Motivation

I haven’t felt much like posting lately. I don’t exactly know why, but I’ve been wandering through my life lately without the urge to record any of it for posterity. I’ve been doing things, sure, but nothing has really seemed blogworthy. I feel like I have to apologize to you for my boring life!

I did have a downtown spa date with BFJ this past weekend. We had a lovely hotel room, a lovely pre-dinner bottle of bubbly, a lovely dinner with more lovely drinks, a lovely shopping experience, a lovely sleep, a lovely (and expensive! Wow! Do fancy hotels ever gouge you for the privilege of eating breakfast in their dining rooms!) breakfast the next morning, then a lovely massage and facial (me) and a lovely massage and pedicure (her). We mostly had a lovely visit with the usual amounts of riotous laughter – most rejuvenating!

And we had an unexpected visitor to our 11th floor room:

This guy scared the shit out of us when he swooped in and landed on the windowsill, and then he just sat there for something like fifteen minutes. He cocked his little head from one side to the other, probably trying to see what we were doing in there and wondering when we were going to open the stupid window and feed him. (We didn’t.) Both BJF and I took loads of photos and texted them to everyone we thought might appreciate a photo of a persistent and photogenic seagull on a hotel window ledge.

And that ridiculous seagull made me feel like writing a blog post again.

PIN-up

My good friend BFJ and I have just had another lovely spa weekend. Well, not a whole weekend, really, just a half-weekend. But it was great anyway.

BFJ and I always have a terrific time together and many adventures, some of which I have written about here, here, and here. This time there was a giggly, drunken phone call at 10 pm to her husband to thank him for paying for our dinner – and more importantly, our many drinks. This would, of course, be the dinner that he had no idea he was paying for prior to our phone call. But she had their joint credit card, and since he’s the one who pays it every month, he technically bought us dinner. And drinks. Lots of drinks.

BFJ had booked the hotel room with her own personal credit card, so she ended up paying for that. Usually, we split all costs, but this time we figured that our spa treatments would be roughly equivalent to the cost of the room (and our room service breakfast the next morning), so we decided that I would pay for both our spa treatments and she’d stick with paying the hotel bill.

We were both having hot stone massages and facials. Mmmmmmm. I’m never so relaxed as when I’m face down on a massage table, drooling on the floor, while someone rubs warm oil (and in this case, warm rocks) on my back. It really is a fabulous feeling! I highly recommend it.

Anyway, two hours later, we were dressed and ready to go at the spa’s front desk. BFJ was checking out some of the products that had been used for her facial, and I handed over my credit card to pay our bills. The woman at the desk handed me back their handheld credit/debit machine, with my card placed in the slot. She’d already keyed in the amount, as they do, so all I had to do was okay everything, enter my PIN, and we’d be good to go.

Except I couldn’t remember my PIN. Again. Every effing time I try to use that credit card, I can’t remember my PIN. I can picture the piece of paper on which the PIN is written, the piece of paper tucked into a file in a drawer of my desk. I can picture the exact file, its colour and the other items in it. I can even picture where it is in the drawer. What I can’t ever picture is the actual PIN.

I thought I had the four numbers, but maybe not the correct sequence of them. I punched them in. Error. I tried again. Error. The machine said I had one more try. I don’t know what happens when you try three times in vain – maybe your credit card self-destructs. In any case, I didn’t risk it. I had to cancel the transaction and pull out my debit card, which I hadn’t wanted to use because I wanted to pay at the end of the month, after I got paid myself. But I had to do it.

I miss the olden days when credit cards didn’t come with chips in them, and you just had to sign your name on a carboned slip of paper to purchase something on credit. I even remember further back when the merchant had to physically phone the credit card company for a quick check on you and your card before the transaction could go through.

Now that I’m officially middle-aged and forgetful, NOW I need to remember a new set of numbers. Just perfect. If I was 20 or so, no problem. But at my age, I’ve got so much stuff in my head that it’s really hard to put more stuff in, especially numbers (not my strongest point) – and then remember them instantly when called upon.

And what the hell IS my PIN? When I got home, despite all that wonderful visualizing that I was doing in the spa, I couldn’t find the damn piece of paper with the PIN written on it in the file. So I have no idea what the PIN is any more and I can’t use my credit card except for on-line transactions where I don’t need it.

I’m obviously meant to use cash only. Except I’d probably put it down somewhere and forget where.

