Rationalizing

"Well, if we're not going to the gym tonight, then we have to do something fun and active...like bake donuts, then eat them."

Appropriating hockey to the kitchen

Me: "Can you slice these chicken breasts so I can stuff them before baking?"
Luc: "What?? I can't do that...I'm a power player, that's a finesse move."
Me: ???
Luc: "I just cut and chop, that one's all you."

And we're off!

I've only just started reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but already I can't recommend it enough. The sentences are beautiful and flow seamlessly into one another. The voice is so distinguishable, even from the first few lines. It's packed with humour and emotion and, dare I say...it's compulsively readable. Here's a great quote:

"...for aesthetically disenfranchised furnishings we are like the families that adopt troubled children and refugees from around the world - we see beauty within and cannot say no."

A leisurely Saturday afternoon

Luc trying to break the ice after vacuuming up ribbon that I got for wedding decorations:

"Wanna help me give the vacuum cleaner a haircut?"

Silence.

"Hey look, a big thread from our old carpet in Saskatoon..."

Looking for an out

Walking up the 3 flights of stairs from the parking lot to the gym.

Me: Weird...it smells like someone's been burning candles.
Luc: Maybe the gym's on fire and we can go home and eat.
Me: No....
Luc: But maybe?

Uhhhh

The concert last night was amazing, and I'll write more on that later. For now, just a few words on how my brain has turned to mush this week.

Last night when Ben Harper was on, he took a second between songs to wave and acknowledge all of the people who were sitting in the crap seats behind the stage....and they went WILD.
Me: "Wow...one little wave of the hand can elicit so much....excite?...uh...excition....uhhh...excitation...?"
Luc: "You're all out of words...you used them all this week! And I think you meant excitement."

Just another Saturday afternoon

Me: Sitting at the dining room table, hunched over my computer, surrounding by books, working on an assignment. I notice that Luc is dressed with his shoes on, like he's going somewhere. I give him that inquiring look....
Luc: "Oh yeah, Kate and Tom are coming over. They'll be here in a few minutes."
Me: "What?? A few minutes?? Shit...."
Luc: "You don't need to come out with us, we're just going to Best Buy."
Me: "Yeah I know, I just thought I should make myself look like less of a gargoyle before our friends walk in." I'm thinking along the lines of washing the sleep-drool off my face from last night and putting on a bra. Nothing much.
Luc: "Aww, you're going to take off your Sponge Bobs and put on pants?"
Me: "What? No! My sponge bob square pants pajamas are nothing to be ashamed of..."
Clearly Luc and I have a different idea of what is acceptable and what is embarrassing.

My Friday night

Me: sitting, hunched over the dining room table, cutting out save-the-dates, return address stickers, stamps...

"You know....I wouldn't stop you if you came and helped me cut out some of this crap..."

Luc: standing 6 inches from the TV, playing video games...

"I'm saving the universe though..."

Me: "Well then, by all means, continue!"

Quotes

"Horse racing isn't really a sport - the horse doesn't even want to do it. He's only running because he's got a midget on his back. If YOU were walking down the street and a midget jumped on your back, you'd run too." - some comedian

Overheard

Last night Luc and I grabbed a bite to eat at Boston Pizza. Every TV screen in the restaurant was showing the same wrestling match (pretty damn uneven if you ask me) between the standard, grizzly looking, overly-tanned macho man and.....drum roll please.....a midget. The kid at the table next to us was watching with great anticipation and shouted "Looook! A midget!!" And then with great surprise, exclaimed, "Wow.......he's so easy to handle!"

Culinary Masterpiece

Me: (trying to thinly slice cheese and nearly cutting my finger off) "Dammit! Can you cut the cheese?"
Luc: (farts loudly) ............
Me: .............. "I guess I was asking for it when I said that..."

Pity Party

Overheard: (big, heaving sigh) "Yeah, sometimes you just have to do these things, you know? It's hard and you don't want to, but you have to. You've gotta do what you've gotta do."

No, she's not a volunteer surrogate mother for her best friend's baby, she's just going to Las Vegas for 4 days. Poor girl. How will she ever cope?

The word of the day is "uncomfortable"

I've had several incidents with strange characters in my office building elevator, but I think yesterday won the "most awkward" award. On the ascent it was just me and one other scruffy looking individual. In the front of the elevator is a TV screen that plays the weather, the news and each day there is a new "word the day". The "word of the day" feature consists of a word, its definition and a sentence using that word. Friday's word was "whinge", which means to whine, and the example sentence said something like, "the daughter whinged about not being able to go to the school dance." The other man in the elevator was already making me nervous just by the way he stood there; shifting his weight back and forth between his feet, subtle head twitches and aggressively scratching his mangy beard. It wasn't until he abruptly burst into laughter that my weirdo radar started to sound its full alarm. The "word of the day" was up on the screen and it had clearly been the trigger to his maniacal laughter.
Weirdo: "HA! Ha...hahaha...HAHA...HAAAAHAHA.."
Me: (slowly turning to my head to look at him out of the corner of my eye)
Weirdo: "HAAA...sounds like MY daughter!! Hahaha..."
............
Weirdo: (staring at me expectantly, clearly wanting me to respond to his comment)
Me: "Oh...um...how old is your daughter?"
Weirdo: (the bright expression on his face dropping) "Well....well I don't actually have a daughter. I....but....I mean..." (bursts out into awkward laughter and incomprehensible mumbling)
We arrive at my floor and I slip out before the doors are barely open.
Weirdo: "HAAAAhahahaha."
Me: "OK then...have a good day."
Probably one of those "you had to be there" moments to see the crazy shine in his eyes, but noteworthy nonetheless.

