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The house next door to ours recently sold, after going through a succession of renters and house-flippers.
The new owners are driving me absolutely batshit crazy.
It’s not so much because they’re concrete contractors, and every morning, unless it’s raining, we get to wake up at 7:00 am with the clang and bang of them loading metal rebar and 2×4s into their rumbling diesel trucks fifteen feet outside our bedroom window.
Being a farm girl, it’s difficult grasping the concept of owning property and yet still being so close that you can hear them hork a big loogie of spit in their backyard, but I’ve learned to realize that they’re not actually coughing up their spleen – it just sounds like it.
We keep our primary vehicle in our garage, so I don’t get as annoyed, much, when they park their three pickups, one car, two flatbed trailers, the motorcycle that sounds like a combine and an illegal dirt bike on the street right in front of our house. And in front of our other neighbour’s house. And the other neighbour’s, and… well, you get the idea. Guests pack a lunch for the hike from their cars.
I’m learning to be at peace with the fact that they enjoy their mailbox overflowing and only empty it once a week, even though they’re home.
Given enough time and pity hugs, I can handle that the woman is dropdead ohmagodyoubitch gorgeous, and always seems to be outside at the same time as I’m digging in dirt or hauling lumber around in my coffee-stained t-shirt and jeans with the ass worn out and a half gallon of deck stain spilled down one leg.
No, no, I am a calm, peaceful, rational woman. I can deal with all of these things, and even slap a neighbourly smile on my face whilst doing so. But when they hang around outside with their friends and tell the funniest jokes and stories you could ever imagine… it makes me twist and cringe with frustration!
Because they’re from Quebec. And I can’t understand a bloody word they’re saying.
Somewhere in my hometown, there is a crotchety old high school French teacher who is cackling with glee, and saying “I TOLD you that you shouldn’t drop my class just to have an extra spare with your boyfriend!”
Baise-moué l’ail!
There are three things that particularly delight me: optical illusions, street art, and intelligent advertising. I plan to some day make a page on this blog for each of those, to showcase some of my favourites.
But for now, there’s this:
Between “Hancock” and “The Dark Knight”, the sign changer took a coffee break. I wonder if it was deliberate.
No, I didn’t take this (anon in an email), but I wish that I had. I also really wish I had time to do this!
I’ve been wanting to go see both of those films ever since they came out. Wait, what did you think I meant?
At the risk of sounding like I’m making excuses for myself (where would be the fun in that? or the point?), I’ve noticed a disturbing and increasing trend for over-sharing, and it’s not just in blogs or with close friends. A gross portion of my precious few remaining grey cells have been assaulted with WAY more information about complete strangers than I ever feared knowing.
I think I blogged before about the hair stylist who told me how her vagina was so tight when she got married, that her husband – mistakenly – insisted that she must be a virgin. And about the masseuse who felt I’d be interested in her plans to secretly go off the birth control pill and not tell her boyfriend. Both of these announcements were made within the first ten minutes of the one and only time I ever booked an appointment with these particular *cough* professional *cough* service providers.
I was waiting in the shampoo chair at a salon, when a 50ish, fake-tanned woman beside me tried to strike up a conversation by asking if I’d ever had a Brazilian. “I just came from having one done next door. It’s only my second time, but I LOVE them! The pain is so fun! I can’t wait for it to grow out so I can get another one.”
I was in line at the Post Office and a young man wearing a baby blue, chopped-sleeves T shirt with “Blow It Up” in velvet iron-on block letters on the back was standing in front of me talking on his cell phone, making no attempt at privacy. “They said I have to sign a Peace Bond if I want them to drop the charges, otherwise they’ll put out an arrest warrant. A fucking Peace Bond… why did she have to do that? Fuck, I should strangle that bitch.”
I was in a fitting room trying on a shirt, when through the door I heard a woman yell to the clerk from several yards away. “I need to buy a bra for my daughter. She’s kind of a thick kid.” Hmm, seems it might run in the family.
Why do people do this?
And why do we let them?
Sadly, it’s not just strangers, and it’s not just people exposing themselves. We were at a family wedding, sitting at one of the tightly-grouped banquet tables, and as often happens at these events, my sister-in-law was lightheartedly asked when my niece, who hadn’t been able to attend, was going to have a second child. Now, I love my niece dearly and if *she* ever felt there was a good *reason* to discuss *privately* with me the explicit details of how her intimate anatomy tore and left her with scars and deformities after her last childbirth, well, I’d like to think that I’d be there to listen, if *she* needed me to. But I’m pretty sure that her grandfather, my teenage sons, and the tables beside us of friends and family of the bride marrying into our clan didn’t feel the need to know this information. I’m also pretty sure that, knowing my niece’s character and pride, she would be absolutely mortified if she ever learned that her stepmother unabashedly shared these details with us all.
Sigh.
Why is it that families these days are less close-knit, both emotionally and geographically, than arguably ever before, and yet we’re more willing to divulge the intimate details of our lives at the drop of a hat – and at the drop of our dignity? Is it because we’re more transient and less community and family loyal? Are we instinctively searching for those emotional touchstones and, not finding them, flailing about crudely trying to create these shared intimacies in an instant, rather than over time and a developed relationship?
Has our impatience and need for instant gratification really sunk us that low?
For approximately the 1,748th time, I wish there was a “wait, gimme that back!” email button. Something that I can use, two hours later when sanity finally saunters into the party, to zap an impulsive missive out of cyberspace and out of the reader’s memory – poof – as if it never existed. (Kind of like blasting Asteroids at the arcade, for you semi-old-fogies, like me.) Boy, the money I’d make if I could create such a beast! Not to mention the jobs, the relationships, and the egos that could be saved!
