the true mother's response

So I got hit by a car two days ago. The shock and the adrenaline have just worn off. Now, before you react the way my mother did to the news, just take this all with a bit of perspective. I have the ability to type you a blog. Can it really be all that serious?

When I say I got hit by a car it was more like a tap. I was on a run minding my own business. Saw a car proceeding towards a busy traffic street which I was running parallel to on the sidewalk. Made eye contact with the driver -- or so I thought -- and continued to proceed under the assumption that she was going to stop for me. Instead she didn't. She kept rolling towards me.

I had one of those out of body moments where my thoughts were reacting but my body wasn't. I had a moment of self narration as the whole thing unfolded in slow mo. And when I mean that it felt like it was happening in slow motion it truly was. She couldn't have been traveling at a speed of more than 0.05 kilometres per hour. I did not go sailing into the air once she hit me. I just sort of skipped, wacked the hood of her car and kept running.

Screamed at the top of my lungs more at the recognition that I was going to be hit by a car. Did a full body check, all nerves slightly frazzled, lots of adrenaline pumping, mad that she had interrupted my run. No broken bones.

I looked over at the driver. Poor thing looked like she had crapped her pants. Let her sit on that for a while. The worst punishment had already occurred. No one likes to sit in their own waste.

Today was her lucky day. There was no need to press charges. Told her that she may not be so fortunate next time and ran off.

Now, yes, I should have taken her name and her number and if my fingernail snagged on something and caused my finger stress, I could have sued but what would be the point of that. I don't have any money to pay a lawyer and I'm not an invalid so there just was no point.

The most amusing part was the phone call to my mother and her response without visual verification of her healthy daughter, "But honey you should still really have that checked out."

Pray tell what checked out? I'm not hurt.

Spoken like a true mother. Imagines the worst possible scenario without physical proof. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it for the sake of saving my mother one extra grey hair.

fidelity and flowers

So this Valentine's Day came and went like the blink of an eye this year. Perhaps it was the fact that in the midst of this recession I find myself on the hunt for monetary earnings and the search for someone special just wasn't on the forefront of my mind. A couple days ago I found myself zoned out in front of the florist counter at Safeway dazed and confused.

A slow southern drawl snapped me out of my trance. "Is there anythin' I can help you with?" I was standing in front of the florist booth clutching tulips in my left hand and gerber daisies in my right. Realistically my light wallet was trying to decide between cheap and really cheap. A friend of mine was awaiting my visit, hopped up on T-3s and ice chips. I couldn't afford what I was about to purchase but I still wanted to get something to brighten her day after her tonsilectomy.

"Which would you prefer if you just got your tonsils out?" I asked the florist.

"Gerbers," she said from behind a couple bushes of foliage, "let me just check the back for extras."

I stood there daydreaming about the follow up calls I had to make that night when I got home from my good deed of the day.

"Sorry hon," she said emerging from the backroom, "I am out. Sold a ton yesterday. But the roses didn't go on sale until today."

I stood there trying to process what she was implying. Then it hit me like a solid brick of chocolate; Valentine's day was three days ago. And now flowers were on sale.

The florist just stood there sizing me up.

I plunked the Gerbers on the counter and returned the tulips.

"Do you know why roses are the flower of love?" She asked me as she prepared my bouquet.

"No idea," I said.

"Cuz they are pretty to look at, but they hurt like hell," she responded. I had to smile at the sentiment but I could only wonder why someone would say something like that. As much as I spent Valentine's Day alone this year I still held on to optimism.

"Every year I never got any of these and it just sucked to have to work on the 14th," she explained pulling lemongrass from other dying bouquets to add to mine.

I snapped out of my self-pity and reflected on how lonely it would be as a single florist selling flowers leading up to Valentine's Day.

"Did you get flowers this year?" She asked me.

"Nope."

"Well today is your lucky day."

Next thing I knew she had downloaded 2 dozen roses in my arms and told me it was my lucky day.

I just stood there and debated whether or not to justify why I deserved or didn't deserve 2 dozen roses. I felt like opening up to this woman but felt like if I stayed longer and said anything that the surreal moment I was experienced would disappear.

I rushed out to the car and hurried to get my beautiful pink roses in water. I thought about what had just taken place and I had to smile. The simple gesture had been just the right touch. No one could have known how much I needed those roses.

