Hard candy and white cotton undies.

So, I am training my replacement at work. Today, they asked that I leave her to her own devices to see how things go. This means I have nothing to do all day. Not a thing. I'm in the spare office so I feel like a big man, having an office all to my self and a big window overlooking Montreal. I guess this is what executives feel like. Your own office, no actual work to do or at least someone to do it for you and you sit around, surveying the city or blogging about your candy cane collection until it's time to assess whether someone is doing a good job for you or not.

I think I will also get gout and order the beheading of some peasants while I'm at it. The thing is, even though it was more or less an order not to work, I still have to pretend that I am working somehow. I mean, they don't want to come back and find me knitting or playing with Hotwheels on the carpet. Which is annoying because it's 3pm and no one has checked on me all day and there is so much I could have done had I known. I even brought my paper and ink to knock off some stellar christmas card but alas, I am not truly free to do as I please. Still, the office to myself is nice. Montreal is grey and cold and snow dusted. I should just wander around The Bay.

I recently did an underwear drawer re haul and went to The Bay for replacements. I bought a slip to wear under skirts so they wouldn't ride up on my tights but it was so hard to find. There were only 3 kinds of slips in the entire lingerie section. They were in the old lady part, with the cotton night gowns and industrial beige bras that have padlocks and kidney and spleen support built in.

I decided that this time, I would go for the nicest, whitest, cotton underwear I could find in the spirit of minimalism. With my slip, and white cotton underwear, suddenly, the idea of a long, loose flannel night gown started to seem appealing. Might as well look for a hard candy dish while I'm at it and some terry cloth slippers and a nice little book of crosswords to do while I'm waiting for the grand kids to come over...

Way, way east of Montreal, the big grey clouds are parting to reveal a sky that is the palest robin's egg blue. The smaller, white clouds there are touched with pink as the sun has already begun to sink. It'll be pitch black by 4. Tonight, the fire place will be aglow and the bed will be warmed by yours truly early. It's hibernation time. Get ready for me California. I will be coming soon.

Stay in bed and order in.

Oh by the way, this is what every young lady in Montreal looks like:



Moving on, after 2 weeks of the shittiest luck ever, involving unsolvable medical annoyances, yelling at doctors, missing trains, canceled trains, a traumatizing movie and more missed trains, I am pleased to announce the successful completion of a perfect saturday. It started off a little shaky. I usually prefer to clean the place as soon as possible to get it feeling like a proper place to live after a week of neglect. Admittedly not the most fun thing to do on the weekend. Then there is the matter of grocery getting, which usually comes next and we were about to get our boots on and brave the snow when I decided, screw that. Let's go back to bed, bring in the tv and the dvd player, order some damn food to be brought to us and watch the Royal Tennebaums for the zillionth time because that movie gets better each time it's watched. So we did just that mi amigos. Our food arrived and we had to answer the door in housecoats-at 2 pm in the afternoon.

The delivery man politely averted his eyes and comments. Onion rings, spicy fries, vegetable subs and a vegetarian club sandwich with rice milk chocolate is a recommendable meal to consume in your bed, while watching Wes Anderson on a cold and snowy Saturday.

It was nearly dark when we finally decided to haul ourselves out of bed. We had been venturing out only to keep the fire stoked, which had toasted up the house nicely, so we pulled the tv back out, turned on the christmas tree, had some hot beverages and geared ourselves up for an evening trip to the grocery store.

The night was mild and the sky was clear with a few stars twinkling, the store was empty, save for a few single men shopping in the frozen food section and some teenagers, waiting for their friends to be done stacking cans of crushed pineapple and pickled pigs feet on the shelves. How leisurely it was to stroll through the empty aisles at our own pace. We called a cab to take us back home and enjoyed the spoils of our conquest, despite still being slightly full of all the fried goodness of our earlier meal.

Ah yes, sloth and gluttony doth perfection make. It's not like that. We usually eat so careful and work pretty hard. That was the first time in forever we took a whole day to just relax and laze about "indulging our fancies", as they cavemen used to say.

A most agreeable saturday indeed. What I would like to take from that into the next week is the feeling of ease and light-heartedness a bit of rest and attention to desires can bring. Remind me because I might forget quickly. I shall approach the coming week as if my pajamas and slippers were on and my pillow and blanket were at hand whenever I needed them. Sort of like a crazy person. Crazy like a FOX, who's having a lie-in. Er...G'night.

Tight pants and wings.

In the mall below the building where I work, there are handsome young men in tight pants and soft, cream-coloured, fisherman knit sweaters with big angel wings on their backs, handing out promotional postcards. Sometimes I love Montreal.

Sgt. Pepper's Bee Gees style.

I love the look of a tree covered in snow. This is lucky because I get to see 20 minutes of it out the window of the train these days. Snow has arrived indeed. I’m really starting to realize that having to only endure a month of this, and then sitting out the rest of the winter in California is a good, good thing. Although, I had a dream last night that we arrived and had a truly awful apartment to live in. Stupid paranoid brain.

On another topic, the award for cutest little cd in the world goes to Nighttiming by Coconut Records. Which is essentially Jason Schwartzman and friends. It sounds like he spent a month listening to Sgt. Pepper’s, but the BeeGees version, and watching episodes of the Monkeys and then went into the basement and recorded an album. It’s the first time I’ve thought of the BeeGees cover of the Sgt. Pepper album in ages. Takes me waaaay back. My precocious enjoyment of this album is due to having a sister 8 years older than me. I remember going to the theatre on a Saturday afternoon in downtown Kitchener and seeing Xanadu. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old. It pretty much blew my mind. I haven’t seen it since but thanks to this adorable cd by Jason Schwartzman, I am so totally going to listen to the Bee Gees version of Sgt. Pepper and rent Xanadu. I suggest you do the same!

