Thursday

Baby It's Cold Outside

Today it is cold in Toronto. Like retarded cold for the end of February. So cold that my stylish red Team Canada jacket actually froze and made the oddest crinkling sounds when I moved. I thought my hood would crack off. Not the best day to wear only a skirt and tights (a top too… obviously).

I entered the building this morning right behind a woman in a very fancy fur coat such that only a very wealthy woman would dare to wear/ could afford. Quite frankly, I am not a fan of fur coats, or fur in general… I could say that it’s due to some sort of ethics or morals on my part but let’s be honest… I eat meat… I wear cows on my feet… I would be an uber hypocrite if I were to rant about the evils of fur. No folks, I just plain think that fur is ugly. Don’t see the appeal and I never have.

So I did look at the coat with a bit if distain because it was quite god awful in my estimation, though it looked to be about the warmest thing on the planet at that moment.

And then I chanced to look at this woman’s head. On top of said head was perched one of the most ridiculous things I have ever seen. So silly that I forgot all about the ugly fur coat and chuckled to myself while waiting for the elevator. For while this woman was wearing what looked to be a $10,000 fur coat (at least… although what the hell do I know...), she was wearing a “Budget Rent-a-Car” toque on top of her head.

But this was no ordinary and run-of-the-mill toque folks… this thing had CLASS… brown and orange, grey, white and blue… it had BUDGET-RENT-A-CAR boldly emblazoned around the forehead. As an added touch, it also had the world’s largest pompom affixed to the top. It was brilliant. I couldn’t take my eyes off the ensemble.

And as she was getting off on the 4th floor. The three of us left in the elevator broke out into laughter… no words needed to be said. We shared that moment together… all three of us. And the toque.

Brrr

Wednesday

The List That Will Never Cease to Grow

It occurred to me this morning, while I was most annoyed at having to use a can opener to open a new can of coffee, that it has been quite some time since I have done a “Things That Annoy Me List”. So without further adieu…

Beatrice Petty’s Things That Annoy Me
February 2008 Edition

1)Can openers. I use can openers very sparingly… Tuna for Devil Cat… which he sometimes doesn’t get if he’s run out the day before due to my abhorrence of the opener de can, which I can blame on the fact that over the course of the night he probably misbehaved at some point and with tuna being a privilege and not a right, it’s easy for me to justify (I understand that I need professional help)… Various cream soups for use in the new slow cooker… which always leads to the sudden appearance of the Devil Cat who associates a can opening with a treat for him.

2)The new girl who works next to me. I realize that I am one of those people who have little patience for others. I don’t like everyone… and even those who I do like I don’t like all the time. We have a bunch of new people who started earlier this year and because of that, needed to do a bit of office jostling. This saw me move my office space from my blessed dark little hole in the corner away from everyone, to a completely wide open cubby that is now shared with the new assistant of the boss that I never got along with. And my patience has long since evaporated with this woman.

If you missed it in a previous post, I quit my job a couple months back and am only here for another couple of weeks. But instead of taking stuff off my plate so that I can get my files organized and create this “manual of all the stuff in my brain that no one else knows how to do” (as was made evident when I took a week’s holiday in January and my department almost fell apart), I have more work then ever to do and sometimes feel so overwhelmed that I just want to cry. Since I gave notice, not a week has gone by where I haven’t said to myself “I would quit today if I had not already done so”. So… long story short. I is bizay.

The new girl? Not so busy. But very chatty. Mundane stuff I don’t care about in the slightest chatty. Also, she’s a ‘cold’ person, which I am sure anyone has come across before, or in fact, is one themselves. A ‘cold’ person is someone who is always cold in the office. But instead of layering up… ie. put a sweater on you daft cow… she insists on running a ceramic heater on high all day long. Unfortunately (for me), I am a ‘hot’ person who prefers to work in an environment slightly cooler than the lowest pits of hell. I also find the office to be dry even on the best of days so to be blasting our little space with hot dry heat for 8 hours straight = one perturbed (and dry and red-eyed) Bea.

But the latest and dare I say the straw that broke the alligator’s back? I came back to my desk and the 6” pile of mail that I had been conveniently storing in my mailbox until such a time as I saw fit to go through it/ throw it out before I left was sitting on my keyboard. I had barely enough time to think “WTF?” before Chatty Cathy proudly announced that she had been kind enough to bring me the mail from my mailbox. So NOW… I am left with a stack of mostly fax confirmations and a few other pieces of correspondence that I was choosing to ignore, cluttering up my already oh-so-very cluttered desk.

3)This shite cold that I have had for a week. I sound like a chain-smoking truck driver. Not a pretty sight.

4)Going to the movies and forgetting my Scene card. Do they have the Scene card in other parts of Canada/ the world? I am completely obsessed with my Scene card. For some reason I did not have Scene card when going to the movies last week with the old roomie and it put me in such a mood. I felt like I was cheating on my Scene card because how dare I go to a movie and not get points towards another? I was also very thirsty but couldn’t bring myself to purchase a beverage at full price. Sufficed to say I spent much of the duration of the movie dwelling on where my card was and hoping with all the hope in the universe that it was in a coat pocket somewhere instead of lost and never to be seen again. The latter would have been heartbreaking for I had enough points on it for two free movies… (btw, all is good. It was in the pocket of a coat I had worn to the last movie I saw. Crisis averted).

