Best. Text. Ever.

This is part of a text exchange I had with DD yesterday.

I don’t even know what else to say, but I’m still laughing my ass off.

Yet another birdshit story

Yesterday, I borrowed my mom’s car to take DD to Ikea. Using her car instead of mine or DD’s was necessary for two reasons:

One: My beloved BMW is a fabulous car for many reasons, but trunk space is not one of them. Every one of my previous cars had a hatch, so this car’s trunk is frequently a major pain in my butt. I can’t seem to fit anything into it, except for things like groceries. A box? Dicey at best. Two boxes? Not even close. Ikea stuff? No effing way, so don’t even think about it, however briefly.

Two: DD’s beloved car is a hatchback, and can fit many, many boxes of many, many shapes and sizes inside it. The thing seems to stretch the more you try to put in it. We’ve had an entire loveseat tucked in there – with room to spare! But DD’s car lives in my garage for the moment, as it’s uninsured. DD has no parking spot at her basement apartment, and doesn’t really need a car in her neighbourhood anyway. She doesn’t need it to get to university either, as there’s a direct bus maybe a short block away and she has a student bus pass that’s included with the price of tuition. She doesn’t mind insuring her car for a day or so if necessary, and was, in fact, planning to do that when we planned this Ikea expedition. But then my mom suggested that we take her car and give it a good run on the freeway, since she only drives close to home and maybe only once a week at the most.

So, as I said, I borrowed my mom’s car to take DD to Ikea yesterday.

We were in and out in just short of two hours, which is truly amazing, as both of us love Ikea and could easily spend the day there, sightseeing. But she was on a mission to find a small shelf unit for kitchen storage, a coffee table for her living room, and a bathmat. She was armed with measurements and her debit card. And she found a shelf unit, coffee table, and bathmat that suited her needs very quickly. We found the shelf unit and coffee table boxes in the self-serve furniture section equally quickly. There was, miracle of miracles, no lineup at the self-serve cash, so she scanned the items, paid for them, and we loaded them into the car quickly, too.

Back at DD’s place, we unloaded everything, then I put together the coffee table while she put together the wicker baskets that would be stored in the shelf unit, then she filled them with kitchen stuff like tupperware. I started to assemble the shelf unit, and it didn’t go nearly as well as the coffee table had. Holes weren’t aligning properly, and those dinky little wooden dowels that Ikea insists upon using to hold together shelves and partitions kept snapping off. I got frustrated, so we decided to go out for frozen yogourt, then I could tackle the project again with a full tummy.

As we walked past my mom’s car on the street, I remarked how convenient it was that I’d been able to find a parking spot right in front of DD’s house, and also under a tall leafy tree that was providing shade on such a hot day. Then I saw the giant plop of birdshit on the back window. Uh, maybe parking under that tree wasn’t such a good thing after all? “I’m going to have to wash that off before I return Grandma’s car,” I told DD. “But a bird crapping on a person is supposed to be good luck, so maybe that’s true for a car, too. Maybe I’ll be able to finish that shelf unit with no further problems when we get back?”

That’s not how it turned out, however. We actually had to make another trip out, to a hardware store to purchase more wooden dowels. Every single one of the ones that came with the shelf unit broke! What are they made out of these days, balsa wood?!? But eventually, I got the thing together, we put it where she wanted it, she put the baskets in their places, and it looked great! “Just don’t climb on it,” I warned her, “because I don’t think those shelves will hold too well!”

I went home, washed the birdshit off Mom’s car’s back window, then brought it back to her. I told her all about our day, including the trouble I’d had assembling the shelf unit and also about the birdshit on her window. I assured her that I’d cleaned it off, and anyway, that was supposed to bring good luck.

“Oh good,” she smiled. “I’m thinking of going to the casino tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll win big!”

Mom phoned me this morning. She’d just come home from the casino. She won a thousand dollars on one pull on a slot machine.

I’m glad that birdshit luck went to somebody in the family!

Ooooh, shiny!

DD and I were strolling through a department store recently. We were on the hunt for new towels for her, in a particular shade of purple. DD is quite particular when it comes to acceptable colours, and I approve of this.

We were making our way to towel-land, constantly getting distracted by various other items.

“I need a new Teflon frying pan, mom, are those ones there any good?”

“Hey there’s vacuums!. PG needs one!”

“Let’s look at Christmas lights!”

“Do you need any more area rugs?”

“Maybe I should stock up on birthday cards. You wanna get some too?”

Yes, this is how DD and I shop sometimes. We usually make a beeline for what we require and get the hell outta Dodge, but once in a while we meander aimlessly, without much focus, despite having a clear goal in mind. It may have something to do with low blood sugar, or maybe it’s occasional ADHD. We both do it, together and separately, so I know it’s definitely genetic at least.

So we stopped absolutely nowhere near the towels to examine something that I don’t remember. Then we got distracted by a little girl, maybe 4 years old, with her mom. The mom was speaking to her daughter in French, and the daughter was responding in English, which is exactly what DD and I used to do when she was little. This mom was telling the little girl to hurry up, that they had to leave soon, so stop dawdling. The little girl answered plaintively, “But Mommy, there’s not enough sparkles.”

DD and I didn’t even look at each other, but we both said, at virtually the same time, “There are never enough sparkles!”

… which is a pretty good motto, don’t you think?