Life in progress

Tag Archives: Humor


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Friday the 13th – I Met the Grin Reaper at Starbucks

The Grin Reaper (typo intentional) stopped by my table at Starbucks tonight and introduced himself. Seriously – he reminded me of the childhood image I have of Beelzebub.

I was sitting at a table working on my laptop, minding my own business and drinking a grande Mocha. Channing Tatum sat two tables away, alone, (yeah, unlikely, right? Okay, so it wasn’t him, but the guy I sat beside was the spitting image) facing the same way I was, doing something on a tablet. Our backs were to the wall. Here’s how it went:

Grin Reaper: (approaches my table and smiles, saying nothing)

Me: (looks up at him and tries not to shrink back)

Grin Reaper: (finally) Hello. I think we’ve met before.

Me: I don’t think so.

Grin Reaper: (holding out his liver-spotted hand) I’m Leo. Nice to meet you.

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Me: (shaking his hand and deciding not to give my name) Nice to meet you too.

Grin Reaper: (smile slips) Do you come in here often? (smiles again)

Me: No, maybe once every six months.

Grin Reaper: Hmm. I sit in the mall every day and read four newspapers. And I play the piano at nursing homes so I keep busy.

Me: (staring at his crooked yellow teeth as he grins creepily) That’s nice.

Grin Reaper: (looks down at my laptop) What are you studying?

Me: Oh, I’m just writing.

Grin Reaper: You’re a writer? I’m a writer too. I write about psychology, sociology, neurology, philosophy, religion… (and he named off about four more things)

Me: Well that’s interesting.

Grin Reaper: (stares and smiles)

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Me: Maybe I’ve seen you in the mall…

Grin Reaper: Yes, that’s probably it. (stares and smiles)

Me: Yyyeah…

Grin Reaper: (stares and smiles)

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Me: (probably 20 seconds have passed but it feels like he’s been sucking on my soul for an hour) Well, it was very nice meeting you.

Grin Reaper: Yes, nice meeting you too. (smiles and retreats)

Beside me, Channing turns to look at me, smiles and shakes his head. I look back, eyes wide, one eyebrow raised, with a frightened look on my face. Channing laughs.

I swear to God, Leo looked EXACTLY like Reverend Kane (Julian Beck) from Poltergeist 2. About 90 years old, thin, and well over six feet tall, he walked with the stoop of a man above average height. He wore a three piece suit and a hat, and had the most God-awful creepy look about him, as though he wanted to tell me how my life is going to end in grisly yet accurate detail.

Had I had my wits about me, I’d have asked Channing if that really happened. In fact, I’d have asked for his number as well – you know, just because he’s my only witness – so I could get another reality check at 2am, after the nightmare I’m sure to have tonight.

I may never go to the mall again.


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Forcing Myself

I’ve been having a hard time for the past few days getting into editing my novel. I’m able to force myself to work, but then I come up with any number of excuses to do something else, every other sentence I fix.
Candy Crush Saga is only the tip of the ice cream cone. (Make that a mint chocolate chip Klondike Bar.) How about those dishes in the sink? Or is that another email? And let’s not even mention WordPress stats. And if all else fails and I’ve done everything else I can do, or eaten everything in the house (damn, I just ate tomorrow night’s pork chops… and why do my teeth hurt? Must be the fact that they were still frozen…) I start to notice that my butt’s starting to hurt because I’ve been sitting on it too long.

It has to be time for a glass of wine.

You can see how it goes. I sit down to edit at times like this and I get SO MUCH ACCOMPLISHED! just not any editing. Is it really worth spending three hours just to slice the hell out of two paragraphs that I end up not happy with anyway because I wasn’t really concentrating?

How does anyone get this job done for goodness sakes?!?


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There’s Pain and then There’s Pain (and then there’s pain in the rain)

This morning while waiting outside for Alex’s school bus with Alex and my best friend John, I lifted my right hand to point at something and felt a shooting pain through my shoulder. I moaned. Not normally being one to complain about aches and pains, I thought about what made me so miserable where this shoulder thing is concerned.

Being that I was diagnosed with arthritis in it, I explained to John that pain has never really bothered me that much. I just live with it. But I realise it’s different this time, because I’m not sure it’ll ever go away: I may very well have to suffer with this one for the rest of my life.

I suppose just saying that made me deserve what was to come. At the house of the second customer on my paper route, I missed a step on the way down and landed on my knee on their brick pathway.

It could have been worse though – I could be out in the torrential downpour I’m watching through the window as I type this.


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A Tuna Built a Nest Under My Front Steps!

It’s true! A tuna has taken up residence under my front steps. What’s worse, there may be more than one!

Okay, by now you’re probably asking yourself what the hell I’m talking about. Let me tell you a story.

One fine evening when my eldest son was about a year old, my ex and I decided to go for a walk around the block, baby in carriage. It was spring, just like it is now, and the lilacs were blooming their fragrant heads off. The bumble bees were in heaven, and there were plenty of them. Their low pitched drones could be heard as they busily buzzed from blossom to blossom.

In the thick of it all, my ex decided that it might be the best idea for me to push the carriage. When I inquired why, he explained.

Now there are two things you need to know about my ex at this point. One, is that he is French. Quebecois. And two, that he is deathly afraid of bees.

His explanation for not wanting to push the carriage containing our child was as follows:

Because if I see a taon, I’m going to run.

Taon is the French word for horsefly, deer fly… but he meant bumble bee.

What I heard was thon, which is French for tuna.

