Swedish for “line-up”

I went to Ikea the other day. I know, I know – but I actually enjoy going to Ikea. Every summer I wait for the yearly catalogue with unbridled enthusiasm, and when it arrives, I am transfixed by its offerings. When I get to the store, I am in my glory and can wander joyfully for hours. I may not buy anything, but I get lots of ideas for home decorating projects that I’ll get around to someday.

Well, this was someday. I decided that I absolutely had to purchase a plain navy blue carpet for one of the rooms in my house. I had seen such a carpet the last time I visited Ikea last summer, when I picked up a few items for DD. I didn’t buy it at that time, because I wanted to think about it, to turn it over and over in my mind to make sure that I really wanted it. (I do this. It’s kind of the antithesis of impulse buying. The problem is that sometimes I ruminate for so long that the item I wish to buy is no longer available, but at least I’m usually spared the ordeal of returning something that I bought in haste.)

It was very nice to drive out to the store in the middle of the week, rather than on a weekend. Much less traffic. The parking lot had plenty of available spots. I was able to wander through the store at will, without bumping into fellow wanderers and their strollers/ shopping carts/ oversized shopping bags.

I quickly found the carpet I was looking for, and picked it up. It wasn’t too heavy or bulky, fortunately, so off I trotted towards the checkout.

I passed the candles on the way. I also grabbed a couple of packages of tealights, since I was completely out of those and I do like my candles. I was feeling pretty good about things, particularly about my efficiency and how single-minded I was being. No aimless meandering for me that day, I was on a mission. And my mission was very nearly accomplished. The checkouts were in sight.

Except that only four of the twelve checkouts were open. And each had a line-up snaking waaaaaay back, at least ten people plus their strollers/ shopping carts/ oversized shopping bags. It was going to be a loooooong wait.

My question is this: on a weekday, with the parking lot and the store itself half empty, where the hell did all those people at the checkouts come from???

Case closed

Do you recall that car crash I had in the summer of 2008? The one where the driver of the other car involved decided to sue me for damages back last February?

Since receiving that rather disturbing sheaf of papers, I have only spoken once to the lawyer that my insurance company assigned to the case. I had just wanted to ask him a couple of questions about those papers, including were they still legal if my address was typed wrongly all over them (answer: yes). I also told him my side of the story, giving him additional details, all of which I wrote about in that post last February.

I have not been contacted since.

Till today.

There was an envelope from my lawyer in the mail today. I couldn’t help it, my heart started to pound and my hands started to shake. I didn’t want to open it up. I was scared of what it might contain. I told myself that it was quite likely just an update on the case, that it surely wasn’t anything awful, because if it was, my lawyer would have phoned me. Certainly that would be how legal cases worked.

Wouldn’t it?

Like an idiot, I sat there holding the envelope in my trembling hands for several more minutes before I finally took a deep breath and opened it. As I did, I mentally scolded myself for being such a drama queen.

Inside was one sheet of paper with very little typing on it. It very briefly informed me that the lawsuit had “settled”. The word “settled” was in bold. My participation in the case was now “concluded”. The word “concluded” was not in bold.

I breathed deeply again. It’s over, and pretty painlessly, really.

But now I’m wondering what that jackass ended up getting as his settlement. And yes, the word “jackass” is in bold.

A moving experience

My brother, sister-in-law and I have been helping my mom move into her new condo home all weekend. We’re not done yet, but I almost am. This moving stuff is hard work!

A few observations:

1 ) A sister-in-law with a cast on her right leg and hobbling around on crutches, is not able to help a great deal. She can unpack boxes – but only if you bring them to her and you put the unpacked things away for her. This limits her usefulness. She also takes up a lot of space. But she makes up for this with her unfailing good humour and constant funny comments.

2 ) A very tall, broad, strong brother is a definite asset when moving. Bonus points for his truck, too.

3 ) Another sibling bonus is learning that he is just as particular as you are about furniture placement and what looks good where. About the only difference between the way the two of you operate is that he measures very carefully whereas you simply eyeball it. But it works. When items are placed perfectly, you are both in instant agreement. You briefly consider starting up a home staging business with him.

4 ) A daughter with a Honda Fit is another plus. Particularly if she doesn’t need her car that day because she walks to work, so she kindly allows you to use it to transport her grandma’s precious china. With the rear seats down, those Fits can swallow whales, you believe. Or at least about a hundred and twelve boxes of breakable china.

5 ) Some buildings have way too many locked doors to get anywhere easily. And your mother now lives in one. The door to the stairs from the lobby is locked. The elevator needs a key to get to the parking garage. There are several locked doors between the parking garage and the elevator. Your mother is pleased with all the security and says she won’t mind using her key so much. She should try it carrying about a hundred and twelve boxes of china up to the third floor, one at a time. She may mind then.

6 ) Many seniors just love watching people move. You are convinced that those seniors all live in your mom’s building. On moving day, they congregate on the lobby couches and watch you go in and out, chatting amongst themselves and with you as you pass. One woman, who is a member of the building’s strata council, is the designated person to keep the lobby doors open and ensure that no one gets in who should not be in. She is hilarious, and you would really rather just sit and listen to her tell funny stories all afternoon – but no, you have about a hundred and twelve boxes of china to carry upstairs.

7 ) Having no phone hooked up yet is a major headache. This means that when your daughter arrives later in the evening to join the family for dinner, she cannot call you from the front door enterphone, nor can you buzz her in. She ends up shouting your name angrily from three stories below, and you have to hustle downstairs and apologize profusely as you let her in. It never occurs to either of you to use your mobile phones.