Oh and I am pleased to announce that there is a new distraction as I wait for the train in the morning. A very tall, businesslike man who everyday, while waiting for the train, closes his eyes and practices walking backwards, as if he were on a tightrope. One foot directly behind the other. Either he is a tight rope walker from 9 to 5 or he's a little kooky. My guess is OCD. I feel like congratulating him for being so funky. Whatever the reason. Walking backward with your eyes closed is one of the best ways of waiting for a train that I've seen for sure.

IIIIIIII can't stand it, I know you planned it...

I haven't been able to blog in a while because I'm training the gal who will be replacing me while I am in California "finding myself". She's beside me all day, except for right this second so I'm typing super fast to say that...

I can't remember. I think of things but if I don't blog them right away, they disapear from my damaged brain.

All I remember is that somehow, something happened that made me decide I should start the blog quoting Beasite Boys - Sabatoge.

So listen all y'all it's a sabatoge... but I really can't remember what or why.

new topic: I will be hell of years tomorrow.

Also, this has been a week of malchance. Remind me to explain.

Some Epson salts will calm your humours Milady.

I went to the drug store to look for hydrogen peroxide. They have it in this little section in the back that's the "old-timey" style pharmaceuticals. Rose water, Myrrh essence, Calamine, Espsom Salts. I felt like I should be wearing a monocle and "perusing the wares" in search of a tonic for for the humours. I intend to buy everything they have in that section a little bit at a time until I have a full 19th century pharmacy in my own bathroom.



So the other day I went to a great sale at the Legion down the street and a yard sale just across from it. Here are my rad finds:

Ayep

Yesterday morning, I grimly left the house at 7am, my spirit was lifted ever so slightly by the tiny sparse snowflakes falling from the sky.

This morning, frost covered the ground. It's okay. Everything is okay. Winter's-a-comin'. Ayep. Birth, death, great circle of life and all that.

On another topic. Long weekend. Yesssssss. Only for me though, me and all others working in banks. Poor T. No rest for the weary(aka engineering student).

The new lady at work eats an incredible amount of variety store items. She is always crinkling some plastic wrapper and nibbling while talking on her cellphone to her boyfriend about his brother or going to New York City to shop or endless, endless appointments being made and cancelled. I'm not sure what she does exactly but I bet she gets paid 10 times what I do. Okay, maybe 5 times. Do I actually care though? Not actually. I would hate her job whatever it is. That's the spirit Godzilla bun!

Okay so that's twice now that the word spirit has worked into this day's blog. I'll make sure to add it to my labels so anyone doing a religious search will find my blog. Or maybe I should replace spirit with a substitute word. Spittle.

It lifted my spittle. That's the spittle!

Ayep.

Ladies and Gentlenerds

I had four hours of sleep last night. In fact, I can't remember the last time that I didn't wake up for a couple of hours in the middle of the night. I'm not actually sure how I've been dragging my ass through everyday. Especially today. It's only 11:00 and I already feel like if I blink too long, I will be rendered unconscious.

Yesterday, upon leaving the house, I thought I had lost my gloves. I couldn't find them and you have to understand that I act like a head injury victim. I put everything in it's own place that doesn't change or else I have no idea where it is and can't find it so if something isn't there, it's probably because I lost it. All I could conclude is that in a slight breach of habit of not putting them on before leaving the train to go home, I had lost them on the train. I. was. devastated.

Ridiculous I know, they are just gloves but it was like abandoning a helpless pet hamster to a horrible fate to me. My precious, cashmere, grape purple, from Boston gloves, lost, no doubt in the hands of someone else. ON the hands of someone else. Metaphorically, someone had found my hamster and was wearing it on their hands. I thought I could get over the pain of losing something I liked so much but what if I saw them on someone else. What if I saw the callous human being who found them and kept them for themselves??? What if I confronted them and they wouldn't give them back. Just the possibility made me shake with outrage for the injustice of it all. Over reaction you say? No fucking shit!

T suggested I put off the grieving process until I went home and verified that they were not just misplaced. I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't! I mourned those gloves all day like nobodies business until in utter desperation, I tried clinging to a shred of hope. But upon returning home, I looked and saw that they were not there and that my hope, as I suspected was hollow. I actually broke into tears, on my way to the bathroom, as I gave up finally, on the fate of my gloves. There, on the bathroom counter, for no reason I can specify, were my gloves. Was I happy as hell? Indeed I was.

What is the moral ladies and gentlenerds? Is there one? Random luck, hope, cynicism and love of a worldly possession...where does it all lead us to. A nap on the spare office floor I think.

Eccchhh.

People are gross.

I had a doctor's appointment this morning. Missed lunch, so I picked something up from the food court before going to work. It was packed. Packed with hairsprayed, oily, make-uped ladies sucking french fries from their fingers like little mouth vacuums and bloated men with greasy hair packing forkfull after forkfull of meat into their meatholes.

I was unaware how much mayonaise could be included in a lunch time meal until the woman in front of me ordered an eggsalad sandwich(with mayo in it) and mayo on the bread and out of the 10 salads she could pick from, she chose the two with mayo in the dressing. Why not top it off with a mayonaise shake and some hard mayo candy. She looked like a jar of mayonaise, like when it's been of out the fridge for a while and starts to go a bit yellow at the edges and the jar sweats condensation. She looked like that, but with more lipstick.

Everyone piling in the junk, sitting on their synthetic fibred, stinky asses, smacking their gobs as they prattle about work and family and how they went to the price club and got a great deal of some big tubs of mayonaise.