aMMusing

It’s quite remarkable how, perhaps moreso now than ever, we can find that we are somehow connected to one another, however loosely. Last weekend, while The Quad was in Montréal from Fredericton for some vacation R & R, I found a very indirect but nonethelesss fascinating connection with fellow Montréal blogger Tornwordo.

It has to be understood that The Quad, whom I’ve known since I was 12, is perhaps the most gregarious person I know. As a result, I suspect it’s impossible for him to travel incognito. No matter where he is, he is bound to come across someone he knows while minding his own business on just about any street in any Canadian city. Or, if not, he’s meeting someone who likely will be added to his vast repertoire of people he’ll unexpectedly bump into weeks, months, or years later. In fact, it’s through The Quad that I met Jain (a.k.a. The Pastry Monster), whom I had called the weekend before to urge her to come to Montréal while The Quad would be visiting, which she did.

While in Montréal, The Quad went to dinner with someone he befriended about a decade ago at some rather extraordinary event in which they were called upon to participate. Before dinner, he told us how she was a very interesting, knowledgeable, sophisticated and successful lady who works extremely hard but who, for some reason, has had a great deal of difficulty learning English despite expending extraordinary time, effort and money to learn the language. He was going to meet her for dinner after she got back from spending several hours with a private tutor in her continuing effort to parler anglais. Another attempt by this lady to perfect her English consisted of spending considerable time in Nova Scotia, whereupon Jain thought, but couldn’t confirm, that she may have met her and even spent some time in a car with her, going from some town to another.

Around 11:00 that evening, The Quad met us in the Village after his dinner. At one point, he mentioned how she spoke very highly of her English-language tutor, and he proceeded to give a description I instantly recognized.

I asked, “Would her tutor’s name be Tornwordo by any chance?” To which The Quad added, “…who’s married to this Québécois named Spouse? You know them???”

We were all floored.

I think it was about four years ago while still living in Halifax that I stumbled across this blog by a guy from California living in Montréal with the guy to whom he’s now married. I took a liking to his writing and, one night, I even read everything back to the beginning of his blog, enjoying his little video montages and the accounts of his travails with one he dubbed Nude Dancer. Afterwards, aside from comments on each other’s blog, we very occasionally e-mailed, like the time he had an apartment to rent just days before I would be coming to Montréal to apartment shop. (Turned out he rented it out within hours of posting an ad for it, so that didn’t work out.) Other than that, we met in person precisely once, for perhaps 3 minutes two summers ago, when I recognized him and Spouse walking down the closed-off street in the Village. Thus, it’s probably fair to say that ours is more a case of knowing of each other than truly knowing each other.

But still! I can’t help but marvel at these kind of connections or coincidences. Like, how was I to know that day in June 2001 when I switched Web host that one of that company’s owners would move to Nova Scotia to marry one of my now best friends who, in June 2001, I had only met once and would be staying on my couch a few weeks later as she would be beginning her new job in Halifax? Or when, during one of my stays in Chilangolandia, my now-estranged spouse introduced me to one of his friends who needed no explanation of what or where “Moncton” is because he’s been doing his master’s degree in Aix-en-Provence where one of his classmates is an Acadian from Moncton. After all, it would be reasonable to expect someone from Mexico never to have heard of that speck-on-the-world-map called Moncton!

So, allow me to indulge in a little kumbaya moment without Kumbaya…

I had a friend back in Moncton some 25 years ago who had a wicked sense of humour. Whenever you’d say something a little salacious or off-colour, he would look at you with feigned disgust and declare you “Trash! Pure White Trash!” before turning his head the other way, nose pointing up. His delightfully campy delivery made it amply clear that he was only joking, just like the time he poured himself a cup of coffee from a pot that had been on the hotplate far too long, and he looked up and asked, pretending to be puzzled, “Who made tar?”

I’m reminded of this friend because of how I’ve been feeling recently about my apartment. I LOVE it! It’s huge, and the fact the building was built in 1936 ensures it has huge rooms and tons of character. However, increasingly, part of the place’s character is the janitor and her offsprings — Irish Canadians originally from Montréal’s Pointe-Saint-Charles neighbourhood, which until recent decades was slummy and very white trash, divided by a train track where on one side lived the Irish descendants and the other side the French Canadians.