Lazy Sunday

Me: "Oh my God, Luc! I just pumped some moisturizer onto my hand and it looks like a swan....exactly like a swan!"
Luc: "Wow...maybe you should take a picture and put it on your blog..."
Me: "Yeahh....wait. Are you being facetious?"
Luc: ..............
Me: "Screw you, I'm putting it on!"

Won't you be my neighbour?

Amidst the chaotic spring cleaning this morning, I paused long enough to notice a moving truck in front of our apartment building. Now it made sense to me why the normally quiet apartment above us sounded like it was hosting an indoor hockey tournament (that started at the unholy hour of 9:00am...on a Saturday...those assholes). I immediately began to feel guilty though, figuring that the old woman upstairs was moving because Luc and I are loud, inconsiderate neighbours. We frequently chase each other around the apartment, screaming like children (mostly Luc, not me, of course) and stay up past our bedtime on weekends playing loud music and getting drunk and belligerent, challenging our friends to wii boxing matches. The chasing each other bit was a habit that we started at our first place over three years ago. It was so bad that one afternoon while taking out the garbage, our landlord (who lived upstairs with his wife and daughter) stopped Luc for chat.

Landlord: "Luc...Luc, I wanted to talk to you about something, just listen, OK?"
Luc: "Yeah...sure, what's up?"
Landlord: "Luc, I know that you and Kristen argue sometimes, but Luc, it is never OK to hit a woman."
Luc: "Uhh..I think you..."
Landlord: "Please, just listen. It's never OK. There are no excuses for hitting a woman. You can get mad. You CAN get mad. But you never hit a woman, OK?"
Luc: (putting on his best 'serious' face and holding in laughter) "Yeah...OK, I...I understand."

Our landlord had heard us yelling and playing and chasing each other around and jumped to the outlandish conclusion that sweet, prairie boy Luc, the love of my life, was teaching me a lesson with the back of his hand. Ironically we ended up leaving that place because our landlord was too loud. By, "I live with my wife and baby", what he really meant tell us was: me and my 4-year-old daughter and my wife and my wife's sister and her 11-year-old son all live above you in a 2-bedroom suite....and another grown man is moving in with us shortly. He also failed to mention that his daughter had a pair of lungs on her like a howler monkey. Which she clearly inherited from Mama howler monkey.

Living at this new apartment has been great - I don't have to throw phone books at the ceiling at 3:00am anymore. And that, my friends, is luxury. But when I saw the moving truck, I feared that our upstairs neighbour held Luc and me in the same contempt as we had held our old landlord. Did she have to wear earplugs to bed every night because of us? Has she been spending nights, curled up in a ball screaming "shut the hell up" while cursing our names? Shortly after this bout of paranoia, Luc spoke to our now former-upstairs neighbour, and it turns out that she was supposed to move a long time ago but some arrangements had fallen through. So this evening, we will happily continue our ritual of drinking too much and beating the crap out of each other on wii boxing. Our old landlord never said anything to Luc about not virtually punching me in the teeth.

Making new friends

Walking back from the liquor store.

Crazy old man: "You two look alike..."
Luc: "oh?"
Crazy old man: "YOU'RE BOTH ANGELS!"
Luc: "uhh.....o..k..."
Me: "At least he didn't say brother and sister."

Discipline

Since I don’t like to subject Luc to the awkwardness of buying “female products”, I walked across the street to Shopper’s Drug Mart to do the deed myself. After grabbing what I needed, I wandered to the Hallmark aisle. As I was innocently browsing the Mother’s Day cards, a frail, white-haired employee (we’ll call her Fran) rounded the corner, took one look at me and shouted:

Fran: “Are you going to put that away somewhere?”

Me: “Pardon?”

Fran: “Well don’t STEP ON IT!”

Me: (bewildered, looking down to see a card on the floor) “I...I didn’t see...I didn’t actually drop that...I didn’t notice...”

Fran: (slowly moving closer), “I SAAAID, PUT IT AWAY SOMEWHERE!!!”

Me: “What? I...I didn’t even drop it...I didn’t.....isn’t...isn’t that.....your.....job?”

Fran: “Put. That. Away. Don't just LEAVE IT SITTING THERE!”

I stood there stunned, feeling like I was being reprimanded. She was my great-grandmother and I was the defiant child. I wanted to talk back to this sour old bitty, but some instinct told me that I would surely be swallowed up and sent straight to hell if I talked back to a woman old enough to say things to Jesus like, “I remember you when you were thiiiiis big.” As I sheepishly reached for the card, she shook her head at me in disbelief and returned to the fiery dungeon beneath Shopper’s Drug Mart from whence she came.

Quotes

"Taco Time heals all wounds." - Luc

Quotes

"What should I do if my Alex Burrows boner lasts for more than 3 seasons?" - Some guy on the radio