Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George W. Bush went to a fitness spa for some fun. After a stimulating, healthy lunch, all three decided to visit the men’s room and they found a strange-looking gent sitting at the entrance.

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I’m copying everyone else and changing my colours. Let’s see if anyone notices. Oh let’s.

I am so tired today. I spent the long weekend cleaning my apartment. I tackled my bedroom which hasn’t been dusted or vacuumed in about three years. Three years of full-time school and work leaves no time for such frivolity. I have hardwood floors, so the dust bunnies under my bed and in corners were black, big, and frightening – straight out of a housekeeper’s horror B-flick. I swear they had teeth – at least they did in my dreams that night as they floated towards me with a vengeance.  I won, armed with my vacuum hose. I had to change the bag halfway. Vacuuming under the bed, radiators, dressers and bookshelves is a work-out for a couch potato like me, reaching into far corners with my face pressed against the floor and ass high in the air – I know, housekeeper porn – it’s quality entertainment, really. My hair and downward excercises resembled Richard Simmon’s while dusting and sweating to the nineties. I feel justified calling it a work-out since my bedroom is huge and I’m cleaning up the dead skin cells and stray hairs from three living beings: me, my better half and the cat, the worst culprit. 

So the cleaning was done, and yesterday I walked for miles and then drank red wine, ate medium-rare grilled steak followed by freshly baked strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert, and tossed a frisbee on Spanish Banks Beach with some friends. Plus I chased and twirled a happy toddler. All uber-fun, but exhausting. Me and wine don’t mix. I love drinking it, the taste, the aroma, my lightheadedness and giddy grinning, but during the night, I always wake up with a headache, dizziness and nausea. And today, I am wiped. I am doing everything to stay awake and not do a faceplant on my monitor at work. I could sleep while walking down the street. I’m quite talented at doing those two things at once during broad daylight.

When I had a paper-route in my early and mid-teens, actually, let me rephrase that to the following:  When a paper route was forced upon me via slave labour by my father and The London Free Press (who generously doled out the slave wages), I would be so tired from getting up at 5 a.m. before school every morning, I would fall asleep while walking back home, the monotonous sound of the metal cart dragging behind me coaxing my heavy eyelids shut.  I found myself staggering onto the middle of the road, awakened by a honking car or someone yelling at me to get off the f*cking road. I would sheepishly make my way back to the sidewalk, only to find myself back on the road again minutes later.  I was eventually fired because I just couldn’t get the papers delivered by 7 a.m. sharp. Most of my customers were grateful to have their papers by 7:05, even 7:15, but the very last house on my route belonged to a disgruntled London Free Press employee who stood by his door glaring at his watch.  I was never so happy to lose a job. 

I’d be happy to lose this reception job, it is so boring, but I need the money. It is laid-back, super easy, but soooooooo painfully dull. Order processing, counting inventory, answering the phone, listening to my boss cough up and swallow mucus and the warehouse guy belch is no entertainment. They are sweet people, but love to hear themselves talk. 

I need a real job. I am tired of applying, working for hours on the perfectly-written cover-letter. I just graduated and so far I’ve received no responses, just dead quiet, the droning dial tone when I check for messages. My Fido voicemail is always saying, “I’ve got nothing to tell you!” in that perky voice. Some pet you are. You’re supposed to fetch when I say so! Fetch me those jobs! Fetch me the fancy title, higher wages and my name in print, you lazy dog!

In response to Little Biscuit Whore’s post  the other day about forgetting everything he learned in Wegnerd’s Communications class, I, too, seem to have forgotten everything from the entire program! Ever since the grad ceremony, it feels as if all the knowledge gained, both practical and creative, is seeping out of my pores as the seconds tick-tock onwards. That’s when it seemed to all happen. And that is why I promply registered for two courses after our final exams last semester, to keep my mind perky and grammatically sound. But, as soon as my security blanket of regular teachers and classmates vanished, so did my smarts. I feel like an alcoholic out of rehab. How fitting, since all we did was drink after each Thursday night class. 

I noticed the affliction last Friday when I was editing my Historical Fiction Creative Writing classmates’ character scenes. Feeling like the ever-so-clever-the freshly-graduated-writing student, I blissfully marked up with red pen the contraction  “it’s”, using the delete squiggle over top of the apostrophe. I did the opposite for possessive “its,” inserting a bright red caret with a glaring apostrophe over top of the humble little word. Then I started thinking: Is this correct? I had to be right, after all! I questioned my classmate, whom I doubted since she constantly told me her grammar sucked. She said I had it wrong. I Googled it. To my horror, she was right and I was wrong! The shame I felt  was nauseating as I hurriedly scribbled a straggly “Sorry!” in each margin of the papers I had violated.  