Don’t you just hate it when a group of people live up to their group’s ethnic stereotype? You know in your heart and mind that you shouldn’t be stereotyping, but then some people come along and you simply can’t avoid it. In this case, as the sterotype goes, every member of this family is loud, combative, intolerant of other ethnicities, and indisputably alcoholic.

Shortly after I got off work yesterday, the fire alarm went off, so I put on my shoes, grabbed my wallet and my ciggies, and vacated my apartment. And sure enough, by the time I reached the main floor, smoke was billowing out of the basement apartment where the janitor’s rough and worn looking 48-year-old daughter lives — clearly smelling as if a pot had been left unattended on the stove and all the liquid had evaporated. This was the second time in as many years that such an incident was happening.

A lovely lady she is — NOT! Back in December, she bilked me by “selling” me for $15 a $25 gift card at a local grocery chain, the proceeds of which sale were supposedly going to some charity for homeless youth. I gave the card to Cleopatrick since I figured he could use it and there’s one of those grocery stores just around the corner from where he lives. But when he tried to use it, it didn’t work because it hadn’t been properly activated. Therefore, we think the goods she was “selling” may have fallen off the back of a truck.

Coincidentally, she moved out of the building in the days following this sale and I would only see her around occasionally. I never confronted her about how she bilked me, chiefly because it was for an insignificant amount and, well, I just don’t do confrontations. Then, one evening last spring as I was heading to the garage in the basement, I saw her and there were two police officers standing outside (what I’ll still refer to as) her apartment. When I came back a few hours later, there was still one cop standing vigil just outside her door. But just like the character of Sergeant Schultz in the 1960s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, I said to myself, “I know nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” — nor did I want to know.

Afterwards I noticed she was around more often, and about 3 weeks after the cops’ visit, she acosted me in the garage and gave me the whole story: that the man who remained in the apartment was in fact her husband; he was in poor health and died quite suddenly in the apartment, thus why the cops had come that night; he was a hoarder worthy of being featured on Hoarding: Buried Alive and that’s why she had moved out last December — “Because I couldn’t continue to live like that.”

My apartment is located inside the U-shape created by how the building where I live is connected to the building next door. Lately, she and her new boyfriend, who seems to have been plucked directly from the other side of the tracks of Pointe-Saint-Charles of old, have been working on (possibly planning to move into?) an apartment in the building next door. When they do, not only do they put a radio in the window; they direct the speakers towards the outside and set the volume very high, therefore causing the sound to reverberate throughout the neighbourhood and particularly all apartments facing inside the U-shape. At one point she took a break by sunning herself, t-shirt pulled up just below her tits and the legs of her short pulled up just enough to cover her vulva. By that point, I realized I was witnessing the crossing by a country mile of that line that delineates white trash from everyone else.

At any rate, back to yesterday’s fire incident: by the time the firefighters arrived, there was no fire but tons of smoke, so their job consisted of ventilating the place out. We were told we could go back inside in about 10 minutes. At that point, I struck up a conversation with a tenant who owns many dogs and who, until now, has been particularly unfriendly. We were talking as we were walking away from the building, and she certainly gave me a earfull. After living here for about 8 years and loving (as I do) her apartment per se, she is considering moving out after years of being bullied and feeling terrorized by the janitor and her brood. She even has suspicions, but can’t prove, about who may have broken into her place a while back — “very likely an inside job,” the police told her.

As for me, would I also consider moving out? That’s a good question. White trash aside, this place has other cons alongside many more pros. I love this location, including the proximity to a great bagel shop, decent restaurants, and the métro station on two lines, as well as living in a 1930s building with indoor parking in the most multinational neighbourhood in Canada. But lately I’ve been starting to think about looking into those “For Rent” signs on nearby buildings that look better maintained. The thing is that I don’t know if that would stretch my budget too thin, as I’m pretty well at the ceiling of what is reasonable on my single income.

