And that is why you put your toys away...

It felt as though we were missing a limb for about eight months,  but we managed to survive Rissa's first year at university.

However, with no one to "adult" for, we devolved into teenagers ourselves. We forgot to do laundry, haphazardly cleaned the house and rarely grocery shopped. Rissa would come home for a weekend and clear the fridge of expired items for us.

"What are you guys eating? How many frozen pizzas do you ingest in a week!?!"

We didn't have to worry about food for Rissa's lunches, so there was no need to head out every Sunday and grab juice boxes, mini yogurts, and sandwich fixings. David took a salami and crackers to work and I existed on Protein Bars at the office.

We both began to work late. David was in rehearsals after school for various drama projects, and with no one to welcome me home except the cats, I felt there was no real point in my rushing to leave the office. Not to say that having a ginger Tom, his high-strung sister and our crotchety, arthritic senior cat at the door didn't ease the pain, but walking past Rissa's empty room for the first 5.5 months of the school year kicked me into cardiac arrhythmia.

Settling into our sans enfant routine after Reading Week, we realized that vegetables existed and that we didn't have to carve out intimacy or Running-Around-Naked-Time. To be fair, I have always enjoyed my Running-Around-Naked-Time, but David seemed to revel in striding around majestically without having to throw on underwear.

We had sex whenever and wherever the urge struck us, and we weren't quiet about it. We had dinner at friends' places and stayed out late.

Rissa arrived home at the end of April. We easily went back to our regularly scheduled programming of sofa-snuggling, binge watching Netflix and family dinners.

We didn't realize the shift in what had been our non-parental status quo until a couple of weeks ago, when Rissa was out with friends. Feeling amorous during an afternoon nap, we were well on our way to the Big Finale when the downstairs door crashed open, and Rissa sang out, "I'm ho-me!!" Nothing like a good case of coitus interruptus to put  Return of the Child into its true cock-blocking perspective.

We didn't despair. With Rissa working nights from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. at a health-care facility, we knew that climactic sex was on the horizon.

Early Friday night, I enjoyed a lowball of spicebox whiskey. Before we headed up to bed I had the epiphanic recollection that with pot now legal in Canada, a friend had been kind enough to roll a joint for me. Having placed said joint with my vitamins on the bamboo lazy susan - above the stove where the cats couldn't mistake if for catnip - I grabbed said joint and smoked 1/4 of it...

This note was waiting for us in the main bathroom on Saturday morning:

The arrow was pointing to the toy.  Feel free to enter the
pool betting on what the toy was and its colour.

Turns out that after we had our mind-blowing, child-not-in-the-house sex, we HAD remembered to clean our accompanying sex toy in the bathroom, but we HAD NOT remembered to take it back to our room. Oh, and when I smoked up? Because I'd already imbibed my Spicebox Whiskey and was a little tottled, I enjoyed those few puffs in the windowless 1/2 bath downstairs. The main floor smelled like a frat house.

It would appear that I have yet to leave teenager mode.

#Taxespayforthisshit

It may be my inner Scandinavian talking, but if the government of Ontario needs more money for Education and Healthcare? I'm prepared to pay a little bit more in taxes to help. Because I'm pretty sure that's what taxes are actually supposed to do. Pay for MRIs and ensure lower class sizes and shorter wait times in ERs and all that other "common good" shit.

Hey! I know! Seeing as Ontario is in a $13.5 billion deficit - if the 7.5 million people in the workforce all paid $1,800 more in taxes - we'd be out of debt. In one tax season. It can't be that easy, can it? This can't possibly be like CPA Murray Blum (Charles Grodin) going in to visit President look-alike Dave Kovic (Kevin Kline) in Dave to find $650,000,000 for social programs in the Federal budget and he does. Can it?

Sure, it's not PC to suggest that we should actually raise taxes, but what if we ACTUALLY did? And what if education and health care then ACTUALLY improved? And what if we then had educated and healthy Ontarians as far as the eye could see? And we'd all be like, "That's right you non-tax-paying sons of bitches! Our higher taxes made us smarter AND healthier!!"

I recognize that not everyone can afford to pay that much more in taxes, but maybe those who can pay a little bit more, say with the tax refund they get back from the Feds, could offer to DO that, which would in turn, make it feasible for those with less of a tax refund to pay a little bit less in their taxes.

And if we maybe acknowledge the fact that PAYING taxes allows us ACCESS to public education and health care and if we maybe didn't expect all those services for FREE - we the people wouldn't have to rant so much on social media and stage walk outs and protest at Queen Park.

But that might just be me. #taxespayforthisshit