Coffeeshop down

In the interest of reducing our carbon footprint and sleeping in for 15 minutes more every morning, hubby and I have switched up our morning commute. Now rather than being driven to my office we drive to his office – which is on the train line and a 10 minutes train ride from my office.

When we came up with the plan it made perfect sense. After all, the drive to his office is 15 minutes, the drive to my office is 40.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

First of all, the train platform is not heated because apparently the city is run by people who hibernate and are therefore blissfully unaware of winter. I am having increasing difficultly balancing fashion with warmth.

There is a point those two things become mutually exclusive. That point hovers around -25 degrees Celsius.

Second, the train is like a sardine can. There is no way I can hold a coffee, my purse, my lunch, my shoe bag and still hold on so I don’t fall on the lurching train.

So this means I don’t get my morning americano enroute to his office/my transit. That is really making it hard to smile as I arrive at work, but I am being a trooper and enduring my coworkers even while in my non-caffeinated stupor.

I thought that I could manage until 10 by drinking a bit of office coffee, at which point I would simply take a two block saunter to Starbucks. But WTH office coffee? W-T-H? It’s bum coffee. It offends me. It is worse than the caffeine headache.

Plus then we had that series of -37C with windchill days. There was no way I was going outside and Starbucks does not deliver (I asked). So I had a terrible choice. Bum coffee all day, or tea.

I chose tea. It may be caffeinated but tea is a poor substitute for coffee, and the only way to make it better is to be stoic. I have gained much insight into the British disposition. Cultural idiosyncrasies explained.

Well, today the weather broke. It is a balmy two degrees above zero morning and I wrapped up and skipped off to Starbucks. I joyfully got my americano. It sounds like a happy ending. Right? Nope. In my absence they had become lackadaisical about stocking and had let the whole store run out of my preferred raw sugar.

So close, yet so far 😦

In private, public transportation

My holiday respite from my crowded commute is over. It officially ended Monday afternoon.

You see, I take the train to meet my beloved and he then drives me home.

I get on the train at the 4th stop going south (there are more stops going north, but I try not to pay attention to anything north of our downtown core because it is too plebeian).

The first stop serves federal and civic government employees.
The second is used by passengers who work in the tall business office towers and exclusive shopping boutiques.
The third stop is close to a college and business school and used by students.
By the time the train reaches my stop, the fourth stop, I and a multitude of provincial government employees are on this platform waiting to embark:

I am willing to stand for my ride south, but I still need personal space during the journey. I have even been known to wait 6 minutes for a second train because I did not think I would have adequate personal space on the first train. The problem is, not everyone seems to share my need for personal boundaries.

After my stop the train crosses the river then stops on the far bank at the university.

Clearly youth is more comfortable with direct physical contact than we, the middle aged.

On the Monday question I got on the first train, having decided I had adequate space. Then at the univeristy 20 more students than common sense and physical space should have allowed for decided to squeeze on.

I was wedged up next to some amazonian proto-intellectual, my head under her chin.

As god as my witness, it took every ounce of my will to not scream and flail about in protest.

I stood suffering for 15 minutes as her breath parted my hair and proceeded down my exposed neck and into my blouse. It was horrific. I prefer to save that level of intimacy for my husband, in private.

The harsh reality

I don’t even know where to start.

My first world problems are interfering with my ability to maintain my first world problems blog.

Does that qualify as irony?

Or does it just qualify as priviledge…?

Either way, the harsh reality is that between the shopping, theatre, socializing, and romantic dinners December is a difficult month to carve out enough ‘me’ time to write about what ever it is I suffer from.

I think I am going to pour a glass of wine and put on my iTunes.

Self insufficiency

I am a creature of habit. I depend on the consistency and routine of my existence to take the edge off my stressful life. On a normal morning my husband drives me in and drops me at my office. I spend the average commute on my smart phone catching up on the news and listening to my meditation podcasts multiple times. I arrive at work relaxed and mentally prepared for my day.

Yesterday my husband had to drive out of town for work. Which of course meant I had to drive myself in to work.

I thought that would be fine; after all I am a self sufficient, empowered, 21st century woman.

I had no idea.

Traffic, oh my god, the traffic. People drive like lunatics. I swear I spent half of the drive idling at a standstill behind a pickup truck.

I thought I would replace the smart phone news reading with the radio. What has happened to radio? I heard a full 37 minutes of commercials, 36 seconds of news, and the first 3 chords of a song.

When when I finally got to work and paid for parking (?!) I then had to walk to a block to Starbucks and then three frigid blocks to my office building.

I thought it couldn’t get worse, but then I had to drive home. I was so frazzled by the time I got to the house I had to insist we go out for dinner because the stress of having to prepare the family meal was more than I could bear.

[Enter Blog Title Here]

I have really been struggling to come up with a new blog topic since my last post on October 29.

I am afraid I have to announce that I have the most severe of all the first world problems currently identified by social science.

I have had absolutely nothing to complain about.

Hopefully something goes awry soon. Otherwise I fear my dreams of being a writer will be irrevocably thwarted by my contentment.

dreams fashion finances

Budget troubles

To counter rumours that I have become an irredeemable princess, I have been looking into way of being more mindful of my finances.