Yes, I’m already back in Montréal! I think I made the Halifax-Montréal trip in record time (for me): it was something like 8:15 am EDT on Junior’s clock when we drove away from BeeGoddessM and Stephanie‘s home and I was sitting at this computer around 9:30 pm EDT.

It’s not like I didn’t stop. In fact, I stopped six times: in Moncton to drop off BeeGoddessC and some lunch at Deluxe French Fries (thanks again!); a pee and pop stop in Woodstock; a pee, coffee and gas stop in Edmundston; two pee stops (due to all that pop and coffee) between Rivière-du-Loup and Québec City, and a gas and pee stop just west of Drummondville where I also picked up a cheap bottle of wine for when I would get home. It was dark only for the last hour or so, and it would have been less than that had traffic not come to a crawl on the Autoroute 30 bypass south of Montréal.

Although too short to see everybody, what a wonderful trip it was! I think a sign of a good trip is that, when I arrived home, it felt like I had been away much, much longer. The trip served as a total disconnect.

I left Montréal as planned last Tuesday when I realized that Junior’s breaks were fine enough for the trip. I did get them checked in Moncton, and the mechanic was as surprised as I was that the breaks on a 7-year-old Cavalier with 100K km are only half worn. I did get the rear break shoes changed when he recommended it should be done by late fall or early spring. Knowing how I can procrastinate with such things, I figured it was better to just go ahead with that fix right away.

I spent two full days with Mom before heading to Halifax on Friday afternoon, with BeeGoddessC driving shotgun. What followed was four blissful days of total relaxing, learning a new card game, and eating like royalty at BeeGoddessM and Stephanie’s bungalow palace and enchanted garden. I also dropped in on Saddam and his brother-in-law Mu’ammar who now runs a fish-and-chip joint; briefly saw Jain (a.k.a. Pastry Monster) although she couldn’t come to Montréal in the end; spent a day with Indiana Jones at Crystal Crescent, an afternoon by the ocean with the Queen of Sheba and an early evening with La Chelita. In other words, I ran out of time to see nearly a dozen other people, but I plan to return to the Maritimes for my next vacation in October, so……

Twice since I’ve been on vacation, I peeked (without actually signing in) to see how things are going at work, and both times I felt like screaming afterwards. It looks like I’ll be coming back to a mess that easily could have been prevented. But, as I told BeeGoddessM after I looked the second time, I’ll just have to learn to be the unquestioning automaton they — or at least my *(@$&!@ supervisor — want(s) me to be.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to be back in MY town for a few days of doing whatever I please, whenever I please. Seeing the Montréal skyline as I crossed the Champlain Bridge yesterday evening, I truly felt like I was coming home, just as while I was in the Maritimes, I felt like a visitor. I guess I’ve officially become a Montréalais whose only beef with the place is the distance from his best friends and the ocean.

Today’s the first day of my summer vacation, and yes, I really need it as my previous post attests. Even though each day and each week goes by quickly, it felt like a painfully slow crawl to this date. And given the stress I’ve been feeling, I made a point of refusing to make any travel plans until today, although I always knew I would head to the Maritimes for part of my time off.

However, the last week, I must admit, was delightful in that my brother and sister-in-law came visiting. The last two years they also came but I wasn’t here: in 2008 I was in Mexico and last year I was in Halifax. So, it was nice to actually be here and host — not that they require any hosting, mind you. In a way, that’s what makes them such delightful guests. They just take off in the morning to explore or shop or both and come back in the early evening.

I don’t mean this in the pejorative way — quite the opposite! — but the first word that comes to my mind after observing them for a few days is “cute.” They really are cute! They’ve both turned 50 this year and have been married for 30 years. Yet my sister-in-law is still a bombshell and looks almost exactly as she did when she married my brother. (I can write that because I said it in her face when she was here, noting that she clearly had the good fortune of inheriting her father’s genes, who up until 90 looked like he was bearly 70.) However, it’s the way they play off each other that reveals not only that they’re beyond familiar with each other, but that they’re each other’s best friend and ally. I’m sure they’ve had their moments like any couple with two (now adult) kids, but they preserve a little je ne sais quoi that is both enviable and admirable.

