The Ex Factor

I routinely, nearly habitually, embarrass myself. Whether it is from my astounding lack of knowledge of world geography ("Doesn't Britain connect at the top to the rest of Europe, though?"), physics ("I thought bendy buses had that accordion bend in them to stretch out and fit more people during rush hour?"), or just general failure of social etiquette ("Thanks for your condolences about my bird. Sorry about your grandpa passing away!) making an ass out of myself happens on a near-weekly basis.

A few months ago I was at an appointment, and trying to navigate the busy parking lot. The clinic I attend hires mentally disabled adults to help out with regular building management duties, and this day they had strapped on a neon vest to one of their workers and sent him outside to direct traffic in the parking lot. He kept trying to direct me into the last stall, a blue handicapped space. I shook my head, pointed at the sign, and he kept pointing at the stall and gesturing for me to park there. I got out, and said "I'm not handicapped, I cannot park there" - but it was a busy place, and he couldn't hear me. I shouted "I'm not handicapped!" over and over as he kept gesturing for me to move my vehicle in the stall. On the fourth or fifth shouting of "I'm not handicapped!" I looked around and realized people were watching. Yes, people were watching the blond bitch with the Pontiac shout at an adult man with Downs syndrome that she wasn't handicapped, over and over and over again. I left in shame. I figured that embarrassment would be enough for the next year or so.

I am divorced and remarried. I divorced in 2005, we get along not too badly - regular ex stuff, I suppose. There's no baby's mama issues or anything. Receiving a text from my ex isn't out of the norm entirely, we share Matthew and need to confirm schedules and pick-up times and such. The text I received yesterday simply said "I think you called me and didn't mean to" which was a bit strange. I saw he had also called, and left a message on the home phone for me give him a call back. I gave him a phone at work -

W: Hey, did you get a new phone?

Me: Yeah, I'm still figuring out how it works. How did you know I got a new phone?

W: My buddy Jim has a blackberry and he keeps ghostdialing me, and you ghostdialed me.

Me: Oh. Sorry for ghostdialing you?

W: Do you know what ghostdialing is?

Me: Nope.

W: It's when your phone gets bumped and calls someone, and they can hear everything you're doing.

Me: Oh.

W: Everything. You. Are. Doing.

Me: I wasn't doing anything, I was driving back into town listening to music.

W: Everything.

Me: I was just listening to music. Oh, and singing a bit I guess.

W: Yes, you were singing.

Me: Ugh, you heard me singing?

W: Carole, you left an entire message of you singing Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad at the top of your lungs on voicemail.



Oh holy hell. Oh holy, holy hell.



Me: That didn't mean anything, I swear to God. That wasn't for you. I was just in the mood for MeatLoaf. Really, I wasn't 70's rock-ballading you.

W: I know. I figured you got a new phone. You should learn how to lock it.

Me: I can lock it?!

W: Please lock it.

Me: I'll google it.

So, yeah. If you're having a bad day, please consider that at least you didn't rock out to a 70's MeatLoaf ballad on your ex-husband's voicemail.

Thingamaknobbers and Fuckamagadgets

I'm not big on technology. Well, that's not entirely true - I love technology, and would never be without it. I'd cry if I didn't have access to running water, a hair dryer and straightener, my car, and everything else that helps me along in the average day. I guess I have Apathetic Doodad Syndrome, in that I never use technological devices to their fullest potential. I have an iPod Classic and it has one playlist on it. A really big and long playlist because sorting my music is too much hassle. I have this laptop that I quite enjoy, but admittedly only use for squeaking around on the internet. I bought my husband a DVR as a gift, not realizing it wasn't compatible with my really old television...I still don't know how to use the recording option on it. I got my first cell phone in 2006, finally pushed into it by my husband because his favourite mode of communication is texting. Until then I had been cellphone-free (not less, but FREE) and quite happy about it.

My first cell was a Sony Ericsson, a cheery little number that was also a combination MP3 player. I never used the MP3 player, it didn't have a single song downloaded onto it except for my beloved Ghostbusters ringtone that no one seemed to appreciate for some reason. It came with a contract and the absolute promise that it would work out at my parents' place in Ontario. I quickly found out my little phone would work in Glasgow, Amsterdam, Philadelphia, Toronto, Chicago, London and Minneapolis but not 6 hours away at my parents' house. This annoyed me beyond reason and my phone became a thorn in my side. It quickly fell out of favour, and aside from having to fill my contractual obligations I had very little use for it.