For instance, just this past Tuesday hubby and I had a conversation about spending during which, when pressured to make a guess, my husband estimated that I spend $1000 a month on clothing.

I found that a bit shocking. I couldn’t counter that number because I really never keep track, but I was still taken aback.

Upon further and later thought however, I began to wonder if that was a number he was comfortable with. And if it was a number he was comfortable with, and if I could manage a quick and dirty forensic audit of my clothing related purchases, and if it turned out that I did not spend $1000 per month – was that amount retroactive?

Why, only just last last month I let an Akris Punto dress, discounted at 40%, slip away from me because I was not sure how my husband would feel about the $945 price tag.

Did I miss my chance? Did I unwittingly limit my own horizons and sabotage my own dreams? So many women are self saboteurs after all; we don’t insist on as much as we deserve from the world around us.

You can be sure that henceforth I will not self limit. When I see what I want I will take out my credit card and make my dreams a reality.

I feel more empowered already.

arachnid Arachnophobia bath bathe laundry poetic license princess spider tea

Poetic Princess license

The spider count is now three. Three spiders in my house. I can’t sleep knowing they’re about.

It started with the bathtub spider. He’s dead, but he probably had friends.

There was the spider on the stairs. He got away when I flicked on the lights.

Then there was the spider on the hallway wall. This one was brave, he stared me down. He’s the reason I didn’t do laundry last week.

I think we need to go away for a week and hire an exterminator to come in and purge the house. My husband seems to think I am over reacting and exaggerating the potential risks associated of a ‘few’ common house spiders. I think I am painting an accurate picture of our current household situation, but he thinks I am taking poetic license with my risk assessment.

So I thought I would compromise. I suggested we get a panic button in the bathroom so the next time an eight legged assassin emerges from my bathwater I can sound the alarm. Then my husband, who thinks I am exaggerating the risks, can run upstairs and rid me of the beastly thing.

My husband agreed, with one caveat. That I don’t use the alarm when I just want a cup of tea while I bathe.

Well, I can’t honestly promise that so I guess I just have learn to live with the arachnid invasion.

academy award dress fashion opera Oscar de la Renta oscarss queen

All my fashionable dreams torn asunder

I am so sad. It pains me to even think of my weekend now. I’ll have to wear black to The Barber of Seville, in mourning.

Oscar de la Renta, designer par excellence, has passed away at 82.

Now what will I wear if I ever have tea with the queen?

Or if I ever win an Academy Award?

Or am invited to the university president’s dinner party?

Or the OPERA, what will I wear to the opera now?

😦

Picture this:

After a long hard week, I sink into a hot bath to soak my stresses away.

I casually reach my hand over the edge of the tub and find, there beside the soap, a menacing spider.

Startled, I somehow knock the monster into the tub.

So NOW the hideous icky thing is desperately doing the butterfly stroke toward my naked, defenseless body.

I leap up and shake myself brave. In desperate adrenaline driven self defense I take hold of the wash cloth and flick the soggy, hairy, bent-legged angry arachnid out of my bathwater and onto the tile floor.

It lands with a little splat, then drags its wet carcass around the tub and, I assume, down the vent.

All of this happens with my husband in the living room downstairs deafened by the TV and completely oblivious to my immanent peril.

Had the eight legged assassin killed me and greedily drained my vital fluids, he would not have known until he came to bed and found my desiccated corpse floating in the tub.

We need to install a panic button.

Not a good week to be princess

This week has been almost unbearable, and I don’t mean to brag, but it has also been a testament to my inner strength.

First of all, my husband is away so I am all alone looking after the boys, the dog and the house. I had no idea how many times that dog went out to pee on an average day. She might have kidney problems.

On Sunday I almost thought I’d lost one of the boys. That was a couple seconds of anxiety. One time he gets out of bed before 2 in the afternoon – how am I supposed to know?

Monday my son decided we should be heroes and signed us up to donate blood. We took the train all the way to Canadian Blood Services then waited our turn, only to have my blood rejected. My iron levels are not sufficient to allow me to donate blood. I had to sit and wait, reading a 2 year old Chatelaine magazine while my son gave blood, then wait and watch him get a cookie and juice.

Then Tuesday was looking like a busy but doable day until I got dressed. I had to change 7 times because I had an important meeting and couldn’t find a outfit that said ‘intelligent but easy going’. It was harrowing and made me despair for the state of my wardrobe.

When I finally did get dressed and to my desk I sat down, crossed my legs and the zipper on my boots ripped a huge hole in my new tights. I had to walk two blocks to my morning meeting with calves bare to the autumn wind.

Wednesday we got home and the dog, apparently as retribution for leaving her alone, had gotten into the garbage and scattered carrot peelings all over the kitchen in her desperate search for a precious butter wrapper.

(what?) (oh, that) (my bad)

Thursday morning I turned on the shower and it just never got warm – the hot water heater pilot light had gone out some time during the night. A cold shower does not set a good tone to a day.

Today is Friday and I am sitting on pins and needles waiting to see what fate befalls me next.

darcysfirstworldproblems

It's lonely in the top (1%)

first world problems