We never talked about the fact I’m gay until I decided to marry and then I thought it was ridiculous to keep the subject taboo. I wanted no more and no less recognition than I’d bestowed upon their relationship. It’s one of those things whereby I felt badly not just because it was the worst-kept secret of the last 25+ years, but because I feared they would somehow feel slighted for not having been officially let on the “secret” for all that time, especially since they’re such “live and let live” people. But not only did they not take offense; they were the first to ask when the wedding would be. Except I had already rushed into it by then.

So, really, the official recognition among us is still relatively new and they met their brother-in-law only once. Their first night in town, we were sitting at the kitchen table talking about this and that, when they mentioned how they wished their elder daughter might partner up with a guy with whom she studied interior design. Knowing that said daughter already has a boyfriend, I wasn’t totally sure what they meant and clearly the puzzled look on my face must have been plain to see. My brother picked up on that and said, “Oh, no no no. As business partners. Let put it this way: It wouldn’t work with them otherwise because they have the same taste in guys.” I burst out laughing, especially because of the way he delivered that line.

On the Tuesday evening we met up for supper at La Strega in the Village. Whenever my brother had been in town, we went to numerous places together but never to the Village, but I wanted them to experience it during the summer when Ste-Catherine is closed to car traffic. I met them outside the Beaudry metro station, whereupon my sister-in-law declared as she looked around, “So, this is Gay Street, huh?” To which I replied, “Pretty much,” although it wasn’t long before she noticed how the street closure attracts all kinds of people, gay or straight. By the time we (or, actually, just I) were having dessert at Kilo, she remarked on how relaxed the ambiance is and how pleasant it is to be sitting outside at 11:00 pm with so many people still milling about.

Back home that night, my brother and I stayed up way too late talking and reminescing, particularly about Dad. Through that conversation I found out that the priest I so dislike after what he did at our father’s funeral is dead. He boarded a plane to South America on his own two feet — a Catholic priest goes to South America? isn’t that how they handle pedophile priests? — but came back in a pine box. “So I guess now both my namesakes are dead,” I told me brother.

They left my apartment Thursday morning, planning to stop at the IKEA in Brossard before taking the road back to New Brunswick. That’s how they do vacations: they spontaneously decide to go somewhere and they go. So, I’m taking a page of their vacation roadmap. I’ll leave Montréal Tuesday morning if I can get Junior’s brakes fixed on Monday and come back mid-week, possibly with Jain (a.k.a. the Pastry Monster) in tow.

I don’t think many people would complain about feeling like it’s always Friday. You know, that whole TGIF thing. But for me, it’s a sign that time seems to be flying by faster and faster, thus exacerbating my feeling that I’m not getting done all that (supposedly) needs to get done.

From the moment I sit in front of my computer at the day job to the moment I finally sign off — often later than what should be my quitting time — it’s a constant Go! Go! Go! The stream of calls that have to be returned, clients that need to be trained, and e-mails that have to be written never stops.

Add to that the fact I’ve been incrementally developing a Web application for said job, an initiative I’m proud to say has earned me one of the highest distinctions one can get with my employer: a week-long Caribbean cruise (that’s dubbed a “convention”) back in January of this year. I returned from this trip full of piss and vinegar, my head filled with ideas for other initiatives; however, unlike my previous accomplishment, these initiatives were met with a cool if not downright dismissive response, resulting in them not being pursued. Practically overnight, I feel I’ve gone from working for one of the best employers in the world to one that is typified perfectly by every Dilbert cartoon you have ever seen.

I understand how some might be tempted to walk away with a clamorous F-you. But that is not an option I would ever consider, as I’m smart enough to recognize that the “climate change” just happens to have coincided with a change of supervisor who, like any other, has her very own style and, perhaps, proofs to make. The tricky part is that my differences with her are strictly professional and NOT at all about her as a person, for on that front, I really, really like her. I’m good at making such distinctions. But like blogger Mike in DE, who seems to be going through a very similar experience lately, “Part of me says ‘talk to [her] about it’, while the other part of me says ‘keep quiet, don’t complain, and stick it out because nothing lasts forever.” Indeed, at the current rate, I’ll be reporting to someone else in about 18 months, whether it’s due to the normal turnover or because I manage to make a move within my employer.

