By Lucy

Work is better this week. It’s hard to tell if it’s really improved or if I just perceive it being better because I no longer feel like I can leave. Terry certainly does not feel like it’s gotten better, which is causing some friction between us.

Pain is curious, isn’t it? There’s been a lot of studies into how pain works and how our perception of it changes. The usual example is a tough manly man who breaks a bone and continues to do something physically strenuous, but that example doesn’t work as well as people think. Pain is all about survival, and if you think about it, your brain will block pain if it thinks you need to focus on getting out of a situation.

That’s why chronic pain is so insidious. When it seems inevitable, it will be perceived as worse.

Anywho, work has mostly become me ordering Janessa around. Curiously, despite the fact we seem to be getting less done per day, Zack is happier with our work, which is all I care about, frankly. I don’t care if we actually finish the job, I just want my paycheck and to not be yelled at on a daily basis. Burt and Ernie continue to be annoyed that we work until 5 and don’t go home early.

The level of casual, almost daily overnight theft is kind of insane, although I suppose it’s probably the same during the day, I just don’t notice. People try to sneak in any open door and grab whatever they can. One night, an ambulance is called after an employee chased a thief (and tripped, the thief didn’t hurt them). Another night, some cops came by to drop off some giant display someone managed to lash to their bike and take off down Memorial with.

The store is also always a maze. The employees are used to having their little section to tend to, and tend to block off aisles with pallets, products or forklifts constantly. When it’s me walking by it’s fine, but if we’re trying to get a pallet or cart somewhere, it’s impossible.

On Monday I took some cold medicine to catch up on my sleep.

I had to run out to the store and texted Julia to ask her for a suggestion on conditioners. Naturally she sent me to Chatters to grab a professional product, but it’s probably worth it.

I also stopped at the liquor store to grab a bottle of whisky cuz I give up. It’s been too hard to sleep during the day and I’d rather be well rested than sober.

On Monday night there was a moth apocalypse.

Around 11 they showed up and they were thick. It was almost a wall outside, and even those of us who aren’t afraid of moths were not thrilled about the idea of being swarmed. Interestingly, all the mosquitoes disappeared. Do moths eat them?

Janessa is afraid of moths, so me and Terry spent the whole night teasing her about it.

Niesha did not show up, so I agreed to give Krish a ride home.

Shortly after I got home myself, a thunderstorm rolled in and did not let up until 5 PM.

I applied for some funding for my schooling, which patronizingly included the caveat that you need to take their little course on budgeting. Up yours, jerk! I wasn’t even going to apply cuz I don’t need it, but everyone keeps nagging me to get what I can and sure, why not. I don’t understand why I have to pay for my books for school! Do they not want female carpenters?

I had plans with Paul to start moving my stuff out of my storage locker, but because of the rain we postponed it. We did decide to go out for dinner later. At 6, I went down to the Marina for our jogging club, which marked the first time I have met Lara. Kev said he was going to be late and never showed, so we did a warm up and a walk, before jogging around 4 km.

I gave Lara a ride home and met Paul for dinner.

Tuesday night was another one of those nights where they didn’t have a lot for us. I kept me and Janessa busy as much as possible, alternating who had an actual task to do and who was sent to pretend to be looking for something.

I slept and slept and slept Tuesday. When I finally peeled myself out of bed, I went looking for the form for my second year in New Zealand and was disconcerted to notice the “approved doctor” list.

As I suspected, no approved doctors in Thunder Bay. None ’til Toronto.

Hang on, Winnipeg is close than Toronto! Why not.

I called one clinic and they informed me it cost 340$ before abruptly hanging up.

Umm… ok.

Called back. “Hi, can I make an appointment?”

“Sure, we have some time Monday.”

I made an appointment for August 18th. Time to find my passport and log in to my account and such. Plus now I have an excuse to bother Duff again, although I’ll need a back-up plan for if I can’t crash at his place. I’ll probably book a day at Thermea as well, unwind from work.

I also re-ordered Factor. I’m not cooking and to be honest, I don’t enjoy eating take-out constantly. At least Factor is ostensibly healthy and I get all my meals for the week at once, so I can grab and go.

A formworker came in to do some repairs on the cement floor of Home Depot. While he had the floor opened up, we noticed some steel plates in the floor! I wonder if that’s why we’ve been breaking bits for the drill when we try to sink the concrete anchors.

Now, I’m chatty at work, to the surprise of no one. But my memory makes me pretty good at schmoozing. If I see someone with a Tims cup, I’ll ask what they prefer and remember it. Or if they’ve got earbuds in, I’ll ask them about their choice in music. Everyone remembers and enjoys talking to me and all the Home Depot employees call me “Red” (Burt and Ernie nicknamed me “Lucy Liu”. Possibly intended to be Lucy Loo, but I like the idea that they are calling me a badass action star).

The manager for receiving in particular seems to prefer my company and we stop to talk a lot. At lunch, I walked past him and a coworker having a discussion.