The good, the bad, and the ugly – part 2

And now, back to our story …

I woke up way too early, dying of thirst. I tiptoed to the bathroom to fill a glass, and of course had to pee as soon as the water started running. I shut the tap, set the empty glass on the towel on the counter so it wouldn’t clunk too loudly, and peed. After that, I washed my hands and went to dry them on the towel that was laying on the counter. Yes, THAT towel. The one with the glass on it. The glass that crashed to the tile floor and shattered in about 62,349 pieces. The tile floor on which I stood barefoot.

Me: Ooops!

BFJ (startled awake): What was that?!?

Me: I seem to have broken a glass.

I now know why I will never have tile in any bathroom of mine as long as I live. Because when you try to sweep up broken things, the pieces lodge in between the tiles and you have to sweep over and over and over again to scoop the pesky little shards out of hiding. A vacuum is always a better option, but apparently those aren’t routinely provided in hotel rooms.

So I only had about five hours of sleep, but that was okay, because a spa visit is SOOO relaxing, and that was on our afternoon schedule. Well, it was relaxing, sort-of, but it would have been even more relaxing if my esthetician didn’t talk so much. I have been to many spas, but I have never experienced someone who talked as much as this gal did. She just didn’t stop! I put up with it during my body scrub and wrap, but for my pedicure, I finally picked up some old magazine to “read” just so she’d stop talking. I mean, they do have to explain the treatment and ask you some questions , but they don’t have to repeat themselves over and over or ask you what you’re doing tonight. That’s what a hairdresser is for.

The spa was also where I tipped over this tall, gangly branch arrangement. I was just trying to get to an armchair to sit down and fill out my information sheet. It obviously was trying to guard that armchair. At least it wasn’t a heavy arrangement, so it didn’t break the window that it fell against.

Anyway, BFJ and I later said our goodbyes and I headed home, scrubbed and polished and glossy and craving quiet. I had it for a couple of hours, then DD came home and PG arrived. But the lack of sleep was catching up to me, so I went to bed pretty early.

Sunday morning around 10, just after DD left for the day, the doorbell rang. I answered it. To be blunt, it was a summons server. Remember that car crash I had last summer? Apparently, the other driver is now claiming damages from me because he claims that he was injured in the crash. He wants general damages, special damages, costs, interest, and “such further and other relief as this Honourable Court may deem meet and just”. He is claiming that because of my “negligence’ (two pages of listed negligence, by the way), he has sustained a whole whack of injuries including some that “before the trial of this matter will be disclosed on medical/expert evidence”. Oh yes – he has also suffered “loss of enjoyment of life and will continue to suffer a loss of enjoyment or life in the future”. And “a loss of income, past, present and prospective”.

Wow.

This is the guy who, when we collided, said he and his girlfriend were on their way to the airport to go to Las Vegas the next day. This is the guy who yanked open my passenger door right after impact and asked if I was okay (then yelled at me), who told me that he was okay when I asked him the same question, was later walking around just fine, was talking animatedly to his girlfriend and various other people at the scene, who hauled luggage out of his damaged car, who got first into the fire truck then into the police car to keep out of the rain, who phoned a buddy to come pick them up, then climbed into said buddy’s truck with the girlfriend and luggage.

My point being, injuries??? He certainly wasn’t acting like he had any at the time. I understand that some soft tissue injuries can show up later, but what is itemized on the summons is rather extreme. I guess it’s kind-of a generic list, as is the list of my alleged negligent behaviours, but it still is upsetting.

I was absolutely in shock, having never even seen a summons before. Legal matters scare me, and I don’t speak or read legalese, so all I could do was to start shaking and say to the summons server stuff like, “What exactly is this? Am I being sued? Do I need a lawyer?”

He assured me that my car liability insurance would take care of all this, that all I had to do was call the insurance company. He said that they would ask me to bring the writ in to them, and then their lawyers would handle everything. I wouldn’t have to pay anything else, he said, the insurance company would look after the entire matter.

I noticed that my address was wrong in a couple of places on the document, so I said, “That’s not my address. This isn’t me.”

He said, condescendingly, “It’s you. That’s just a typo.”

“It’s wrong in two places,” I persisted. “How can that be me when the address is wrong? What else is wrong in there?”

“Ah, forget it!” he snarled and left.

I shut the door quietly, still trembling. I needed to process this. I needed to make sense of it all. I needed to research – and PG was on my computer!

We had a subdued breakfast. I was still thinking this whole thing through. After we ate, I wanted to clean the kitchen myself, then get on-line to see what I could learn about this situation into which I had just been thrown. And that’s when I spilled the opened bottle of wine on the floor and on the kitchen carpet by the sink. And that’s when I cried – but only a little. I had a kitchen to clean and now a floor to wipe and a carpet to blot.

And fortunately, I also had a glass or two of wine left in the bottle. For later.