She only goes every two weeks, but she always sells out of stuff. So she spends a week cooking and baking and I smell all the goodies, but can't have any. She's been doing it for so long that she knows exactly how much batter she needs to make four dozen cookies. So there are never any left over. I get the stuff that doesn't sell or the stuff that she burns.
But she never burns it. She's got it down to a science. And we've already established that she sells out every damn time. That leaves me with bupkiss in the way of treats, people! Do you know what it is to be surrounded by cookies and homemade bread and brownies and be unable to taste them? It's like I'm hungry Superman, but Betty frickin' Crocker has laced all her goodies with kryptonite! ARGHHHHH!!! So frustrating!
But my mom knows how I feel (possibly because I whine about it every chance I get) and we've worked out a deal. Every second Thursday when she's waiting for the bread dough to rise at around 7:00 p.m., when my dad goes back to work for the night, we head out in search of dessert. And while we nosh, we watch CSI. My mom has a crush on David, the Conditionally Fun Coroner and Gil. I have a crush on all the lab techs, from Ballistics Bobby, to Archie and Liam. Sigh. Liam. So dorky. With his fine self. Ahem. So that works out well.
So tonight was our goody night. It's been kind of gorgeous out lately, so today, I decided to tempt the weather Gods and wash my car. And when I drove back, it was so nice, that I figured ice cream would be a good treat. So after supper, I went to Dairy Queen to get some treats. When I came back, it was raining, and by the first commercial break, the snow had turned to big, fluffy flakes of snow.
But back to the ice cream. I myself am partial to the Peanut Buster Parfait which is peanuts, hot fudge and vanilla soft serve layered in parfait form. My mom likes the Buster Bar. Which is basically, a Peanut Buster Parfait condensed, dipped in hard-shell chocolate and frozen with a stick up its ass. Mmmm. Buster bars...
Which brings me to the point of this potentially long-winded rambling. A dim memory of a time in the past, after the telling of which, you all pity me and dispise the evil boy who hurt me. I know. Hard to believe, innit? Don't worry. I now chew boys up and spit them out with semi-regularity. But seriously, this is long and about boys. So I'll understand if you don't want to read it.
Picture it: Senior year in high school. Britney Spears is but a twinkle in the eye of a money-hungry record exec. Mr. Dress-Up, Peter Gzowski and my desire to be a hard-core muck-racking journo are still alive and well. I have my grad dress, and I've recently cut my long-ass hair boy-short (a fact which would later weigh heavily on my mind as I desperately attempted to figure out what the hell I did to deserve what was coming.) My boyfriend Chris and I have been dating for six months. Almost to the day. So when he calls and asks if he can come over and take me for a walk, I was in a great mood, joking around with my mom who yells "You guys could walk to the Dairy Queen and get me a Buster Bar."
Chris heard her and said sure we could. To which I replied: "She doesn't need a Buster Bar, she's just being annoying." I was teasing, flirting, feeling fine. And he comes over about half an hour later with a Buster Bar for my moms. Well! She was beside herself. "You know," she said, slurping her melting ice-cream. "He's a keeper."
In retrospect, can I just say:
Dun-Dun-Duuuuuhhhhh...
Back then, I was a busy girl. I was playing a lead role in both the junior and senior casts of Lie, Cheat and Genuflect (because the junior playing my role had to drop out). I was first chair trumpet in both the concert and jazz bands, I sang in the choir, I had a part-time job at Canadian Tire and I had after-school commitments to the outdoors club, the science team, the yearbook, for which I was the photography editor and the student newspaper. And I was also the catcher for a ladies fastball team in a neighboring town.
Lest you think all this made me popular (And really, why would you? Student newspaper? Drama? Band? Science team? That's high school for "geek," yo.) I must also admit to spending more than my fair share of time on the library computers reading X-Files fanfiction. All that time I spent on my own persuits left me precious little to spend with him. As a result, hardly anybody outside our social circle knew we were dating. Which he apparently had issues with, but never told me about. Because he was a wimp.
So we're out on our walk, holding hands, and I'm chattering away, all "Yabble, yabble, yabble! Bleeh-blee-blah! I'm completely oblivious to what's going on around me! Mook-mook-mook!" And he finally says "I asked you to come for a walk with me so I could talk to you."
Eep! You might think. Red Flag! Danger! You might warn. But I? Had not a clue. Even as he was saying the words, I was thinking "We could have talked on the phone. I have a big English assignment due tomorrow that I haven't started!" Ah, to be a dumb teenager again! Without the world-weary cynicism and suspicion I now carry in my attach� case of adult foibles!
Did I mention that my dude was painfully shy? Well that wouldn't even begin to cover it. He was neurotic about working out and had a really amazing body. We're talking, gym-sculpted-write down everything I eat-muscles on my muscles-amazing. I worshipped that body. Even though he was two inches shorter than me. And I ain't that tall to begin with. But my worship was for naught. He wore baggy clothes and covered up his physique and didn't ever want to talk about it, and shrugged it off whenever a friend would mention that he was "built like a brick shit house. If brick shit houses had muscles." His complete and utter self-consciousness bordered on neurosis and I would get so damn frustrated with him and not just about that. He always deferred to my whims, could not make a decision to save his life, and never took a stand on anything. His backbone resembled nothing so much as a wet, limp noodle.
