Category — Uncategorized

I opened the door to see if it was still raining, and there was a cup of bubble tea left on the top step with a plastic bag around it to protect it from the weather. A receipt was stapled to the bag with exactly zero pieces of helpful information. No name of the intended recipient. No address. Just the order details (bubble tea), the driver, and the cost ($10! For tea!).

Someone out there wanted a bubble tea badly enough to order it for delivery. And that person did not receive their bubble tea unless DoorDash sent them a new one.

It sat outside in the rain for five hours until Josh came home and disposed of it. I left it there in case someone roamed the neighbourhood, seeking their lost tea.

Have you ever received someone else’s order?

Once upon a time, I bookmarked a museum I wanted to visit in the area. At least, I thought I did. I haven’t been able to find the bookmark in any browser folder, but I have fallen down a rabbit hole of things I once believed I needed to be able to find again.

Recipes, Facebook profiles, websites with airline seat maps, and random board games I remembered from childhood. It’s like pawing through a massive junk drawer of information.

60% of the time, I wonder why I thought the link was important. 40% of the time, I am so happy to see the site again and remember the search that brought me there.

I’ve left all of the bookmarks in place so I can enjoy them again months from now when I can’t remember another thing and go searching for it.

P.S. Does anyone remember the small museum that I once mentioned? Not Planet Word. Something with historical artifacts. I vaguely remember that the museum was so small that only 12 people could enter at a time, and you needed a reservation to visit.

I didn’t realize how much socializing we did over food until after we received our first two COVID vaccines. Before that point, we weren’t socializing with anyone, or if we did see people, it was standing on opposite ends of a driveway or masked and sitting on a porch.

But after the vaccines, many people returned to eating indoors. And by this point, most people have returned to eating indoors. We have not.

We’ve stepped closer to our old life by dining outdoors this spring/summer. This works until it doesn’t work. We make plans, and then rain cancels them because we’re not moving indoors. Or the air quality is terrible. Or it’s just too hot to enjoy the meal. When it works, it feels like old times. Like things are normal. When it doesn’t, it makes me feel apologetic for being careful.

A case in point: Cup of Jo recently posted a list of things to do with your friends that aren’t dinner. I opened it eagerly to see what else I could do to socialize beyond walks. Two of the thirteen options were… essentially dinner. And the others had a food component (pizza and a movie). There were interesting suggestions in the comments, but my point is how much socializing contains eating indoors; the only thing you can’t do inside if you’re still masking.

We went to the beach for my birthday. It’s a family tradition, where we go through the same well-worn steps, year after year. We almost didn’t go because of poor air quality, but the numbers looked okay when we woke up, so we set out for reading on the sand, French fries for lunch, and carnival rides to cap the day.

Over the years, we’ve narrowed it down to two rides. The first is the Haunted Mansion, which is a low-budget version… a much much lower-budget version… of the Disney ride. I love it, mainly because it hasn’t changed since I was a little kid. There’s a point where the vehicle takes you outside to a balcony overlooking the teacup ride. I always think about when my father got the operator to stop the ride when I got scared, and he ran on as it slowed down and scooped me out of the teacup where I was screaming. And then there are years of memories in the park with the twins. Squeezing into the children’s Ferris wheel with them, the mermaid boat ride, and too much money wasted on the horse-race-water-squirting game. Eras pass before my eyes every time the wooden ride doors open, and you jerk onto the balcony for five seconds before you disappear inside again.

The other ride we always go on is the carousel. We’ve had different riding formations over the years, but I usually get an outside horse. If possible, a dark brown one. The twins took two horses right behind us.

Round and round, the park spinning by. There is the helicopter ride — the first big kid ride the twins went on without us. And the swings that the ChickieNob wanted to ride non-stop when she was little. And the bumper cars that the Wolvog measured himself against the sign each year, waiting for the time he could drive in the car with us. Waiting for the time he could operate the car without us.

And then, like always, the ride started slowing down. And I started sobbing. We slowly spun by one man with a look of horror on his face at the masked, grey-haired woman sobbing on the merry-go-round. But I didn’t want the ride to end. I never want the ride to end; I always hope something will happen and we’ll get an extra long turn. But it never does. Two minutes is what you get. Eighteen years is what you get. Management doesn’t accept requests for extra time, even from crying women.

I think one of the reasons I love the Magicians trilogy so much is that Lev Grossman clearly shares my feeling that the worst part of adventure books like the Chronicles of Narnia is the time when the adventure comes to an end, and the children are booted from the magical land a la Alice in Wonderland. I’ve loved this adventure so much. It hurts my heart to feel it slowing down, knowing that we’ll be asked soon to give up our space and make room for the next riders.

In honour of Father’s Day, I give you this great article that appeared in Elle of all places back on Mother’s Day. It’s about how people won’t just allow the person to be a child-free woman. She is called “a mother of words” or asked if she has “fur babies” or is a “plant mommy.”

She touches on it but doesn’t delve deep into the other side of this story. Can you imagine someone asking the new guy at the office if he has fur babies? Or is a plant daddy? No, you can’t because it doesn’t happen. Men may be asked if they have kids, but no one then spends time trying to point out to them that Father’s Day is for them because they give birth to new ideas.

Unless the person calls their pet their fur baby (something I wholeheartedly endorse and the way I think of Beorn), please do not call animals in their house their fur baby. Let us enjoy what men worldwide get to enjoy; a quiet acceptance of their choices and circumstances, as if they are the captain of their life ship.