However, for me, making such move is not obvious for a whole whack of reasons. First, I’m very optimistic by nature, so operating within a bureaucracy where cynicism poses as business acumen is not a comfortable spot for me; therefore, wherever I would move, that inward and cynical outlook is likely to persist. Second, the term “bureaucratic exigencies” is for me an oxymoron in that it places the emphasis on style (or processes) rather than substance (or accomplishments). Third, it’s difficult — sometimes downright painful — for me to witness the slow pace at which things get done in a bureaucracy, to the point where it seems completely out of touch with the realities of the world outside that bureaucracy. And fourth, because I’m at once extremely meticulous and passionate and empathetic, I would make a lousy supervisor in that I could be prone to micro-managing (definitely a very bad thing) or to doing other people’s work so it would be done right. I understand that “right” is not absolute, but I know myself well enough to know that I would have trouble recognizing that “right” is not synonymous to “my way,” so that would make me a lousy “people manager,” as they call them at work. Thus, I fear that my ability to move is severely restricted.

Meanwhile, beside work, there’s life, which unfortunately I’ve been neglecting. Off the top of my head, I can think of SIX major “projects” I need to get done for myself, but I never get around to them because half of them would require that I take some time off work — work which, as I mentioned earlier, is a constant Go! Go! Go! — while the other half would need to be done after work, by which time I’m often too exhausted to contemplate tackling them.

It’s also been two years already that I’m living in Montréal, a city whose energy I continue to love. Recently, former roommate Cleopatrick asked me if I regretted having moved here. I didn’t hesitate a microsecond before blurting out, “Absolutely not!” If ever I imagine myself still living in Halifax, I instantly get this overwhelming feeling of dread, which confirms to me that I was almost 10 years overdue leaving that city when I finally did.

Two years in, I’ve established a comfortable routine yet I’m still discovering things that are new to me. Moving around this city, it’s like I’ve always lived here. But I have to admit that I’m not taking full advantage of living in Sin City North, and by that I don’t mean that I’m not allowing myself to sin sufficiently. I just mean that, like always, I stick to doing the same things and going to the same places over and over again. I’ve been like that all my adult life, but I want to start breaking out of that cycle.

Here is, before my concluding remarks for this post, a video of the infamous Michèle Richard in praise of Montréal.

In fact, I think that it’s because I’m in Montréal that work — the topic of the first two-thirds of this rant — is bearable. And I think that’s because, as I strive to strike a balance between work and life, I recognize that there’s plenty of life to be had here. It’s far from the perfect place — crumbling infrastructures, a seriously ethically challenged political class, and some rather schizophrenic attitudes about being a city that is both francophone and multicultural ensure that it isn’t perfect — but it certainly has much to excite all the senses.

It was almost 26C here in Montréal yesterday, and today is expected to be a repeat performance. That’s very likely, as it’s already 21C at 11:00 am. Yesterday evening, I got to enjoy some people-watching and coffee-sipping in the crowded Village, and I wasn’t wearing a jacket. I felt cooler evenings in July or August than what I felt last night! And as I sat there, I really wished that La Chelita had been here to hang out with me, so that she could see that Montréal doesn’t just get extreme cold or extreme heat like she experienced whenever she has been here in the last 15 months.

One of the (many) things I like about living in Montréal is that there’s really a springtime in this part of the country. Back in Atlantic Canada for the last 15 or 20 years, it seemed like we would go from winter, to a miserable middle season of variable but usually too long length that wasn’t as intensely cold and snowy as winter but wasn’t terribly inspiring, to summer. Here, on the other hand, there’s a real spring that progressively gets warmer and seems in better agreement with the calendar.

By all accounts, this year having been an El Niño winter, it hasn’t been too bad except that the unseasonably cool temperatures requiring a winter jacket started in October. But by February here, it felt like March; the first three weeks of March felt like late-April; and now, April is starting off like an extraordinary June. It’s quite simply incredible and delicious. That’s honestly the word that immediately comes to my mind.