Then my dog ate it (picture of dog included). Thankfully the SIM card was intact, so I bought another little phone from Winnipeg Buy and Sell that would utilise my SIM card and used that until my contract ran out. I dropped it a few weeks later, cracking the faceplate, and put the only sticky thing I could find on it - a Curious George bandaid (it did match in its own way). It wasn't pretty, but it worked. It slips into German predictive text on occasion, I can't use the calendar because it reverts back to 2003 all by itself, the ringtones reset themselves so I never know that it's my cell ringing in a public place, and it isn't internet capable. But it can text sometimes, and call people other times, so it met my simple needs.

Eventually my contract ran out and the freedom I was looking for became a sudden mental prison - I could go out and get a new contract and phone, but God what should I get? I didn't want anything. Phones were bigger now, and silly colours, and had eight versions of themselves. The choice was daunting, overwhelming, and I couldn't trust the liars at the phone desk to sell me what I needed. The wound from my first phone was still open and raw. I kept a no contract phone for 2 years longer than I needed to because of indecision. And laziness.

I knew I didn't want an iPhone. I can't handle one without wiping my sleeve on it, trying to rid it of fingerprints, and they aren't even my phones. I needed something classic, nice-looking but functional, slim but not James Bond, with a bigger screen that I can actually see. I finally found her, a BlackBerry Curve 3G in Smokey Violet. She's lovely, understated, light but sturdy. She spoke to me the second I saw her. I won't lie, she's a complicated lady - but I know we'll have years and years together that I can spend figuring her out because I'm just loyal that way. And lazy.

Dream a Messed Up Little Dream of Me

When I was younger, I had that dream many people have. I'd be sitting in school trying to focus on a lecture with no pants on. We have all had that dream, whether we were at school with no pants on, at work with no pants on, at a party with no pants on, or at a funeral with no pants on. It binds us together as humans. As I've gotten older that dream has morphed into various forms - I've shown up to a meeting in dreamland with no shirt on, the Oscars with no push-up strapless bra on, and even the grocery store with no pants or shirt on. It changed into deeper and more complicated levels of social embarrassment and despair, like when I dreamed I had my son but he was a watermelon - and instead of having a smiley, lovey baby at my mothering group like all the other mothers I had a listless watermelon that started to rot a bit where I had dropped him and dented his fruity head. People judged me for not loving my watermelon as I should, so I was left to feign love and admiration for my watermelon in public...while crying and sobbing over my smelly watermelon behind closed doors. Last night, however, was by far the worst public humiliation my subconscious has inflicted upon me.

It started out as a regular dream, aside from us living in an absolute shack with five half-dressed and dirty children wandering around in filth and poverty. Ok, in my dream it was obvious we were poor - dirt poor. I wandered out of our bedroom and my husband (still Graham...not one of those dream husbands you get to borrow for an evening that your brain tried on during the week without you noticing and squirreled away for material later on) looked relieved and annoyed, while juggling what looked like our youngest spawn. Apparently I had been depressed in my dream, and spent two weeks in my bed sleeping and this was the first he had seen me in all of that time. I asked him what he'd been feeding the children, and he burst into tears and said Chicken Pie from the factory across the road. I took the half-dressed, filthy baby from him and apologised for my absence, and vowed to be a better wife/mother/dream person. First things first, though, I had to take a massive piss.

I can confidently pee in dreams without pissing myself in real life. This wasn't always the case, but the inevitable accidents that would happen in childhood when I tried it eventually turned into hit-and-miss attempts as I grew older, and now I can successfully pee in a dream with no real-life consequences. It's a skill I should put on resumes, I know.