So when he said "We need to talk" my heart skipped a beat. Like, surely, this can't be the talk I think it is! Not from this wuss! Oh, but it was. He danced around it for twenty minutes until I pointed out that we were nearing my house. You could practically see his eyes darting around searching for a door marked "Exit this uncomfortable situation here." So he finally came out and said it.
"I don't think I like you like that anymore. It's not you. It's me."
Of course, I was such a smart ass about it. "Oh you did not just say that! 'It's not you, it's me?' That is such a clich�! Are you going to say that we can still be friends next?"
People, I can't even turn my critical snark off when I'm being dumped. Snarkillepsy. I was in the throes of the disease even then, it seems. Of course, it was all a big, tough, you-can't-hurt-me, act. He revealed that he had talked the situation over with a good friend of mine who told him to just hurry up and do it already, no sense in dragging it out. I was a little put off at that, and what girl wouldn't be? A friend hears from your dude that he wants to dump you before you do because he needs somebody to bolster his courage before he does it? Wuss. I felt I had a right to be miffed. But again, tough, righteous chick phase? All an act. We parted with a hug when I think he really knew I wanted to haul off and hit him right in the gob.
Instead, I went to my room, called Gripper and bawled. She wasn't home, so I settled on listening to some Sarah McLauchlan. I was dazed. When she did get home, she phoned me, and I had barely gotten the words out when she dropped the phone, ran to her car without any shoes on and drove to my house to collect me. We sat in her red convertible parked on the hill overlooking our city and I cried and cried. We played some sad chick music on the stereo and drove to Dairy Queen. Where I related my Buster Bar "He's a keeper!" story. She laughed and I realized that it was kinda funny, considering that when her boyfriend dumped her, they were at the Dairy Queen too. And he was nervous, so he ordered a hamburger and ate it as he broke it off with her. And she drove him home! Man, we were such saps!
Fast forward a month. Graduation has occurred. I set his offer of a pity date on fire and doused the flames with the reeking piss of the righteously angry bizzotch. I went to grad, got myself hypnotized, danced my face off, won a set of screw-drivers, went out to a post-grad piss-up at some guy's farm, drank too many Mike's Hard Lemonade and intentionally lost ten straight hands of strip poker-- enough to remove most significant articles of clothing. And he was at that party, baby! Ha!
Then, Gripper started packing for Cow-town. I was to stay at home for a year to attend the community college before heading to Regina. But before she left, she made mention of something she would tell me later. Like, a few months later. And I was insanely curious. I filed it away. The next time she visited, we went for a drive and she said "remember that thing I said I would tell you?"
The week before she left, she got a call from the Wuss. Who, it turns out, had been screwing up his courage to tell her that he loved her. Maybe a tiny part of me was hurt. The other part of me laughed in delight. What did he think he was doing?
Gripper said she asked him the same thing. He told her he had felt that way for a long time and just had to tell her before he lost his chance. And she laughed in his face. "Buddy, you never had a chance to begin with. You just dumped my best friend and you're telling me that you love me a week before I move 1,000 miles away? Yeah, that's brave. What do you want me to say? That I think I'll dash my dreams of becoming a reporter to stay here and have your babies?"
Ahhhhh....good times! I know I should be the bigger person, and let me tell you, when I heard that he was working at Smitty's, I maybe didn't try as hard as I could have to not be seated in his section when me and my successful friends came in for a post-party brunch. And it took every ounce of maturity I had to tell him I wanted the fruit cup with my toast and could he please refill my coffee while he was at it? Okay. Maybe not every ounce.
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My mouth hurts like a mother-fucker. Seriously, I think my back wisdom tooth is coming in. No problem, the dentists say. You've got a plenty big mouth. Thanks. No, really if your wisdom teeth come in, it shouldn't be a problem. LIARS! Oh my *God!* Owie! The area behind my last molar on the bottom right is puffy and sore to the touch and there's an ever-present coppery taste to my saliva that I assume comes from the teeth that are cutting through my gums. Geez, let's hope this doesn't last long. I haven't been to a dentist in nigh on four years. No, make that five. Hmmm...now I'm scarred to book an appointment.
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What are you thinking about when you're not thinking about anything?
While surfing the good ol' Internet, I came across that question and it really did make me think. Our brains are occupied all the time, even when we're asleep. But when you aren't actively thinking about something, say, your job or school or a family member of a loved one, what are you thinking about?
I found myself trying to keep track of my random thoughts, and I also wondered what other people were thinking. It would be like REM's Everybody Hurts video. Eventually, we'd all get out and walk, and wouldn't that help solve the current oil/war problem! Not to mention the current obescity problem. But I digress. When I was thinking of "nothing" I was wondering why we say "Lord Love a Duck." Does the lord not love all his animals equally? Is the duck, in fact, that natural enemy of the lord, and so uttering the phrase in a moment of frustration is akin to saying "Dude, you've really got to try very hard to put up with this shit. Much like you'd have to try hard in order to love an animal as ridiculous as the duck."
Music: Mose Allison, "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy."
The Printed Word: Life of Pi by Yann Martel, and Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut.
Watching: War. On teevee. With Buffy as a break. Man, I can't believe she shut Giles out like that. Here's hoping it comes back to bite her on her non-existant ass.
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