Many minutes passed before I was able to get up off the ground from laughing so hard. When I could finally speak, with tears running down my face, I told him he could push the carriage because it didn’t matter – if I saw a tuna, I was going to run as well.

So there you have it. I have a tuna living under my steps. I won’t be telling my ex though – I won’t see him again until winter if I do.

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My ex’s vision of a tuna


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One-Liner Wednesday – Concentration

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That awkward moment when you’re concentrating really hard on making the bed until you realize that all three of you are sticking your tongues out but you’re the only one without ice cream.


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A Day… I Mean Night in the Life

01:00 – The thirteen year old comes to my room to say he needs to be covered up again. I get up because he won’t leave me alone until I do, and the more he fusses, the more he wakes up.

02:01 – Cell phone rings. Squint at the number. Don’t recognize it. Decline call.

02:02 – Roll over to go back to sleep. Get cramp in left foot. Writhe until cramp goes away.

02:03 – Get comfortable again. Notice light in my eyes. Open them to be blinded by rays of moonlight like laser beams coming through window. Roll over.

02:04 – Am awake, wondering if the phone call was from eldest son, lost, alone on the side of the highway, with a phone he plucked from the cold dead body of the guy he’d just seen run over. (Okay, the body wouldn’t be cold yet, but you get the picture.)

02:25 – Thinks about getting up to write this post.

02:30-02:54 – Drifts back off to sleep.

02:55 – Cell phone rings. Answers it. Loud talking in the background and then a voice says, “Wrong number,” and hangs up.

02:56 – Cell phone rings again. Answers it. Person hangs up.

02:57 – Cell phone rings … again. Answers it. Lots of noise: voice says, “Still wrong number.” Well DUH!! Am clearly dealing with a rocket scientist.

02:57 – Cell phone rings. Picks up and listens. Voice says, “I think the number’s 0215…” Resists temptation to say, “YES! Try that!” They hang up.

03:00 – (While failing to get back to sleep.) Imagines how it might be possible to replicate fax machine noise for next phone call.

03:27 – Considers getting up to write post which will include phone number of non-rocket scientist so that people all over the world can phone said doo-doo at 2 and 3 every morning for the next week.

03:41 – Tries to figure out how to say 999,999 in Japanese.

03:50 (or so) – Drifts off to sleep.

06:25 – Thirteen year old wakes me up to let me know he’s going downstairs and that he’s going to let me sleep for another half an hour. Goes downstairs and proceeds to scream at TV for half an hour.

06:55 – Phone rings … cousin in England has forgotten yet again how many hours difference there are…

It’s going to be a long two weeks until I’m able to sleep again.

 


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One-Liner Wednesday – …If It Wasn’t Screwed On

My mother, talking to me on her cellphone: I’ll make sure I keep my phone with me tomorrow, in case you call – I just have to find where I put the bloody thing now.


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Everybody’s Different

Diversity is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? Well, not always.

If you’re at all sociable: whether you go out of the house, or stay in and spend your days on the internet, you’re bound to meet someone who gets on your nerves. I remember when my ex and I started dating. Everything was flowers and wine and laughter… and then I found out he was a morning person. I, on the other hand, am not one for more than a grunt if you’re lucky before my first coffee, so the singing coming from the direction of the shower was enough to set my teeth on edge.

While that wasn’t actually painful, I do now at times feel physical discomfort when I come across someone whose nature is completely different to mine. Take, for instance, people who live in a constant state of drama. I have enough real life problems to even consider worrying about who has pissed off whom and how they’re going to badmouth them until everyone else hates them. And it happens everywhere! Social media, high schools, offices and even old-age homes.

What I don’t understand is, why do people do this to themselves? Why can’t people just live and let live? So what if so-and-so is pissing you off? Ignore them. Don’t let them pull you into their world of misery. I certainly didn’t let my ex get the best of me with his early morning glee, and since he was still serenading the shower head when we broke up, I sure didn’t do anything to stifle him. Then again, maybe by that time he was doing it just to get on my nerves.

I know I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: life is too short. I think if we can all accept that not everyone is the same as us, that we all have our quirks, our opinions, and our preferences in life, we could all be so much happier.

Stop trying to change people. Embrace their differences. Just not necessarily in the shower.


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Will We Become Like An Old Married Couple, WordPress?

In attempting to come up with something new to write here today, I realized there doesn’t seem to be much left of my present life that I haven’t already written about. In short, I’m running out of things to say.

I have this vision in my head of me and you sitting in a restaurant, eating a meal and looking around at the other couples – the young ones holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes, *gag* and the middle aged ones with kids, arguing over whether Bobby should get a new computer for his fourth birthday – and having nothing to say to one another. We’ve already talked about the weather and how bad the traffic was to get here.

Your teeth hitting the spoon every time you sip your soup is getting on my nerves.

Your memories of how sexy I was when we first met are fading even as the colour in your favourite cardigan does every time I wash it – it’s a horrible burnt orange and I’ve been secretly putting a drop of bleach in the water for about six months. I figure if it finally goes yellow you’ll stop wearing it.

Is that how things are going to end up with us, WordPress? Is it?

Come on, my dear. Let’s spice that plate of bits and bytes up, shall we? Before I have to face your dentures in a pot beside the sink in the bathroom every night.

 


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One-Liner Wednesday – He’s At It Again

My best friend, John, after I told him my son Chris has been washing dishes to earn money: So that’s why there are clean dishes in your cupboards!