!  Rest every 1/2 hour and change hands occasionally - something every teenaged boy learns very early on.

Apparently, my trick shoulder - my Super Spanitus - has been craving a little bit more attention.  I guess that I haven't given it its due lately.  What with general forgetfulness, also associated with age, I don't remember doing anything to it.  It's not like I've completely disregarded my physiotherapist's advice and gone back to 50 push ups before I retire to the boudoir.  I'm not even doing 1 push up.  I haven't trapped my arm underneath me in bed and then torn the tendons by attempting to slide it up across the mattress without first rolling over to my back in a long time.  I've adapted.

And yet - the shoulder has been twingeing - when I reach for something, when I use the back scrubber in the shower.  I recently got a nice, new lift-and-separate bra, and it hurts to do it up.  Thanks to this bra, my girls finally have some vintage-inspired perk, and I can't put it on.

The last couple of nights, David's had to help me disrobe.   Poor bugger, I presented my back to him and he became confounded at not having to reach around me to do his 1-SNAP-NAKED move.  I'd thrown off his groove.  Me, relying on him in this way is throwing off my groove.  I was going to have to bite the bullet and invest in front-closure brassieres.  I was bummed.

Last night, at a long-awaited girls' night, I asked everyone's opinion about front-closure bras.  On account of the fact that I was going to have to switch to them because of my early decline into decrepitude.  The words had barely left my mouth, when a chorus of  "Why don't you just spin it?"s echoed through the room.  Little cartoon word bubbles, filled with the phrase appeared over each of my friends' heads - in differing fonts, depending upon the person.

It never even occurred to me.

Since the age of 11, I've been a reach-back gal.  After nearly 3 and a half decades of doing something one way,  to find out there was an alternative?  Revelatory.

It's akin to learning to knit.  Mom tried to teach me to knit the "Continental" way, and my brain nearly melted.  You know why?  Because knitting, in every North American visual medium, has that thing where you have to wrap the yarn around with one hand.  Even when you mime knitting, you knit one or whatever and then you have to wrap the yarn around the needles.  You don't just slip it under surreptitiously.  You make a show of it.  Which, frankly, is why I've always done my bra up in the back.

"Hey look at me!  Look at my dexterity!  Look how I can make my arms disappear while clothing myself! TA-DAH!!!"

But now... now, I didn't have to buy any bras!  Not a one.  I just have to put those wee hooks in their wee little eyes in front of me and then spin the sucker...

In our group of 6 women last night.  3 of us were reach-back ers and 3 were spinners.  I found out that two of the spinners tried the reach-back this morning, probably at the same moment that I was attempting my first spin.  Old dogs.  New Tricks.

After dinner entertainment

"Uh... Heather?  Can you come here for a second?"  David's voice sounds hushed, a little odd.

"O...kay..."

"We have some visitors at the back door."

Who?  Who would be walking all the way to the back door?  Everybody comes to the side door - the one to which the other door, the first side door with the sign points. 

Rissa and I make our way to the kitchen.

"Who's here?" we ask.

David steps back to reveal two bassett hounds framed in the kitchen door.  "BASSETS!!"  Rissa and I make our way outside.

This is WAY better than the neighbours bearing a gift basket with wine which is who I'd thought would be visiting.  Technically these dogs are neighbours - the back yard kitty-corner to the south-east of us has 6 bassets between two sides of a duplex.  I guess there's a hole in the adjoining fence somwhere.


(If I wasn't too excited to even think about grabbing a camera, and I'd taken photos, they would have been something like this.)

Someone else's basset hounds

Affectionate to the point of obscene, these beasts bare their bellies - showing off their un-neutered nethers - and more than a little excited to see us...   ("Dude!"  Rissa says.  "You're showing me way too much information!")  After a good tummy rub, they gallumph to the front of the house, before making their way into our eastern neighbours' yard.

Then, as we turn to head back inside, Rissa yells "Incoming!"  Two more basset hounds appear at the bottom of our yard... then two more...  then two more...  the bottom of our yard has turned into a basset hound clown car - they just keep emerging.  The math doesn't add up.  Then I realize what must be happening... they've found another hole in our neighbours' yard that takes them home, and the 6 bassets are now running laps between all the yards.

I'm not saying it was my best evening ever, but it was pretty damned close.

shot by Luke Askelson
http://www.lukeaskelson.com

My cat's a cougar

Minuit hated the kittens as soon as they entered our home.  Despised them.  She exhibited such violent loathing that we frequently had to physically remove her from their backs and spray her with water. At the age of 4, Minuit was well-on her way to being crotchety (not to be confused with crochet-y - although that would make us tonnes of cash in YouTube videos if we had her making wee blankets for the elderly cats in her neighbourhood.)