I was just checking the Environment Canada website, and it would seem the average high this time of year in Montréal is about 8C. However, for the next five days, that’s going to be the average low temperature. We’re not expecting mid-20s through that period, but still! I’m totally loving this!

The last time I posted in this blog, it was still Daylight Saving Time for 2009. Today, we started DST for 2010. Granted, we spend more of each year in DST than standard time, but that still means that I have gone more than four months without touching this blog. And that makes me sad.

It makes me sad because I really do miss blogging. When I started this thing in late 2002, there were no such things as Facebook or Twitter. In fact, back then, there were very few blogs by people in Atlantic Canada where I lived at the time. Now, many are quite satisfied with those easy and instantaneous messages on social networks, reducing a person’s thoughts to 140-character chunks.

I miss blogging because it allowed me to delve more deeply into what was (or is) on my mind. Some postings were merely diary-like updates, which definitely have a place on a personal blog, but others gave me an opportunity to reflect on sundry topics without placing myself in the centre. For instance, I still remember my posts after Hurricane Juan in 2003, a storm which, while no Katrina, left a lasting impression on those of us who lived through it. Or how this blog helped me through grieving the loss of my father — already six years ago this past Friday. While an intensely personal event, my father’s death is something that I diarized in a manner that was more than a mere recounting of my feelings of grief.

I miss blogging because, first, I like to write and, second, I like to be read. Yes, I admit it: I like to be read. Is there anything wrong with that? Does that make me narcissistic?

No, I don’t think so. At least not totally. Not in the pejorative sense of the word.

I also miss real blogging as it used to be at the beginning of the Aughts (i.e., the ’00s or 2000s), before it became mainstream. Back then, the blogosphere — a term coined supposedly as a joke in 1999 by the late Brad Graham of BradLands fame, which eerily is still online, untouched, seemingly with no one having found a way of updating it to warn of his death — was a social network in its own right. Some members of this network were simply “lurkers” — again, not in the pejorative sense of the word — who had their “blogroll,” while others were producers. This social network led to real connections and, yes, sometimes real discorde. Many eventually met in person at improvised “blog conventions,” while in one case that’s very close to my heart, one blogger’s online reflections led one “lurker” to e-mail the blogger her reflections on that post, which led to a string of back and forth e-mails which, over time, finally led to the blogger moving to Canada and marrying the lurker! (Okay, I’m skipping a few steps, but you get my point.)

By the same token, the flip side of blogging has always been risk — not just of exposing your thoughts to whomever would stumble upon them, but also of writing something that can lead to real trouble.

Take, for instance, when I was working freelance. I had to hold back whenever the thought that preoccupied my mind involved one of my clients. Now, employed and no longer a freelancer, I really have to watch out. After all, people have lost their job over what they wrote in their blog! I have made some references to my work, but I’ve steered clear from bitching about it. And believe me, these days, I’d really want to bitch about it!

Meanwhile, most people who know me in person also know all about that “other story” I haven’t blogged about, at least not directly …until now: the fact that my spouse and I have split. I’m reticient to get into it for a whole bunch of reasons: not wanting to turn this blog into a de facto kangaroo court against someone whom I did marry, after all; feeling it would not make for compelling reading; not wishing to publish something that could lead to the same kind of trouble as can bitching about an employer, and believing that it’s not such a good idea to turn this blog into an alternate therapist.

So, confronted by these fears and countless hours of (self-imposed) overtime at work, what I have done?

Nothing. I abandoned this blog I loved so much.

I’m thinking of changing that, though. I miss it too much. I’ll have to think a little about how to come back, but I will. Promise!

Remember it always feels better to be grateful for the things you have than resentful for the things that you don’t.

Sometimes I come across something — an object, a friend, or, in this case, a sentence in someone’s blog — at precisely the right moment. I might be in the middle of a period when bad stuff is happening to me or a close friend, and in such a time, it would be easy to descend into a maudlin state of mind and assume the whole world is conspiring against me (or the close friend in such a way that it affects me, too). And then, quite by coincidence, someone happens to write something totally unrelated that resonates in the right way.