Then to get my character scene ripped to shreds in Creative Writing. I was sneakily trying to make a non-fiction piece into fiction, and in doing so, the genius that I am, I forgot to change my own name in the piece!  I must admit, I only worked on it the night before, completely lost as how to write a fictional character scene from scratch and trying to get away with passing off an older piece thinking, “This’ll do. This is old hat compared the shit I did in Wegnerd’s class!” Oh, the mockery of it all as eighteen-year-olds lacerated my delicate prose. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, I got an A – , but it is humbling and a little degenerative being in a class with people so much younger that are actually quite good writers.  I want to smack the pompous dude. He never shuts up and is way to picky in his criticisms, ripping everyone’s work to shreds, getting upset about italicizing thoughts and using phrases like “four blocks North” and “years later.”

Ah well, it’s all a learning process, and I’m gonna have to get used to not being in my comfy old shoes that I’ve been wearing over the past two-and-a-half years. It’s soothing to read my classmates’ blogs though. All my sense of worry and panic melts away when their affable voices share how they are feeling the same way, stumbling through the cacophonous job market and bad interviews, feeling awkward calling ourselves writers when people ask what we do.

Hopefully the brambly path ahead of us will clear as we find our way and we will stop dreaming of thong pies (see Meladuck) and eating our feet. Yes, I dreamt I was trying to save money by eating my feet. In the dream it made perfect sense as I knew they’d grow back, like picking leaves or flowers off a plant.

I’ve been avoiding blogging like the plague these days. Partially to blame is Facebook (FB). For some reason, I am strangely addicted to viewing pictures of my current and long lost friends that found me and vice versa through this new internet phenomenon that has taken the world by storm. 

FB works for me because I can keep in better touch with my family and friends back East, looking at the pictures they post of their kids, and we seem to connect better writing on eachother’s walls than just sending a boring old email or picking up the phone. They never call me, it’s usually me who does the calling, and usually they are never home, but we always have time to FB. It makes emailing more interactive and I feel more involved in their lives. 

I also FB with my pals who live a few blocks away. Maybe it’s because we are all so vain in showing off our pictures and who we are, and more importantly, how many friends we have.  It’s also fun to look at other people’s friends and reconnect with ones you thought had dropped off the face of the earth. I have reconnected with folks I’d forgotten about completely until I saw them on someone else’s friends list. 

I found myself looking up ex-boyfriends and friends from public school. What is wrong with me? Why am I suddenly so interested in my past? I’ve even reconnected with my former Christian friends, very hesitantly because of fear of what I’d see, fear of judgement, fear of the G-word. But curiosity got the best of me. I wanted to know if they are married with kids, and all of them are. Most are still in London (Ontario), some have moved either out East or West, but nowhere in between.  Even though my beliefs have changed, I am genuinely interested in them since we shared the most influential part of our lives together. I respect their beliefs if they respect mine.

I am agnostic after all, open to what others have to say, as long as they don’t go overboard and try to push their shit on me and say that George Bush knows what he’s doing and that yoga is evil. It’s all about balance, people. And balance is what I need, even with FB. I can’t spend too much time in that place or else I’ll get nothing done and spend countless hours writing about my past. 

For some reason, I’m feeling really angry these days. Maybe it’s PMS, yes, let’s blame my hormones. So I come to my poor blog to vent. I hope I’m not abusing it too much by just coming here to complain and whine. The poor thing is gonna have no self-esteem left by the time I’m finished. Happy stuff sucks anyways. It just pisses every one off.

The first ember of my rage was sparked on the heels of public transit, particularly Translink and Vancouverites. I do praise the locals for embracing the transit system and not driving, preserving every little bit of oxygen that remains in our environment, but since there are so many of us crowding into our under-staffed, under-supplied buses and trains, we should learn to travel without killing eachother. A new form of road rage is emerging – bus rage.

We have a lot to learn from our neighbours to the East. They know how to move fast and efficiently on their busy, well-used systems. Our West-coasters however, as polite as we Canadians are, don’t practice good street etiquette. Etiquette sounds all lame, polite and typical Van-cewver-ish. Maybe I should rephrase it to plain street sense. Let’s start with a list. Don’t you just love a good list? Your inner Joy Lass is gloating.

1) Get outta my way!

If someone  is walking down the street and you look like you’re going to smash into eachother, at least make an effort to move out of the way. Just assuming the other person is going to move, especially if there is oncoming traffic to her right and a huge tree to her left, will not just make that person move out of your way, and don’t fricking expect her to climb that tree to get outta your way!

