My work, in progress
“I’m sorry!” I said, as I turned around in the middle of a crowded Zellers and brushed against another woman’s arm.
“Oh, no, I’m sorry - oh, sorry!” this last, to the woman behind her, who materialized out of nowhere somehow carrying a staggering armful of mascara and lip gloss.
“No, don’t worry, I wasn’t watching, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” says a voice to my left, as a third woman reaches around me to grab what I had taken to be a display purse and was, in fact, hers. “I didn’t mean to leave this in your way …”
“Goodness,” I reply, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to snoop into your bag!”
“I’m sorry if I kept you waiting,” yet another voice interjects, as a slightly frazzled looking sales clerk makes her way to the check-out counter.
“No, no!” the woman with the mascara protests. “I hope we didn’t take you away from other work, I’m sorry, I could use another cash if it’s easier …”
…
I have never felt so Canadian in my life.
It’s the most beautiful day I’ve ever seen, or at least the nicest one I can remember, and I think the beams of sunlight are bringing down beneficence as well as vitamin D and skin cancer.
A’s girlfriend, E (I’m hanging perilously off the edge of dropping into bad Canadian television humour) arrived semi-spontaneously yesterday, resulting in my fleeing off to V’s for the night to retain some shred of my sanity and proving that I should never write anything about getting too comfortable ever again, unless I want Fate to come up and kick me back into place. Her apartment is beautiful, though, and her internet is better than mine (because that’s hard) so maybe Fate is actually on my side after all.
Actually, thinking about it, maybe I have managed to make it into Tyche’s good books after all; I was alone in the office today, Dee off at some sort of breakfast for people-who-are-at-this-office-and-more-important-than-I-am, which was fine with me except for the tiny part wherein that makes me the only person on hand to answer phones, or man the office. Every morning, unless I don’t, I head downstairs for a cup of coffee at about 10:30 … but for some reason, at 10:30 this morning I decided that I had better not. Literally fifteen seconds later the telephone rings, A on the phone, asking where Dee is and if one of us can help her arrange something to do with airlines and travelling and things that aren’t my job. Dee of course wasn’t around, I couldn’t help her - and, miracle of bizarre miracles, that was somehow okay. She thanked me for my effort anyway, thanked me for clearing out of the apartment, wished me a good weekend.
I picked myself out of my stunned stupor in time to hang up the phone, and thanked my lucky stars for whatever kept me in my seat.
The rest of the morning’s been similarly blissful: Bea gave me a task via email, I phoned her, we chatted, I seem to have come out of it sounding like I have at least some idea what I’m doing. There are no protesters outside, making it quiet enough to open the window, and I swear the breeze smells slightly of roses (although there are no roses planted in the vicinity, and since I thought that my hazelnut coffee from last week tasted like mint I’m not really sure how trustworthy my senses are anyway). I went to the drug store to pick up a nailfile and something to nibble on, and ended up finding (aside from a gaggle of pleasantly apologetic women of all ages and stations) that my favourite line of nail polish apparently hasn’t been discontinued after all. Not only that, but the entire store was on some sort of massive sale that allowed me to get what I thought should be about forty dollars worth of random treasures for just over twenty. (I’m not sure if there was some sort of error there, it seems too good to be true, but I watched the apologetic cashier scan every item, so I’m just not going to check my bill and hope it’s all legit.)
My only regret thus far is that I left my flat shoes behind this morning; if I weren’t wearing relatively new three inch wedge heels, I’d be out in the middle of a grassy field spinning in joyous circles right now.
As it is, I’ll just write about them, and hope that I haven’t managed to condemn myself to a weekend of drudgery.