Since we moved to the new house, Minuit has had a change of heart towards Steve,  and who can blame her?  Steve is an attractive orange tom cat with lots of personality, who will stretch his long body across a quilt, showing off his sexy tom physique.  Lola, Minuit will still bully, gamboling after  her younger sibling as only a 1/2 paralyzed cat can, chawing on Lola's neck when she catches her.  To be fair, Lola is a bit of a drama queen and might over-react a titch when an open mouth turns toward her, but when I hear her yowling and turn to look, Minuit is usually pinning her down and growling at her by that point.

Minuit now sleeps with Steve.  Cuddles up to him, grooms him.  The other day I stepped in a wet, slimy, orange hair ball.  I assumed that it was from Steve's gullet, but in second consideration I'm pretty sure that the bile-covered hair came, in fact, from Minuit, who now seems to spend all her spare time glued to Steve's side.  For two beasts incapable of having kittens, they seem to be pretty damned intimate, often sleeping on top of one another.  I opened my closet curtain to get dressed this morning, and the look Minuit gave me was pure venom.  I apologized and left.  I think I may have twat-blocked her.

Are they made from diamond dust?

You ever shop for bed skirts?  I was killing time at a Bed, Bath & Beyond a bit back, thinking "Hey!  We need some new bed skirts - I'll just have a looksee in their linens dept."

They started at $45 and went up from there.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the bed perimeter x 15 inches of good fabric sewn onto a piece of crap fabric that actually sits on the box spring, right? Is the part that you can actually see made from spun gold or diamond dust?  It's just sheet fabric right?  It doesn't even have to be high-count sheet fabric - it's not going to go anywhere close to your body, and at floor level who is going to say, "Hey, that's 180 count fabric if ever I saw it"??

This is when not having energy pisses me off.  If I had loads of energy I would just buy some cheap-ass sheets and make my own bed skirts.  It's not rocket surgery.

My present ennui is stopping me from saving money. I'm all about saving money and now here I am, on the verge of buying freaking bed skirts.  And even if I did buy the bed skirts, just the thought of having to take the mattress and bedding off the box spring to then carefully smooth out the bed skirt seems too daunting a task.

So is this ennui that comes of moving to a new home and having accomplished the first round of renovations, or am I veering into depression territory?  Is my peri-menopause truly kicking into high gear and fucking with my sanity now?  'Cause either of those would be inconvenient.

What's really concerning me is that I don't want to go to movies.  And going to movies for me is probably my most favourite activity in the world - 3 weeks out of the month.  For the 4th week, I'm hormonal and all I want is sex, but those other 3 weeks, if I could see three movies a day in a movie theatre - I'd be in Heaven.  So when David suggests that we go see a movie, and I can't muster up the energy to leave the house, that's a pretty big freaking red flag for me.  Problem is, the signs of depression?  Apathy, exhaustion, mental fog?  Are remarkably like signs of Peri-menopause... depression, crashing fatigue, mental fog.  Which are also remarkably like signs of Hypothyroidism...  fatigue, depression, mental fog. 

I feel like I'm playing hormonal roulette...
 
Place your bets!  Place your bets!

Drowning once more in a pool of depression scares the shit out of me.  So I refuse to do that.  Not going to happen.  This, I have decided, is all peri-menopause crap.  My hormones have simply kicked into a higher gear of fucking with me - which, now that I'm aware and I know all the symptoms - I can counteract.  Today, when I get home from work, I'm ironing for the first time since Christmas. 

Baby steps, folks.  Tomorrow I'll unpack the last two boxes in my bedroom.

This is what a spatula is made for...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"  I shake my fists to the heavens in rage. 

"Mummy?"

"There is NO peanut butter!!"  It's one of those morninigs.  You know, one of  those mornings when all you want is a certain thing for breakfast?  All I wanted was peanut butter on my toast.  And only one piece with peanut butter - I needed a tablespoon and a half of it - the other piece of toast was going to have seedless raspberry jam.  Was that too much to ask for?  Wait!  Wait! Rissa doesn't eat peanut butter.  David would have been the last to eat it, which means he would have 'finished' it, which means it would... still be sitting in the sink...

"HAH!"

"Hah?" asks Rissa.

"YES!  HAH!!  All I have to do is drain the water, grab a spatula and voila!  Peanut Butter Toast!  THIS.  This is what a spatula is made for... this exact task!"

"Un-huh..."

"See??  See how much peanut butter is left?"

Rissa avoids eye contact, because that's what you're supposed to do with crazy people.

The spatula is the most perfect of kitchen utensils.  I pour out all the soaking water, then hold the spatula aloft like Excaliber.  A deep breath and I begin to scrape the sides of the jar.  Press down the sides, swirl around the bottom, press and swirl... "AHA!!!  Take THAT Mr. Doesn't-know-when-a-jar's-empty!!"

"Happy now?"

"Yes.   Yes, I am."

You know what else a spatula is good for?  Smoothing peanut butter on your toast.