Squirrels Are Some Scary

Seriously. Squirrels give me the wilies, ever since one of them got stuck in my basement kitchen and couldn't get back out again. It was like those bike races you see when the bikes are going sideways around the track -- it whizzed around the friggin' walls. And it screamed.  Guess what? So did I. I left my back door open (all at the other end of the apartment, the only door out) and left the place for hours. I still came back in with a broom (like that would have protected me because that little mofo was pissed).

So trying to throw out my empty Starbucks cup at the beaches in Toronto became a terrifying experience based on the following video. EEEEEEEK!!!!

These People Are Running the Show

Now, I like a good parent council meeting as well as the next person. There are types that end up on parent councils, and I guess since I'm usually there, I must be one of them. But I resist being pegged as like them. One of them, but not like them.

I'm not athletic enough to be a soccer mom, nor do I have the correct haircut. Nor do I ever show up at soccer games. My kids play video games and hang out at parks at night. They don't play soccer. I don't have a government job, so I don't weigh in at the meeting with a perky, "I know! Let's make a critical path analysis!"  I don't know anything about numbers, so when someone asks for the 'actuals' vs. the 'projected', well, that's when I start wondering if Pan Am was premiering tonight and whether I can make it home in time.

Tonight, however, was in a league of its own. Anarchy. Side conversations and no agenda and no chair. Teachers looking uncomfortably at each other, wondering how alike the kids are to this bunch of yo-yos. I resisted stepping forward. You know how it is. Dead silence when someone asks who wants to be chair? And I almost always end up saying, "I'll do it!" I didn't. I think I'm getting crotchety in my old age.

Ravening Hoards Terrorize Ottawa Home

Newsflash: my family will eat the varnish off the doorknobs. Locusts appear finch-like in comparison. I was left with no recourse.

PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF:

Frogs -- which food group?

Scary scene of the day: herding quarter-sized frogs into the penned in area for my sister's free-range chickens...and watching them fight to eat them. Ewwwwww.

I took a dozen eggs. mmmmm. Frogs.

Hello Students. Welcome to My Bedroom.

I like a party as much as the next person. More, probably. Especially when the piss-up involves young things effervescent with the thrill of freedom and summer still clinging by its toenails to the coming fall.

Hundreds of froshy students, spilling out into the back alleyways and up the (my) street, enjoying the night, enough liquor to block out the imminent pain of failing every single class of first semester. Sounds great/familiar, right? Yeah, I enjoy a good party.

Especially when it's pretty warm and I can open my bedroom window as I'm trying to get to sleep at 2:15 am. At my age, I don't even have to get out of my own bed to enjoy the party. It's here. In my bedroom. The alarming inebriated kid sitting on the curb about 20 feet from me (lying in my bed, staring at the ceiling), talking/begging/pleading on his cell phone, beer sitting beside him might as well have been sitting at the end of my mattress.

I had come in earlier, having taken the dog for its pre-bed stroll, and heard buddypukeshisguts on the phone, reeling on my doorstep. Doggie stuck his wet nose in his ear and he didn't even notice. Yes, that drunk. I woke up this morning and he was gone. His beer bottle was gone. But he'd thoughtfully left me a thoughtful crumpled Kleenex used to thoughtfully wipe his chin after he'd thoughtfully barfed up his (thankfully) negligible dinner.

Hi Old Ottawa South Porch Sale people! Welcome to my house and my puddle of puke!

Now comes the scary part. Last night, the kids weren't playing any music. What kind of party doesn't have music? Just drunk first year college students. Conversing. Can you imagine the quality of those conversations? But no music.

What is with kids today?

Truly Frightening: The Tax Man

I am a very, very good citizen. I do my taxes. Okay, I pay someone to do my taxes. I have a fully-justified fear of numbers, no doubt due to Mr. Foster, my Grade 11 algebra teacher. One time, he took my right shoe in exchange for a text book I'd forgotten. Jerk.

So I didn't appreciate The Man harassing me for my 2009 GST return. I wasn't doing consulting work that year, so I hadn''t collected GST. Or, I thought I hadn't. But trust The Man to hunt me down. And to be a jerk about it. I had an abrupt call with The Man (a.k.a. "Dorinder") yesterday. I was reasonable. I was the voice of reason. But The Man was swinging a big bat and knew it. It's like that customs/border guy that's bored out of his braincase and who decides that he's going to make you run around like a Pekinese on amphetamines.

Scary that these people are The Man. Scarier? Me trying to do the paperwork.

PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF:

Scary Stuff #1

Want to know what's scary? Entertainment Tonight.

Where else can you feel really, really smug and at the same time experience the jaw-dropping phenomenon known as age dislocation? Yeah, I'm not as batshit crazy as any of those celebudancers (oh, Chaz Bono, you look like you're having fun, but I see the pain behind your chubby wee smile).

However, I sure don't need to see how far Eddie Murphy has fallen in my lifetime. Because that either happened really, really quickly or took a hella long time. The year I graduated high school (like, last week), he was the bestest thing on SNL, and next thing you know, he's a friggin' donkey.