My visit to the big city was great. I went to Montreal, of course. I saw Chinatown (or, le quartier Chinois) and downtown, including all the strip bars and sex shops. I went around old Montreal and visited some neat shops. Matt and I went to see a movie at the Forum (where the Canadiens used to play), Ghost World, which I highly recommend. It was very cool. We also went to see The Others, which was also amazing. It genuinely scared me, even more than The Sixth Sense.
Matt and I went into a sex shop to make a purchase. We were both a little uncomfortable with the whole prospect. I mean, it's a sex shop. There are dildos everywhere! I look at all those purple rubber penises and it makes me disdain the whole idea of buying a vibrator or a dildo, or anything including the cool fishnet "suspender tights" - the kind that don't have anything where regular pantyhose would have a control top. But we bought something, and the girl who worked in the shop made chitchat about the weather to ease our nerves. It was all very... healthy. Like the kind of thing you're supposed to do in a relationship.
And the toy is quite fun.
And, no, it wasn't handcuffs. Though Matt and I have played with his ties a couple of times.
I can't believe I've been that open about my sex life. I didn't used to feel at ease with being open about these things. Not without a couple of drinks. And I haven't had a couple of drinks.
Not yet anyway.
Montreal was a hoot and I look forward to going back again someday, probably next spring.
Once I returned, though, everything was back to normal. The mother hen was back to her old tricks, manhandling my toast at breakfast, feeding me glow in the dark juice at lunch (I still don't know what flavour it was supposed to be), and then there was my dinner.
She said, "I decided we'd have chili since it's chilly."
Ha. Ha. Ha.
So she brought out the dish and sat it down. The beans looked familiar, but not like chili. For one thing, there was no sign of tomatoes in any form. For another, it looked like the wrong kind of beans.
Like baked beans, the kind that come in can. With some kidney beans and ground beef thrown in.
I shrugged at my own hypothesis and dug in.
Of course, I knew on first taste. It was maple baked beans, and the kind that come in the can.
That wasn't so bad, but she called it "chili" and she had made no visible (tastable?) attempt to make her concoction taste more like chili. Plus, the ground beef tasted like the inside of her freezer.
Have I mentioned she doesn't use plastic wrap on anything in her fridge so it all ends up tasting vaguely of *fridge*?
I didn't eat the meat, but the beans weren't bad. I finished eating the beans and the rather flavourless fried potatoes, as well as the raw carrots (baby carrots. blech.) and cucumber. The mother hen looked at my plate and said:
"Have you stopped eating meat?"
Well. I said no, of course, and told her I just hadn't felt like eating it. Which was true.
I planned to do laundry after dinner and she told me she had some things to clear off the washer. Fine, no problem. And then she said she was expecting many many phone calls and that I was to keep my phone calls short.
Well, I made a quick call to my aunt, who asked if I wanted to have Matt to dinner when my mom came to pick me up. I thought it would be a good idea, even if it would be a little awkward to have Matt meet my mom in the presence of my uncle and aunt. I guess we'll deal. Then I put my laundry in and watched the BBC news. About an hour and a half later, I made a second call. I meant to keep it short, but I was talking to Matt and we were both kind of weepy because it's getting to be hard to think that I'll be gone soon. Next week is the last week of the Red Sandal diaries (and my sandals are quite sun faded now) and then I'll be at school and Matt will be teaching elementary school... It's weird. The mother hen came out in her robe just as I was saying good bye and said:
"I thought you said a short call."
Well, I got off the phone, put my last load in the dryer and left to listen to my new Cake CD. Which was quite effective in keeping me from killing the old bag. It's not like the phone rang once the entire time I was upstairs.
(Okay, so it did ring about three minutes after I got off the phone. Get a message service, you old bag.)
Have I mentioned I do a lot of wanking about the mother hen in my written journal and then tell myself I'm being awful. And then the mother hen goes and does something like try to turn canned (tinned, the Brits would say) baked beans with maple syrup (a Canadian staple, by the way) into chili.
So I waited for my laundry to be dry, and then I took off for the office to call my mom.
Phil was already at the office, so I just talked to my mom in the boss's office, which is mine too, I guess. Mom told me that Dad had run a half marathon the day before. Wow. I told her about meeting Matt and she said that would be fine. We also confirmed plans to bring back donair meat and sauce for the boss (donair meat, for those of you outside the regions of Canada that have this wonderous thing, is compressed spiced beef and/or pork, shaved off a big rotating chunk on a spit. It's served in a pita with onions and tomatoes and donair sauce, which is a creamy white sweet and very garlicky concoction which also goes quite well with pizza and garlic cheese fingers, which are pizza with just garlic and cheese on top.) since you can't get any around here. Not even in Montreal.
Mom said that her friend Heather, who's like my extra aunt, is going to drive up with her. That means she'll meet Matt as well, which might break the tension. That's a definite advantage.
As well, my mom told me a kid drowned at one of the supervised beaches at home. I'm pretty sure a guy who used to be on my lifeguard team is the beach captain there. If he's not, then it's someone who was in my training class. That's so weird. I feel bad and I want to call them and express my sympathy, but I'm out here and out of the loop.
I can't wait to see Matt again. I'm kind of lonely without him. Even with my new toy to keep me company.
Okay, now that it's officially the end of the week, I'll finish my updates.
I got to pick the colour for the front page this week. It turned out. The only problem is the inside of the paper - the cover of the supplement is supposed to have colour on the photos and they reversed the plates. Instead of the photos being printed a sepia tone, the text is this nasty baby poo brown. Lovely. And it's the printer's fault, not mine. We might have been in the running for best supplement, if it hadn't been for the printer.
Aargh.
Production day was hectic, and no one could concentrate so things took forever to get going. I was here for eleven hours. Eek. But then Matt and I took off and went to his place. We just spent the 24 hours and a bit we had together - I even made him curtains so the sun won't wake him up so early. They're green to match his favourite sheets. Plus, we did a bit of shopping. He bought new pants and I got a wool plaid skirt that will go with all those pairs of pastel coloured fishnets I own. Matt saw me try it on and he thinks I look hot in it. But he thinks I look hot in everything. I told him he's the wrong person to shop with because he has a very biased opinion.
I miss him this morning. He dropped me off last night and I miss him already. And I have a list of stories to work on over my last week. Eek. I wonder what I'm going to drive tomorrow to the meeting about the trail. They're fighting about this trail. The trail people get their way and then they change their minds and give up grants, etc, because they're never happy. And I get to go to the stupid thing.
It'll take a small amount of time away from Matt and I's *last* weekend together. Sigh...
I really want to get back to school. But I don't want to leave, either. Not Matt, not the office. If Matt and the office moved seamlessly into the rest of my life in other parts of the country, I would be happy. Unfortunately, that's not the way. I get to say goodbye to this stupid town and the mother hen, though. That's definitely an advantage.
© lily keller 2001
back current next