I think back to how much Safeway prides itself on customer service. I worked there back when I first turned 16 and quit shortly after the union threatened to go on strike. Safeway is expensive and I generally opt for a more reasonable alternative at Superstore. I stand by what I can afford. I thought about the nice gesture. The jingle from President Choice commercials entered my mind - is it worth switching supermarkets for? Naw.

Thanks Safeway, you raised the bar ever so slightly for any potential suitors but the reality is I will forever be faithful to my Superstore.

Conversation: NB

I met for lunch with my mother recently and as we were talking I couldn’t help but realize how fortunate we are for the generation gaps that we encounter. Most of the time, they can create frustrations, however, every so often they are good for a laugh.

So halfway through an exquisite meal of homemade pasta, my mom posed the question to me: “Do you know what NB stands for?”

The truth be told, I couldn’t help but think the acronym could stand for many a thing. New Brunswick, New Balance shoes, Not Balanced, Never Before, Not Better, Nicker Bottoms…wait I’m not British and neither is she. A really short form of None of your Business?

I mumbled something to the effect of “Is this a trick question?” She shook her head.

“I have no idea,” I said, and returned to the wonderful steaming plate of carbs about to make their way somewhere onto unwanted areas on my thighs.

She continued on with her story about how she had been reprimanded at work for writing NB in a logbook where she was supposed to take notes for other people.

“I can’t imagine that most people know what NB stands for unless you’re talking about the short form for New Brunswick,” I paused, I had a rather difficult piece of pasta to swirl. I added, “What does it mean?”

“Oh I don’t really know what it actually stands for,” my mom chuffed. This was certainly bothering her.

I set down my cutlery. “Wait a sec, then why did you write it?”

“Oh, it was used back in the day to make people pay attention.”

“But, you don’t know exactly what NB stands for? If you don’t know what it stands for how do you expect someone else to know?”

“Oh it was commonly used at one point.”

The logic was lost on me. I wasn’t entirely what point in history she was referring to. Pasta beckoned.

“Anyways one of the other workers thought that I had written it out of spite,” my mom stopped and rolled her eyes.

I stopped chewing. A few pieces of pasta fell out onto my plate. “Shay dat agin?”

Knowing my mother, she would never do something like that.

“Oh she thought NB stood for Newbie. She thought I was calling her the Newbie,” she took a sip of coffee and asked, “What does Newbie even mean? It sounds mean.”

I started to laugh. “Is the woman new to the company?”

My mom nodded.

I proceeded to bring my mom up to speed and explain what it meant. Never again will she ever use the term Newbie in that context. She is wiser for the pop culture slang lesson I gave her. Fortunately I’m around to update her vocabulary bank every so often.

The brief truth and nothing but the brief truth.

It puzzles me how there is a cultural stigma that goes along with whether or not you choose to wear boxers or briefs. Perhaps I just don’t understand this all to foreign concept to me as I don’t have to go over the complex decision each time undergarments are purchased.

For my own experience I know that I don’t attach a certain stigma to a certain type of underwear simply because I understand that each serves its’ function for the wardrobe necessity at hand. The thong or granny panty debate is not necessarily a raging one unless the person in questions pants are too low for their own good. But the reality of the trivial debate should truly be discussed in the female’s poorly purchased pant choice.

Anyway, so this story is a classic Kelsey moment.

I was about 15 and I happened to be volunteering at a summer camp. The paid staff had been given the luxury of a staff thank you dinner across the island in which we worked on.

One would think that the staff who deserved the most thanks were those who were not given a stipend sum at all. The heart felt gratitude was just supposed to be absorbed I suppose. Nevertheless, as their staff thank you, everyone had dumped their laundry in the laundry room before they left.

This caused several displeased exclamations among those that stayed behind. For one we were in charge of making sure the camp was spotless upon the return of the absentees, and secondly most of us had overdue laundry loads that were weighing heavy in our laundry baskets.

I, with every intention of doing the right thing, got to the laundry room and surveyed the sea of undergarments. With a strong dislike for touching other people’s personal items, I turned around on my heel before something caught my eye. A curling piece of yellowed paper adhesively dangled from the dingy wall with the words, “Do a good deed, help those in need.” (Those may not have been the exact words I read, however, I know they rhymed whatever they were.) I was assuming that the paper, strategically placed in a public laundry mat, was referring to the laundry that senior management had placed in a mound on the floor.

So a friend of mine and I started doing loads of laundry. We got to the last load and my friend started to laugh. She poked at it and pointed at it with a huge smirk on her face.

“You know who’s that belongs to?”

