Today was a busy day.
My mom got home from Toronto today, after two weeks visiting her own mother. She had stories to tell. Like the time Grandma thought she ought to call the police because she was under hypnosis and wondered if they could do anything about it. Or how the woman next door is a witch who has put a hex on her garden so it won’t grow, and is also secretly married to my uncle because she wants his pension money. Or how Grandma had her search the downstairs suite because she thinks the tenants are growing marijuana.
Good times.
Also today I had to keep this travel diary as part of a survey for the city government. I had to write down everywhere I went, how I got there, and what I did. I don’t think today was a good day for it, because it was a highly atypical travel day for me: I ended up having to run around all over the city and I ran out of pages in the travel diary. At the end of the day I went to a friend’s place for dinner and a gab, and afterwards the friend asked me if I wanted a ride home.
“Nah, I just live up the street,” I said.
“It’s late,” she pointed out.
“If you give me a ride,” I told her, “I have to write down the make, model, and year of your car.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
So I walked. As I was cutting through a parking lot, I tripped on some broken pavement and fell on my face. Tore the skin off my knees and the heels of my hands, and knocked the air out of my lungs. I lay there panting for a bit, thinking about how the stupid travel diary was directly responsible for this injury, and I heard a car pull up. My first thought was, ‘shit, I gotta get up, or I’m gonna get run over.’
Then I heard a voice call out, “are you okay?”
This guy (I have no idea who he was) had stopped his car to check on the woman lying face-down in the parking lot. Which was very nice of him, but I realized that if I didn’t get up, he was going to call an ambulance and I had no idea how to record that in this stupid travel diary. So I assured him I was fine and limped on home, where I dug all the foreign matter out of my flesh and bandaged myself up.
Tomorrow I’m going to be working the cash register with band-aids all over my hands and everybody’s going to be asking what happened all day. I don’t want to explain to them that I tripped and fell because I refused a ride home on account of a travel diary, so I think I’ll tell them I had a life-or-death battle with an angry beaver.
Good times.
Also today I had to keep this travel diary as part of a survey for the city government. I had to write down everywhere I went, how I got there, and what I did. I don’t think today was a good day for it, because it was a highly atypical travel day for me: I ended up having to run around all over the city and I ran out of pages in the travel diary. At the end of the day I went to a friend’s place for dinner and a gab, and afterwards the friend asked me if I wanted a ride home.
“Nah, I just live up the street,” I said.
“It’s late,” she pointed out.
“If you give me a ride,” I told her, “I have to write down the make, model, and year of your car.”
She nodded. “Fair enough.”
So I walked. As I was cutting through a parking lot, I tripped on some broken pavement and fell on my face. Tore the skin off my knees and the heels of my hands, and knocked the air out of my lungs. I lay there panting for a bit, thinking about how the stupid travel diary was directly responsible for this injury, and I heard a car pull up. My first thought was, ‘shit, I gotta get up, or I’m gonna get run over.’
Then I heard a voice call out, “are you okay?”
This guy (I have no idea who he was) had stopped his car to check on the woman lying face-down in the parking lot. Which was very nice of him, but I realized that if I didn’t get up, he was going to call an ambulance and I had no idea how to record that in this stupid travel diary. So I assured him I was fine and limped on home, where I dug all the foreign matter out of my flesh and bandaged myself up.
Tomorrow I’m going to be working the cash register with band-aids all over my hands and everybody’s going to be asking what happened all day. I don’t want to explain to them that I tripped and fell because I refused a ride home on account of a travel diary, so I think I’ll tell them I had a life-or-death battle with an angry beaver.