I wandered around our small cabin/shack/house and found two toilets. One had a door on it, but was closed off with Police tape cautioning me not to go in. Graham let me know he had plugged that toilet up, and it couldn't be used. Great. Left to be used was a toilet with not only no door (Graham had burned it for heat for our little ones) but completely encased in see-through plastic. In my desperation, I had to use it. No sooner did I sit down than my entire extended family walked into our house for some type of reunion/party dig directly in front of my toilet. I had aunts slowly walking by, uncles, cousins, my grandfather even did a painfully slow looky-loo moment at me. I was desperately trying to finish my pee but suddenly suffered from stage-fright and couldn't put an end to the job. My family mocked me for this. I took the ribbing in a light-hearted manner, but was then faced with the horrible task of having to wipe myself in front of them all.

I got the toilet paper ready and sat quietly, willing someone to notice what stage I was at and to alert the others to give me some privacy. It didn't happen. I looked at the toilet paper in my hand, realizing I had to just get it over with and at least finally pull my pants up and end this horrific experience. So I got ready, tilted and wiped -

And my entire family stopped talking immediately, looked over at me and did a giant, collective "EWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!" all at once.

I woke up at that point, shuffled to the bathroom to go pee (you have pee dreams because your bladder is bursting in real time) and lovingly caressed the door before going in. I woke up Graham when I crawled back into bed -

Me: Graham?

Graham: Jesus Christ, what?

Me: Can you promise me you'll never burn our bathroom door for heat?

Graham: Why would I? I'd probably burn a few of the other less important doors first, Carole.

Me: Good. I promise I'll never lie in bed depressed for two weeks while you have to only eat chicken pie.

Graham: Fantastic, I fucking hate chicken pie. Shut up and go back to sleep.

So I did.

The terrible Mr. Moving.

We moved last weekend. Is there anything worse than moving? I can't think of it. Ugh, one moment...there. Kung Fu Panda was in my laptops DVD drive and kept setting it off, revving and interrupting my sensitive thought process. Moving is tough on a marriage. This time around I was unable to lift furniture because I'm pregnant, and my husband lifts furniture like a pregnant woman, so we decided to hire movers. We're at that stage in life where our furniture has to last us a few years because it cost us more than $5, so having friends haul it all up flights of stairs and scratching things is no longer an acceptable trade-off for free labour.

Moving didn't bring out the best in us, we discovered. I just wanted to throw out everything in my path, minimising our lives no matter what sentimental value the object in question had. So what if your grandmother smuggled this up her bum out of the old country when the Nazis invaded? It's taking up space - toss that sucker out! Whereas Graham shut down and refused to pack, his total tally of helpful packing coming out to two and a half boxes of only his own DVDs and books.

Picking a moving company was Graham's job. He took it very seriously, picking the first moving company he called and promptly forgetting which one it was. He then spent the week asking me if they take cash or cheque (I must have owned a moving company in a previous life) and procrastinating on calling them to ask until the night before. If we paid in cash we could escape paying taxes, so we went to the bank to pick up some cash and went home to organize the move.

I wasn't very impressed the next morning when the movers were 30 minutes late, and I couldn't call them for two reasons. One, we didn't have any computers to look the number up - we had moved them the night before. Two, Graham gave them our land line to call in case they couldn't find our place and I had joyously and less-than-gently disconnected our digital phone box so it could move with us - and had no idea how to set it back up again. After much squabbling and finger-pointing, a moving truck pulled up out front. Hurrah! I ran downstairs to prop open the door, willing to forgive them for being 30 minutes late when the driver raised his Tim Horton's cup at me and made the universal smoke-break signal at me with his two fingers. What? WHAT? 30 minutes late and I'm supposed to hangout while they finish their coffee and have a cigarette?!

So I shut up and waited. Really, I needed to pick my battles and they were going to carry all my shit anyway. The moving guys came upstairs, had a look around, set up their truck, and then an amazing thing started to happen - our apartment started to get empty, and it wasn't causing us one single second of pain or arguing. While the movers effortlessly picked up our entertainment unit, swivelled dressers out the tiny door, brought our beds downstairs, and shifted my heavy deep freezer, we were able to sit and stare with idiotic grins on our faces. Every time the movers were out of earshot we giggled and whispered to each other excitedly. Our mutual love of the moving guys brought us closer together on a day filled with much stress and conflict.

I think I was even forgiven for ripping the phone out of the wall when I was only supposed to disconnect the modem.