2) OFF means the same as ON

When getting onto the Skytrain, let the people off first. The same rule applies to all elevators. Pushing your way into the car like there is a bomb about to explode behind you makes it really tough for others who actually exist on this planet besides you. These doors do have timers with enough seconds to let people on AND OFF the car in good time, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there is a warning sound that let’s you know when the door will frickin close! Elevators don’t have this sound, but also give enough time for people to get on AND OFF in good time. Oh, and if you’re worried about being crushed to death, the door will stop if you stick your arm out. Ah, the wonders of technology.

3) Don’t be afraid of the back.

When you enter the bus, don’t all congregate at the very front. I know the luggage area is very exciting as well as standing beside the great driver himself while setting his little alarm off, but they designed these new buses to accommodate more standers at the middle and back of the vehicle. Drivers are starting to get vocal-chord damage from asking people to “Please move to the back of the bus!” The B-Line drivers are getting carpal-tunnel syndrome in their index fingers from constantly pushing the button that gives the pleasant female-voice version of the same command that no one listens to.

4) Don’t get too comfy

If you’re sitting in a cozy two-seater closest to the aisle and the person beside you needs to get off, simply moving your knees an inch to the left makes it impossible for her to get by, and you wonder why she is suddenly sitting on your lap.  Again, effort here can go a long way. Stand up, for crap’s sake. As hard as this is to believe, you are not too  important to have to move for anyone else. I know you are bitter because she got the window seat first, but if you move, that seat is yours!

5) Speak, human, speak, but nicely. 

Again, this applies to the cozy two-seater situation. If you’re sitting closest to the aisle and need  to ring the bell, don’t just reach over aimlessly bashing your arm into the other passenger’s face while you yank that rope. This is where conversing with your fellow human being actually comes into good use.  Saying, “Excuse me please” or even asking the person to ring it for you is much less likely to get you killed on a rainy Monday morning during rush hour.

6) Crank it down! 

Thankfully drivers don’t allow boom boxes on board like they did in the eighties. Well, they did in London ON, anyways. But you wouldn’t know it nowadays because some dudes crank up their MP3 players as if they were stone deaf. I think those are the boom boxers of yesteryear, wanting everyone to hear their horrible taste in music, usually consisting of Asian pop, gangsta rap or heavy metal. If you know who you are, we all don’t want to hear your music, and you are stripping your poor eardrums! Sometimes I can hear your music above my own headphone noise. Maybe I should crank mine up too, but then I’d go deaf and it would be a choir of tinny headphone music for an audience of naked ears. 

7) The one-sided conversation-listener goes mad. 

You thought I’d never get to this, didn’t you James? CELL PHONE USAGE! I’m all for cell phones, but if you must use them on the bus (that means MUST, not discussing lame details about your bad sex life), keep your voice to a normal level. Just because you can barely hear the person on the other end, doesn’t mean he or she can’t hear you. Yelling won’t make you hear better, and if you are having connection problems, wait until you are off the bus in consideration of people forced to listen to you. And if you choose to carry a cell phone and listen to your separate MP3 player at the same time, make sure you turn your phone off or put it on vibrate so it doesn’t ring loudly forever while you remain blissfully unaware of other passengers trying to get your attention.

8) Keep your brats at bay. 

If you have children, tell them to stay with you and stay seated. Running around screaming on the bus is not cute and  is very annoying to other passengers, especially the ones who chose not to breed for a very good reason. If your child doesn’t listen to you, eparenting classes are only a penny and leashes are available at pet stores.

9) Young doesn’t mean strong.

If an elderly person needs to sit down, don’t ask the youngest person in the crowd to give up her seat, especially if she has about ten heavy bags full of groceries. There are plenty of middle-aged people willing to stand. Even a few old people are willing to stand! Not all of them are helpless, and some of them get offended if you offere them a seat just because their hair is grey.

10)  Ew, stinky!

One more just to make the list even. If you’re going to eat something, make sure it is not tuna fish, McDonald’s, fresh pizza or rotisserie chicken. It just makes everyone else either ravenously hungry or incredibly nauseaus. Try to eat before or after the bus ride. There are germs floating around in these human-crammed  metal tubes-with-wheels anyways, so it’s better for everyone that way. Incessant chewing noises are gross too. Don’t get me started about being squished beside someone with bad breath! And bathing regulary is a real treat for regular transit users, especially those with virgin noses.

There. I think I said it all. I think I should post this at the front of each bus. If you can think of anything else, feel freel to drop a comment. Ah, I feel better now. Thanks blog-bitches! Wow, that was 1300 words. I must have been really mad!