I knew where she was going with it before I responded but feigned stupidity. “Oh?”

“The Vancouver Sun Run shirts are only one indicator of who’s pile that is.”

I continued to ignore her. I knew very well that my summer crush wore only one outfit and one outfit only. A pair of workman’s pants or jeans and every Vancouver Sun Run shirt there was from the day it started. I was unsure why the individual in question collected so many of them considering he wasn’t running a 10 Kilometre race at the age of 2 but I chose not to ask because I was partially petrified of the opposite sex at the time.

Needless to say, it was the simplest recognition to pick out the fact that I was about to dive into the personal treasures of someone that barely knew I existed. I held my breath closed my eyes and dove my hand in the sea of clothing. I hoped that whatever my claw produced would be a Sun Run t – shirt, somewhat filthy but not as awkward and as intimate as a different item.

BOOOM. “BLllleleleleleleleleleleleleleleleh!”

Shocked I threw my hands up in the air as the stillness was ruined by another friend barreling through the door behind me yelling at the top of his lungs.

The garment which happened to be the very item I wished not to touch went sailing in a perfect arch in slow motion heading straight for the point of no return – the back of the 50 year old washing machine against the wall adjacent from us.

No. What did my hand just touch??? I sure hope it wasn’t tighty whities. Oh, but it was.

The person who came barreling through the door stood there and just unleashed the laughter. It wasn’t funny in the least bit. I was stunned and mortified.

It took 3 people later and one dirty dryer to reveal the not-so-white, now grayish black underwear. By this point, all the loads had been done and my new indigo jeans load was the remaining one to add in the gross underwear.

The underwear went in and slid out and were folded just in time for the van of senior staff to pull up to the camp. The next morning during breakfast, my crush leaned over and asked me who had done his laundry. My response said something to the effect of a “collective effort.”

Looking back on the events, I could have just thrown the tighty whities out but I was too honest. Those permanently stained blue underwear were a beacon and a reminder of what happens when you don’t pick up after yourself. Let it be a lesson to you all. The fact that the story involved my crush was just coincidental. Never again will I do someone else’s laundry without their permission first.

Produce Aisle Love

I am currently conducting a social experiment. Many of you may or may not be conducting the same one. I call it an experiment perhaps because I have to weigh pros and cons, deduce from facts, and to be honest, the whole process is very scientific.

A friend once told me that the most likely place for two perfect strangers to meet is the grocery store. It makes sense. Everyone needs to eat unless they are anorexic or allergic to everything but water. Literally the meat market is at the meat market. Although I prefer to hang out in the fruits and vegetables aisle. It says a lot about people depending on what aisle they meet in. The junk food aisle….the meat aisle….the frozen food section. Hmmm…Something tells me I would like Mr. Right to be shopping in the fruits and vegetables section but realistically he’ll be in the canned food section or in the meat aisle.

If that can of soup is on the top shelf and there is no stool in sight but just a confused bachelor at hand fumbling over his heaping basket of baked beans and Kraft dinner, what is a damsel to do but to scale the shelving units and fall backwards in the general direction of an unobservant strangers direction in hopes that the person just might drop that basket of processed foods for you. I knew it. Love at first sight. Spell it out in the Chef Boyardi when you propose.

The scientific social experiment I am doing is actually a figurative cyber meat market rather than the literal. Yes, that’s right online dating personal ads. Yikes! Let me tell you it has provided hours of endless entertainment and many of these anecdotes will be shared in moments of inspiration. I promise. Although whenever I have to go grocery shopping, I can’t help but peak down the meat aisle and wonder if Mr. Right is waiting there for me.

The First Post

So people, the much-anticipated blog has arrived. Much to my perfectionist chagrin I finally buckled down tonight for a couple of reasons. You will find that when I blog, as much as this blog has been requested that I blog strictly about relationships, I don’t want to banish myself to a life of perpetual singleness for the reason that I spoke up and became the an experimental scape goat so everyone else could learn from the medicinal anecdotes of been there, done that, don’t want to look back.

I will touch on a variety of topics.

I don’t want to be known as the annoying complaining blogger. I have a hard time reading certain blogs for that reason. Oops, was that a complaint??? Or that if I touch too closely to the real events that the people in my life will come chasing after me with a steak knife in hand.

In all seriousness, most of the actual events in my life will be altered for the safety of those important to me, unless you give me permission first to spill your humour to the world.

So without further ado, I give you my little cyber nook called Kitsch ‘n’ Stone Soup.