A long-lingering bad situation — let’s call it a confrontation, really — in my roommate Cleopatrick‘s life reached its climax this past week. Of course, I can’t get into details here because it’s his crisis, not mine. But I’ve been associated to it so intimately that one could argue that I am and am unwittingly continuing to be one of the ingredients of the crisis.

As bad as the situation has been for roommie, one thought has frequently crossed my mind this week regarding his adversaries: that they are sad and pathetic, stubbornly wrong, morally bankrupt, and so desperately lonely that they have to manufacture heinously difficult situations for others to endure just to give meaning to their insignificance. “You know the joke about the absurdity of a dog chasing after the wheels of a moving car?” I asked the roomie as I was driving along A720 en route for a late supper at a cheap but good Oriental joint down in the Village. “If it were possible to have a little talk with that dog, I’d love to ask him what he intends to do with the wheel if he were to catch it.” After a reflective pause, I explained: “I can’t help but think of [roommie's adversaries] as that clueless dog. If and when you give in to their demands, they won’t know what to do next.”

Moreover, earlier during our drive, I had been thinking and telling the roommie that what he does have — the support and love of his friends and family — is practically an alien concept in the life of his adversaries. Roommie knows that, both cognitively and affectively. But I think it’s particularly important to be overtly grateful for that now and to remember that, quite possibly, his adversaries are as vile as they are because they spend an inordinate amount of time doing the opposite, even going as far as being resentful of the most insignificant slight, let alone seismic life shifts. (Actually, there’s a good inside joke for us, which I can’t get into, in the term “seismic shift.”)

At any rate, last night I was invited at the bountiful table of the roommie’s parents, which, along with the company, is always a treat. Late in the evening, the roommie and I drove home in what was by all accounts an uneventful drive.

Until we arrived in the garage at home.

The pictures aren’t downloaded yet from the roommie’s cell phone, but the most bizarre and fluky incident occurred. In a nutshell, I always drive to a certain spot in the garage so that I can then back up into my assigned parking spot. In that certain spot where I always drive, there’s a manhole cover over which Junior has gone over countless times. But last night, his driver’s side front wheel hit the cover in a certain spot and in a certain way that caused the cover to topple upwards, wedging itself solidly under Junior. So solidly, in fact, that I couldn’t back him up. It took the help of the janitor’s son and two jacks to lift Junior up enough so that we could unwedge the manhole cover and free him from this strange stranglehold.

Back at the apartment after this odd incident, the roommie, by his own admission, was surprised by the calm I exhibited at that point. Had this happened to his adversaries, he said, the jumping up and down and screaming of bloody murder would still be occurring. And, truth be told, while there is a large element of fluke to what happened, the fact the manhole cover wasn’t (and still isn’t) bolted down or made to fit the hole properly and is probably moved on an irregular basis tells me that my insurance company will likely go after the owner of the building to recoup the cost of the damage on Junior. To have a sign in the garage stating that the owner takes no responsibility for theft is one thing, but this situation, to me — and I suspect the insurance company — is quite another.

Junior today is sitting in his parking spot, likely wincing in pain and unable to lick his wound. But while it was a stinkin’, rotten, fluky thing to happen, I have one thing to be grateful other than the fact that no one but Junior got hurt.

It’s called …Insurance.

Okay, I know a lot of you have been wondering where the heck I’ve been. Not blogging, obviously.

Not only has work been insanely busy, but I also can’t believe that tonight I’ll be writing my Level 4 Spanish exam. Yes, already the end of the 4th course since September when I began. I’m up early in order to study some more before work, as I likely won’t be able to do so before tonight’s class. I’m really happy that I’m only starting Level 5 in early May, as I feel I need to revise the first four levels. But just as I think that it’s not really sinking in, I have little conversations with Esposo and I realize I’ve learned more than I give myself credit for. And I think Esposo is liking that I’m speaking some Spanish, broken and incomplete as it is.

Best of all, though, I’ll be putting what I’ve learned into practice next week, as I’m heading to Mexico City and Puerto Vallarta on Saturday. On the night of the Academy Awards next Sunday, Esposo and I will be in PV celebrating (already!) our first anniversary. Time flies, as they say.