Somebody should be working on this.
I say we start a telethon.
I’ve been very busy. And very lax when it comes to blogging, sorry. The most recent time-eater-upper had been running around to appointments at my dentist and the prosthodontics lab, in preparation for The Big Day, when I get the final jaw hardware to make it so I can eat and chew like a normal human being, and not have to wake up and go to sleep with non-stop mouth and face pain – my reality since the car accident five and a half years ago. (back story)
The Big Day.
It’s become that, capital letters and all, over the last several months. Even my dentist and his staff have been getting increasingly excited. He joked that they should have set up balloons and confetti to drop from the ceiling. By all accounts, my case has been one of the most complicated they’ve ever dealt with in their long and respected careers. I have to confess, hearing that makes me feel marginally better somehow.
So last Monday was The Big Day. I was excited, but not quite as much as everyone else. They didn’t have the anticipation of the pain of the actual procedure to dampen their eagerness. But even my adorable and wonderful dentist, who’s been a true hero in this flick, showed some signs of pressure. I joked about having thought about bringing a shot of brandy to take, and he said quite seriously, “You want one? I can probably find some around here.” He said he’d been excited all weekend thinking about this, although he was kind of apprehensive as well.
I teased him about his honesty. He grinned and shrugged. With the ridiculous amount of times (43, at last count) that I’ve been in his exam chair over the last two years, and the emotionally charged circumstances, it’s gotten like that between us.
Unfortunately, the brandy idea didn’t seem to go any further, so we just got down to business before we both lost our nerve.
Just as a side-track, this whole, long, frustrating experience has to have been one of the overall funniest adventures of my life. Seriously. Or maybe it’s just me and I’m warped. But here, check out some of the things I have heard/experienced over the last couple of years through this process:
“For god’s sake, don’t swallow!” (after accidentally dropping a titanium screw in my mouth and having it fall to the back of my throat) “Those things cost a fortune so if you swallow it, you’ll have to, um, go get it, and nobody wants that. Stop! Wait, don’t breathe, either! If you get that in a lung, it’ll be more surgery for you.” (meanwhile, tears leak out the corners of my eyes as I try not to convulse with laughter! Hard to do and not breathe!)
“The special order parts for your mouth are in.”
“What is that? I’ve never seen anything like that before and I don’t know what that is.” (my surgeon, looking at an X-ray of my jaw)
“Tell Wayne that he’s in trouble with me! He jammed his tool into my tool and it’s stuck now, and I can’t get them apart. This isn’t good – I need it right away for Heather.”
“I love your lips now! They’re big and pouty.” (Me, squirming under the scrutiny, “Well, you made them that way.”) “I know, but… wow. You’ll be accused of getting botox.”
“I’m going to have to send you back to the surgeon – I don’t have the right sized screwdriver.”
(scowling into my mouth) “Tsk. Hmm. [more sighing, and frowning] How the heck are we going to do this?!?” (Erm, I was kind of hoping you’d tell me! I can’t tell you how many times I heard versions of this one.)
There’s plenty more, but this gives you a pretty good sampling. Think about it the next time you go to the dentist, and listen to the everyday conversations around you. There really is a plethora of comedic material and innuendo available to help keep one distracted and entertained. Or, ya know, you could just read that dog-eared copy of last October’s Good Housekeeping magazine again, instead, I suppose.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah….
So we had The Big Day. And the day after The Big Day, a friend emailed and asked how I was feeling, because I had previously mentioned that this was happening, and whined about being petrified and excited, equally.
If someone had asked me in person how things went and how I was feeling, my answer would’ve undoubtedly been something along the lines of, “Okay. Not great, but not all bad. It didn’t go as planned, so there’s more rigamorole to go through and we’re not done like we’d hoped, but we’re getting there so it’s all cool.”
But a funny thing happens when my fingers hit a computer keyboard. My brain, self control, and dignity pretty much all bugger off for coffee and a pee break. This is why that email zapper would be particularly useful for someone like me.
My pal has been privy to a fair bit of the experience to this point, and knows me well enough to decipher shorthand, so here’s what I *could* have sent as a reply to their kind “how are you feeling???”:
“incredibly disappointed, sore, overwhelmed, and optimistic. three hours in the chair, I stopped counting at 20 needles, the lab royally fucked up the prosthetics, have to start all over and make new ones, probably take another month yet. Sigh. But feels like it’ll be great when it’s finally done!”
That pretty much covers it all – the narrative, the details to justify the self-pitying whine, the concluding optimism. It would have been a perfectly fine reply to send.
But did I write that succinct and adequate answer? No-ooooo…… Brain, self control, and dignity decided to stay out and have a smoke, as well. Left unsupervised, I instead sent an account of The Big Day that wasn’t much different than the above, except in that it was 50 times longer and more detailed, and it foisted way too much information onto my poor pal, and none of it at all attractive.
I have a normal amount of vanity and a considerable amount of pride. It’s one thing to tell you lot here that I now have congealed blood and a $45,000 meccano set in my mouth, but that’s hardly the kind of thing you want to have pop into a friend’s mind the next time they meet up with you in person for coffee. Hey, here’s an idea, I can send another email and describe to them how last night I discovered an errant nose hair sticking out that I had to tweeze. Yeah… that will enhance the lovely and sexy image!
What a tool.
So, someone get cracking on that “wait, gimme that back!” button, would ya, please? I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who’s wished for one.