8 ) It’s really important to have extension cords. Many extension cords. This is because some buildings do not have electrical outlets in logical places. Buildings like your mom’s. Logical places like on the long walls rather than on the short walls. Because appliances requiring these electrical outlets are more likely to be placed on the longer walls where furniture actually fits, rather than on the shorter walls where only something the size of a toaster will fit. Oh – and why would there be a telephone jack in the middle of a dining room wall? Would any sane person actually have a phone in their dining room? (Assuming their phone line was hooked up, of course.)

I’ve now decided that I will not ever be moving until I am so old and decrepit that DD must put me in a care home. That way I will likely avoid doing any of the work.

What’s up doc?

I went to my doctor for my annual physical last week. Except it wasn’t my regular doctor, who’s been on some kind of extended leave since last spring and won’t be back till mid-September. I actually had two people examining me: the nurse who used to just do the blood pressure check, and the substitute doctor. Strength in numbers, I suppose.

I’m not sure what exactly the nurse’s position is now. I asked her if she was a nurse-practitioner now, but all she said was that she was going to enter all my information into the computer, check my blood pressure, height and weight, and do the breast exam and the internal. Oh. Do we know each other well enough for that?

Anyway, it turns out that I have gained 3.5 kilos in the past year. Yes. That is almost 8 pounds. 10 pounds is a whole size. This would explain why my favourite shorts, my only pair of beige summer pants, my denim capris, my slinky electric blue dress no longer fit. I can’t even button up the damn dress any more!

Also, I am now shrinking. I always thought that I measured just over 5′4” (162 centimetres). I am now just over 5′3″ (160 centimetres). Has my bad posture finally caught up to me? Has gravity increased recently? Is this even supposed to happen?? I’m not a senior citizen yet, for heaven’s sake!

All depressed, I went home and immediately started back on Weight Watchers (the easy pinklea version: no meetings, just write down the points value of everything you eat, drink oceans of water, and pee pee pee constantly). I’m proud to say that in a week, I’ve lost 4 and a half pounds! I know at this point that it’s only water, but it’s a great start, and the rest of the weight should come off in another couple of weeks if I keep following the regime. And I will. I know how to lose weight (and gain it too, it seems).

But I have absolutely no idea what to do about my diminishing height.

To serve and protect?

PG lives across the street from a neighbourhood pub. It’s a pretty nice place, with good food, and we go there often.

Unfortunately, so do a number of what appears to be homeless people. While they don’t exactly patronize the pub, they do pop into the liquor store that is attached to the pub, and pick up whatever they can get cheaply. Then they go outside, sit on the cement ledge around the corner of the pub entrance, and proceed to drink their day away. Illegally. In public. One person is invariably joined by a few more, sometimes with shopping carts full of cans and bottles (or even all their personal belongings), sometimes with a portable stereo system, usually with more liquor. They get progressively louder and louder, and nastier and nastier. They are not always there, but they are there often enough that they are annoying.

There are a lot of seniors who live in this area, and I can imagine that they would be disturbed by all this going on on the street in front of their homes. I don’t like it, and I don’t even live there (nor am I a senior). It’s hard to walk past these people drinking on the sidewalk, because they end up taking up a great deal of walking space and harassing passersby for cigarettes or money. They also swear a lot, and if my own mother is anything to go by, seniors most emphatically do NOT like that.

A few days ago, I arrived at PG’s place in the middle of the afternoon. As I got out of my car, my ears were assaulted by the tune “Barbie Girl” by Aqua on some street person’s portable stereo. That’s an inane song at the best of times, but to hear it at full blast on a hot summer day is unbearable. PG was up on his balcony, gazing at the owner of the stereo and his buddies, who had obviously been drinking out there for quite a while and were also yelling and swearing at each other over the sound of the music. I yelled up at PG, “How long has this been going on?”

He yelled back, “A while!”

They eventually turned the stereo off and moved on.

The next day, PG and I were returning to his place from a walk up the street for brunch, and this time there were two men and a woman sitting there on the ledge outside the pub. The men were clearly well on their way to being tanked, and the woman seemed to be trying to reason with them. They were all really loud. We gingerly stepped past them and made our way towards his apartment. One of the other apartment residents, an older man, was leaning over his ground-floor balcony railing, watching the proceedings. He and PG talked briefly about how this drinking in public just wasn’t right, and how noisy it always got, and how disturbing it was to the neighbourhood. They agreed that it wasn’t the pub itself, it was these people who seemed to feel that it was okay to sit on the street and drink and disturb the peace.

When PG and I went inside, we watched as the two men began yelling louder and louder at each other, while the woman tried to calm them down. One of the men shoved her, so the other decided to try to strangle him. The woman tried to pull them apart. Fortunately, they did little damage to each other and soon let go and settled down somewhat. Then they began to swear and shout at each other again. Again, the woman tried to keep them apart and calm them down.

In the meantime, PG called the police.

We kept watching, waiting for a cop car to show up. There was more shouting and swearing, but the men refrained from further physical contact, and the woman persuaded them to go somewhere else. Then it was quiet. Twenty minutes later, not one, but two cop cars slowly cruised by. Good timing, officers!

I think PG should keep calling the police every time he notices people out there drinking. I understand that these may be people who are somewhat down on their luck right now, but that still doesn’t give them the right to illegally drink on the street and upset the residents with their loudness and off-colour language. And the police can’t move them along if they don’t know about it. And if the seniors are too nervous to call, well, PG certainly isn’t.

Would it do anything for those unfortunate street people, like help them find homes or find steady jobs or get them off alcohol or get them treatment for their mental issues? No. But it might help the people in this neighbourhood sleep a little more securely at night. And sometimes that’s all you can do.