So, to all of you who have been writing but to whom I haven’t responded: my apologies. If you think I was crazy-busy before, you have no idea how crazy-busy I am now. But all is good otherwise.

Snowstorms and mothers — especially mothers travelling at the tender age of 80 — do not mix well. Or so I discovered.

It was increasingly evident as the day of her arrival drew closer that she would be arriving in Montréal in a snowstorm. How bad a snowstorm wasn’t clear, but the predictions were getting worse as we got closer to the day. By the time I got up around 6:00 am to fetch her for her 8:00 am arrival, it wasn’t snowing yet but the weather office was calling for at least 20 cm that would fall intensely between noon and suppertime — precisely the time when we’d be heading out to visit her sister in Longueuil.

I stupidly didn’t think of calling ahead to see if the train would be arriving on time; I figured it was coming into the storm and thus had no good reason to be delayed. How I underestimate VIA Rail! When I arrived at Gare Centrale around 7:50 am, the arrivals billboard proclaimed that her train would only be coming in at 10:00 am. So, I thought, the hell with that: I headed back home for the multiple cups of coffee I had skipped before heading to the station.

Further screw-ups ensued, like my cell phone not having enough credits to receive calls and, upon arriving back at Gare Centrale around 9:45 am, discovering that, ultimately, her train had arrived at 9:20 am. Fortunately, my mother didn’t worry much, as she figured the train’s delay explained my absence, especially since the passengers, too, were initally told they’d only arrive in Montréal at 10:00 am.

I brought her back to my Snowdon abode with the intention of having lunch at her favorite, St-Hubert (on Côte-des-Neiges), the moment it opened. But, alas, it was between 10:00 and 11:00 that the heavens opened and the snow started to fly with a vengeance. As we were driving up the Queen Mary hill to the restaurant, that’s when she started: “This is the last time I’ll be travelling in the winter,” she sternly declared. “I made it until I turned 80 and that’s good enough.”

We were the first customers to arrive at St-Hubert, so we had the choice of tables. I, not thinking, let her sit in a way where she was looking out the window while I was back to it. She was thoroughly miserable throughout our short hour there, looking at and commenting on the worsening storm. As for me, I didn’t really care; I knew it was only a matter of driving slowly and carefully, plus we weren’t going outside the city (really).

Now I admit it: the visibility and the roads were really bad, but I wasn’t nervous in the least. I’ve been through worse — namely similar conditions, except after dark. THAT was truly nerve wracking; not this. I warned her to expect the visibility to be a bit worse as we crossed the Champlain Bridge across the St. Lawrence, but that everything was under control. And it was.

Once on the other side, though, we were driving into the snow, so an already unpleasant experience got progressively worse. I knew, however, that we were already more than halfway to destination and the return wouldn’t be as bad. But that didn’t stop her “Oh doux Jésus, oh doux Jésus“… At that point I couldn’t help but say, “Ma! Who’s driving? And do I look the least bit nervous?”

We reached our destination, of course, and visited my aunt for about two hours. On our way back, by which time the storm’s fury had abated considerably, she went on saying how this was likely the last time she would see her sister, as it’s too much trouble due to all the unknown bad weather conditions that could be encountered. Taking her at her word, I reminded her that, the next time, she wouldn’t be travelling in winter, so if we were able to make it through this, we could make it through anything.

We spent her remaining hours in Montréal at Gare Centrale having coffee and waiting for her train to depart for Ottawa (late, of course). When I got home, I immediately called my sister to advise her that Mom was safely on her way, and admitted that I may have ruined forever her going to Ottawa for Christmases to come. But, as my sister said, we have a year to work on her and give her assurance that we won’t attempt to repeat the detour to her sister if it’s the middle of winter.

But already Mom is countering that, in winter, she still has to worry about getting to the train station and having people drive in bad weather to fetch her from the station. You just can’t win with her when she sets her mind on something. I need to remind myself that, although my father was the biggest worry-wart of them all, she’s no slouch in that department herself.