Life in progress

Tag Archives: real life


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253. Scenes from the Second Seat on the Right

Friday, May 11th, 6:00pm
Shannon and Terry

 

Shannon: I wanna do something fun.

Terry: Like watch TV?

Shannon: No! Something like jumping off a cliff with a bungee cord wrapped around my ankle.

Terry: How about going to a movie?

Shannon: A movie? I’m talking about doing something exciting! Like taking a trip to a foreign country where I don’t know the language, and getting lost.

Terry: That’s fun?

Shannon: I think so.

Terry: We could go downtown and play in traffic …

Shannon: (glares at him) Don’t you have any sense of adventure?

Terry: Sure. I play video games.

 

Next stop: Saturday, May 12th, 8:00pm

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Is it Live? Or is it Internet?

Do you remember the old Memorex commercial? No? If you’re wondering why I’m asking, see the title of this post. Okay, on with my point.

What kind of person are you? Are you like me and wonder what happened to someone if they don’t show up online for, like, twelve hours? Or do you figure they’re just living their life in real life? Because seriously, it’s hard to differentiate between online life and real life sometimes. If someone stays offline for three days it’s not the same as if they don’t come out of their house for three days. But we still wonder, are they laying on the kitchen floor in the puddle of grease they slipped on because it’s been thirty-six hours since they last posted a picture of a cat on Facebook?

You hear stories of how the mailman calls 911 because the old lady in 226 hasn’t emptied her mailbox since last Tuesday, but you do the same thing for your online friends and you end up with the police knocking on YOUR door with a restraining order. Okay, there may be exceptions: like when they don’t show up online for months (yeah, I’m looking at you, Paul Curran). But the fact is, we don’t really (usually) know what goes on in the background of our online friend’s lives. Just like we shouldn’t judge people by the way they look, we shouldn’t necessarily worry or think others are ignoring us when they’re not around the internet at the same time every day.

I do consider my online friends as friends. It’s a totally different friendship we have with our physical neighbours though. Right?

How soon do you start to worry?


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Slapstick

Warning: The following my cause you to spit coffee out of your nose. Please read with caution.

Do you ever have so many things go wrong at once that you wonder if you’re on a sitcom and nobody told you? I had one of those moments at 6:30 this morning – far too early to start wondering who started the cameras rolling.

So there I was, standing at the counter in my kitchen, painstakingly crushing my son’s chewable vitamin with the blunt end of a knife as I do every morning. He won’t chew it – I have to stir it into his yogurt.

Anyway, there I was with this fine fine powder on the counter when my cellphone alarm went off in my pocket. I reached for the phone and pulled the crushed pill off the counter – all over the floor.

So I go to the broom closet, take out the broom and drop the dustpan. Bend down to pick up the dustpan, the mop falls and hits me on the head. Stuff the mop back in the broom closet, go back to the kitchen. Sweep up the mess, almost knock an opened bottle of wine on the floor with the broom handle.

Yes, there was a stopper in the bottle; no, I don’t drink wine at 6:30am, though I’m not sure why not.

All this happened in the space of about ninety seconds. One of those mornings when I just wanted to go back to bed and start again, you know?