Now what else am I forgetting???

Thursday

Why is a Beer When it Spins???

Another birthday come and gone, though the fact that I can out drink a couple of alcoholic Englishmen is slightly disconcerting to me. And by slightly, of course, I mean yikes.

But here’s something curious… despite drinking my weight, and then some, in booze, I came home and just wasn’t quite ready to go to sleep. So up I stayed and watched some videos until 5am or so until I finally decided to hit the hay. When I woke up again to go potty, as I do pretty much every night because I have the worst bladder ever…

On a related albeit disgusting note, I feel that I need to share that I almost peed my bed the other week… I was having one of those dreams where you are going to the bathroom… and I REALLY had to go… so I finally found a bathroom though as usual, it offered little in the way of privacy… Why is it that the dreaming me who needs to go to the bathroom must always do so in a communal toilet, or one with a stall whose door is missing/ too short/ toilet backed up etc… But nature called and so I went and it was so relieving (no pun intended). Thankfully I am a light sleeper because I woke up just in the nick of time and disaster was averted. Can you remember the last time you peed a bed? I do. I was in university and it was my ex-boyfriend’s bed. I swear that I didn’t do it on purpose… just one of those things. I never did tell him.

Anyhoo… the rest of that story seems so stupid now that I went off on the pee pee tirade, so I will just end it by saying that I woke up early, like 8am early… and despite having had an entire keg of beer to myself, not to mention who knows how many shooters, I was wide awake and raring to go.

Cut to… Last night. After a very pleasant interview experience which I really, really hope I got, I was joined in my hood by the taller of the beer loving Brits who, I will admit that despite agreeing to be strictly platonic friends, I have a bit of a crush on. It’s quite manageable for the time being but we’ll see… so with that in mind, you may be interested to know that last night, he finally declared his love…

For my cat. I could be making way too much out of the whole thing but I am thinking that when the guy you have the teensiest crush on begins a sentence with “I love”, only to follow with “your cat”… It ain’t looking good in ye olde love department, unless you’re the cat.

So there we were having some pints. I only had three over the course of 4 hours. But despite that, I got drunk… had a somewhat early night, lots of water… 7 or so hours of sleep. And today? Well in no particular order…

1) Could NOT get out of bed this morning. No headache mind you, just could have slept several more hours, like, several.
2) My cat attacked me without warning from behind the curtains. Am thinking that if a certain tall Englishman loves the damn thing so much then he can have him!
3) I’m as bloated as… well, as something that’s really bloated. Am open to suggestions.
4) Our finance guy greeted me today with “Hi Bea. You look REALLY tired”.
5) Gas. Gassy. I have gas. I should be put in a quarantined room (with an open window please) so as not to offend anymore people.
6) 3 + 4 + 5 = :(

I guess what I am trying to say is…

Why?

Friday

Holy Momma

The last 6 plus months have gone by like nothing. It seems like only yesterday that I was being dissed by a short, bald, old scottish man who had lived in Canada so long that he no longer had an accent. NO ACCENT??? What the eff was I thinking???

I was very upset about it too, for about a week. And then I remembered that I really only like tall guys with actual British accents and got over the whole thing quite quickly.

Yes, I am that superficial. Who knew???

Since then, my social life, life in general to be honest, has been somewhat unremarkable. I won't go into the mould poisoning that caused me to puff up like a bullfrog, but sufficed to say that I'm not dating at the mo'. Nor have I been for like EVER... but as I seem to only be not dating tall Englishmen, it's all good. Did that make sense? Surely not.

Blah, Blah, Blah... then Christmas at home for two weeks cooped up with the parents that almost had me go insane... Blah, Blah, Blah... quit my job last month with nary another prospect in sight... Became an overnight Guitar Hereo...yadda yadda yadda... Valentine's Day spent alone... tomorrow I will be in my mid-thirties... Badda Bing... Badda Boom. That pretty much brings us up to speed on the last 6 months. Seriously. Sad no?

I'd like to send a shout to the following... to Britney, for keeping me amused these past few months. To Rafa, for not trading my Crouchy during the January transfer window. To my Dad, for buying me a kickass Liverpool jersey for Christmas. To the former-Roomie who got married last year and became an aunt for the first time only yesterday (yaaaaaaaaaaay). To Wee who had a wee baby boy of her own (yaaaaaaaaaay). To the 6 feet of snow that has fallen this month (I LOVE SNOW!!!). To having the balls to finally take my life into my own hands. Last but not least, to Pizza Hut Stuffed Crust Pizza. To which I have been addictted to ever since they first came out with it and am about to order in about 2.5 seconds.

Birthday celebs tomorrow. Fingers crossed that I make past 9pm. Pray to the universe that no one offers up shooters!!!

Bea Out!