“Love is about more than money! Right, Red?” He says, turning to me.

“If you’re not payin’ it ain’t happenin’.” I say, skipping into the bathroom without skipping a beat.

When I’m done in the bathroom, he’s still laughing in the hall. “That’s not the answer I was expecting!”

Later on in the night, he passes me a note he cut out of a cardboard box, with his number on it and an offer to be friends. And fishing buddies. His name is James.

Sure, why not.

“I need some more screws!” I lamented, trapped under a shelf. Well, not trapped, but once you’ve got yourself into a tight squeeze you usually don’t want to wiggle out until you’re finished the task.

“Here, screws for all the screwing you want.” Terry says, passing by and handing me a fistful of screws.

“I never get all the screwing I want.”

He laughs.

“Watcha gonna do at the next job without me?”

“Oh, I’m taking you with me!”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, right, you’re going to school.”

Indeed, but I also wonder how serious that statement was.

Thursday before work, we did the first load of stuff going to Paul’s locker. I had to unpack basically the entire locker because I didn’t want to send anything that wasn’t in a tote, and all the totes were at the back since they were easiest to pack. I did it before he got there so he could just throw it in the trailer and go.

He commented, “It actually looks like a lot less now that you can’t see the negative space.”

Also true.

I suppose the problem I have now is trying to get up early enough to drive to the office and cancel my storage space.

I went to work early to buy some tote bins for repacking some of the hastily packed boxes.

I also brought in an application for Krish to sign up for the hall. We filled it out on Ernie’s truck hood while everyone crowded around us and laughed and joked. I get that a certain amount of hazing is ‘required’, but we’re short-handed and they should be glad he wants to join! Brotherhood and all that jazz.

Zack asked us about overtime Friday and I hastily agreed – time and a half, another 200 bucks in my pocket – but then I found out no one else would be there but me and Zack and I backtracked. It also meant another night I’d have to bail on sailing, because I don’t have the strength to do both, and I’m supremely annoyed about how much sailing I haven’t been able to do.

Well, I’m annoyed by how much of everything I haven’t been able to do. I missed both Afrofest and the Great Rendevous the previous weekend, and I would go on to miss the Festival of India and the Festival of Colours the coming weekend, because I couldn’t get to sleep and wake up at a good time.

Sailing on Friday was an exercise in the fact that just cuz the wind is howling, doesn’t mean you’ll go fast! We had to contend with the wind being so powerful it was pushing the boat over instead of pushing it forward, and angle the sails to lose some wind and convince it to send us ahead.

It was a good day for a race. Pity we were the only boat on the water! It called for rain, but ironically it was only raining on land; it wasn’t raining on the lake. So we had fun doing laps by ourselves and experimenting with the sales. Most of the people on the boat were green and nervous about burying the rail – it’s always fun breaking people in!

However, after sailing was over and we all went home and I was staring at the clock, I started to regret not going in. Now I had to stay awake all night and do nothing, make no extra money, and I still wouldn’t be able to sleep the next day.

I did end up doing a fair bit of work on my novel. “Kill your darlings” they say, so I did. I scrapped… ok, well I didn’t scrap it cuz I still hope to publish it, but stepping back and taking a look made me realize the book I intended to be the sequel to my first book should just be my first book. It hurt, but I’ve been making so much more progress now that I’m not twisting myself into a pretzel for that condition.

Saturday night I went to the circus with Krish. He’s really into Halloween and horror, so the ‘paranormal’ circus was something we were both really looking forward to. I was debating if I should dress up and if he’d think it was a date, but I decided I had nothing to worry about and I was correct.

The circus was really good! I’m never really sure what to expect from a circus; we didn’t get any in Barrie for a long time. Some of it was clearly just set dressing for usual circus acts; the juggler was summoned and dressed like Beetlejuice, for example, but he was still just a juggler. Some of it was just magic tricks, but it suited the “paranormal” setting. And some of it was just straight cabaret dancing and bawdy jokes, but I’m here for it.

Power is a curious thing. Now that GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, have been out for a few years, stories are starting to coalesce around them. One thing I find striking is how GLP-1s are breaking up marriages. (This wasn’t the article I wanted to link, which was New York Times and paywalled, but none of y’all click on my links anyway)

There’s a few flavours to these stories, but the most common one I’ve seen is that the man is unhappy the wife is slim and more attractive. There’s also sorts of excuses as to why this is, but my opinion, and the one most of the wives eventually come around to, is that he’s unhappy she now has options. That he loved her because her low self esteem meant she wouldn’t leave, that he wanted a woman who was trapped and couldn’t leave or say no.

Isn’t that terrifying? The minute a woman has the ability to leave, it’s a threat. I’d leave a man just on that alone, him being afraid that I have options. I’ve seen this too; the number of men who praised my ‘independence’ before acting immediately threatened by said independence is staggering, but unlike those women, I’m not afraid to assert my boundaries and I just strut right out.

We accept the love we think we deserve.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower