#fridayflash: How She Found Out

“Hey family,” Sandy called out as she bumped the front door closed with her butt. “I’m home!”

She kicked off her snowy boots then went into the kitchen, her arms loaded with a couple of grocery bags, her purse and a big trendy bag from the drug store gift shop in town.

“Whadja bring us, Mom?” asked seven-year-old Cory as he landed into his mother’s packages with all the grace and finesse of a station wagon. She barely had a chance to put the bags down before Cory was pulling everything out.

“Wait a minute, will ya?” she begged. “Let me get my coat off for chrissakes.” 

Cory ignored his mother, studiously pitching food he didn’t like onto the kitchen floor. Gwennie, his four-year-old sister, heard the commotion and came out to investigate.

“Whatzat?” she asked, holding up a zucchini.

Sandy told her, then took it from her and put it in the fridge.

“Whatzat?” she asked. 

“Soy sauce. Pass it to me, Gwennie, will you please? Cory, where’s your father?”

“In the bathroom.”

“Whatzat? 

“It’s barbecue sauce. And that’s eggplant. Cory, be careful what you’re doing. There’s eggs in there.”

Sandy hung her coat on top of two other coats and a pair of ski pants and some soggy mittens, all of which occupied one peg on the rack on the kitchen wall. She picked up Cory’s book bag and Gwennie’s backpack, both abandoned on the wet floor, and draped them over a chair.

She turned around to finish unpacking groceries and her husband of 14 years stood amidst the chaos, looking at her.

“Hi,” she said. “Have a good day off?

Rick nodded. “Yeah, it was ok. Nothing spectacular. Got some stuff done. You? How was work?”

She shrugged. “You know, same old, same old. But hey, I got some cool stuff at the drug store.”

It was a few days after Christmas and most of the stores still had boxing day sales going on. Sandy had got a bunch of bargains and she could hardly wait to show them off.

“Hey Mom, what’s this? Cory was into the big trendy bag and had pulled out a small box.

“Oh yeah!” Sandy brightened. “This is so cool! Marilyn at work? She collects salt and pepper shakers just like me and she went to Mexico over the holidays and she picked me up a pair. Wait ’till you see them, they are so cute! Here, Cory, pass them to me, will you? Careful, they’re very breakable. Thanks sweetie. Good job.”

She opened the box, unwrapped a couple layers of tissue paper and held out a Mexican bandito pepper shaker made of terra cotta, sort of in the shape of a bowling pin, only with a sombrero on top. It was painted in bright, sparkling colours: emerald pants and a purple poncho.

Cory’s eyes popped open and he thrust his wiggling fingers towards it. “Can I hold it, Mommy, can I hold it, please? Please?”

“Be careful,” Sandy said, passing it to him. “Just settle down and be careful.”

Gwennie watched her brother, a smile lighting her own small features.

Sandy pulled out the other shaker, a senorita, dressed even more colourfully than her dashing husband.

“Oh!” said Gwennie, reaching her own hands up for the shaker.

“Be very careful, Gwennie,” Sandy said.

As she was about to take it from her mother, Cory reached over and snatched it from his baby sister, who immediately started to wail.

“Cor, jesus, give your sister back the salt shaker,” growled Rick. “I am so sick of this shit.”

Sandy swung Gwennie up into her arms for a hug, while Rick cursed out his son and Cory, oblivious to what was going on around him, started putting the shakers together like they were kissing.

“Look Mom,” Cory said happily, “they’re kissing! Just like Daddy was kissing that lady in the driveway today!”

Sandy said “Wha?” and looked at Rick, the man she trusted more than herself, her partner, her soul mate, her best friend.

Her husband lowered his head and stared at the groceries strewn all over the floor.

Sandy felt the blood drain from her body. Her knees went rubbery. She put Gwennie down, almost dropping her, and sagged against the kitchen counter.

She stared at her husband, beseeching him to straighten this out.

He kept his head lowered. And said the one word that wouldn’t be making any of this better, any time soon.

“Sorry,” he said.

Fridge Convention

COMING EVENTS: They're having a refrigerator convention at the Travelodge Motel in Huntsville, ON this weekend.

All the fridges from far and wide are heading on over for two days of frosty frivolity.

The agenda includes seminars on controversial topics such as "Freeing the Freon: did it make good ecological sense?" and "How to keep fingerprints off stainless steel."

Entertainment will be provided by Stars on Ice, Coldplay and a special guest appearance by Hank Snow. 

Keynote speaker will be Nicold Kidman, talking about her performance in Cold Mountain.

Don't miss your chance to meet Snow White and David Frost who will be signing autographs in the lobby.

With any luck it'll be a cold day in hell before we see this happening here again.

So come on down to the Travelodge, where there's lots of free ice and fridges are always welcome!

Sorry Seems to be the Commonest Word

Gold-soaked clouds layered in a blue parfait of sky, forest and ice.

Open mouth, insert foot.

Before the days of the internet, when Christ was still on the cross and my bathroom cabinet was full of Clearasil, there were only two ways I got myself in trouble. 

One was letting my mouth run away with itself.

One was letting my fingers do the yapping in my newspaper column.

Either way, it warn't a purty thing.

It didn't happen all the time, thank god, but once in a while I'd say or print something I'd later regret.

If I was honest, I'd say I'd get yappy once a month. Yappiness plus fits of bawling and the screaming reds all added up to tooth-rattling PMS.

I thought as I got older that PMS would gradually disappear.

HA!

HA!

HAR DEE HAH-HAH!

It wasn't until Oprah (who is about the same age as me and is a lot like me... you know, except for the fact that she's smart and she's rich and she's slightly more tanned) started going through menopause that I first heard the term perimenopause. Since then I have learned that this condition is like PMS on STEROIDS.  Like super-size-my-fries PMS. Like the CN Tower of PMS, only all bloated and puffy and tear-streaked and pathetic.

In the old days, before Oprah and the introduction of antidepressants and hormone therapy, perimenopausal women were declared crazy and sent to insane asylums, where they moldered away and died without bothering anyone.

And you see? Maybe if I was moldering away somewhere I wouldn't get myself into so much trouble! 

(I also wouldn't have to go to work, cook, clean, bathe or shave – oh, and that's something else they don't tell you. Once you get to a certain age you have to shave EVERYTHING. That? Oh yah, you have to shave that. And, ahem, THAT? Most definitely. Imagine every place on your body that you don't want hair to sprout from and that's where you'll be shaving when you get to my age. The good news is, there won't be as much hair growing in other places – like your underarms or your legs or, sigh, your head. Think of how much money you'll save on conditioner.)

But I digress.

These days I can get myself into trouble where millions of people can watch my humiliation – the internet!

You'd think I would know better that, when I'm feeling hormonal, commenting on other people's blogs is not a good option. Y'know, intellectually, I know that. And yet, when the hormones are making me crazier than a shithouse rat, I find myself pounding the keyboard, bitterness flowing out of my fingertips like syrup on Sundays, hitting the SEND button over and over in a delirium of angst-riddled unhappiness. (Cue evil laugh.)

The thing is, once the hormone tide recedes, I return to my normal happy-Cathy self. The nice Cathy. The good Cathy. The Cathy who feels hideously guilty and unhappy that she blew a gasket with an innocent bystander.

Sorry, Elizabeth.

Sorry everyone at work.

Sorry Mom.

Sorry Dave.

Sorry kids.

Hell. I'm just sorry.

But you already knew that.

Slife Two

Slife = Slice of Life:

A weekly bit showing our daily world, 

shared with online friends to get to know one another better.

Me, our old cat Ben and our dog Misty in front of a roaring fire on a cold day. Ben always looks depressed. Misty never does.

Our road, just off the main highway. It's so much prettier in the wintertime.

Our friends Lynda and Roger at Swiss Chalet in Huntsville. Faithful blog followers know we think Chalet Suisse is the best thing since sliced hen.

Quitting time at work.

Picking up some vegetables at the Independent grocery store.

Just about to cross the bridge in Bracebridge. Hmm... I wonder why they call it that?

Boogers in the Bathroom

Jodie sat on the toilet, her head resting heavily in her hands, peeing. 

There were two stalls in the women's washroom at work and she was in the left one, closest to the wall. She rarely took the one closest to the door and never gave her choice a moment's thought. Some people took the one on the right, some took the one on the left. That's just the kind of wonky world it was.

She heard the door whoosh open and someone walk in with clicking heels. The other stall door was opened, shut and locked. She heard a zipper unzip, the rustling of clothes, a soft thump as the derriere next to her settled onto the toilet seat and a gentle sigh as the woman next to her began to pee.

Jodie looked down to see if she could see the shoes under the stall next to her, but couldn't see anything.

"Is there any toilet paper over there?" the woman asked.

Jodie lifted her head abruptly and flushed full red from the roots of her hair straight down to her toes. It was her supervisor in the next stall. Kirsten. The lovely and talented and perfectly awful Kirsten. The same Kirsten who had just tore a strip off Jodie for her shoddy work, told her she would be taking a pay cut, then, in the next breath, asked her to fill in for her on the weekend because she had a hot date.

Kirsten, in Jodie's humble opinion, was a Grade A Bitch.

Wordlessly, Jodie passed a roll of toilet paper under the wall. She saw Kirsten's long, skinny fingers as they made the roll disappear.

"Thanks," Kirsten said. Jodie heard uravelling and then wiping noises. "You'd think the cleaners could stock the bathroom with toilet paper once in a while. I'm going to send a memo to Bob in HR. Maybe he can get these guys to do their jobs for a change. Don't you think?"

Jodie mumbled in reply. She heard Kirsten pull up her pantyhose and zip up her skirt. The toilet flushed, the stall door opened and Kirsten washed her hands.

"Oh SHIT!" said Kirsten. "There's no soap. Jesus H. Christ, this company is going to hell in a handbasket." 

Jodie listened as Kirsten's high heels clicked across the bathroom door. She sighed when the door snicked shut and the only thing that remained of her supervisor was a lingering trace of her expensive perfume.

Jodie sat there. Lumpish. Doing nothing. Just thinking about Kirsten and how everything seemed to go her way.

She was younger, thinner, more successful, had more money, was better looking, enjoyed a series of entanglements with studly looking men, drove a fancy car, wore better clothes, ate better food and, in short, just lived a better life. 

Not only that, she had great hair. Thick, red, shiny, beautiful, wavy, long hair.

Jodie pulled at a hank of hair on her own head so that she could get a look at it. Mousey brown with streaks of grey, thin, brittle, dull, flat, boring, boring, BORING.

As she sat there, comparing her own boring life with that of her supervisor, Jodie began to pick at a scab inside her nose.

She wasn't conscious of doing so. Jodie's index finger appeared to have a mind of its own, digging and burrowing, mining for a peculiar kind of gold. Finally she pulled out a crusty green nugget and held it up for inspection.

"Huh," said Jodie.

She reached for a piece of toilet paper to wipe her finger on and realized she had given the roll to Kirsten.

No matter, she just wiped it on the wall next to the empty toilet paper dispenser.

She lifted her butt slightly, waggled it back and forth a couple of times to shake off any excess piddle, then got dressed and went up to the sink to rinse her hands. As the warm water flowed over her fingers she glanced in the mirror and was so surprised she did a double-take.

Her hair looked ... better. It actually looked thicker, shinier, healthier.

Jodie did a slow spin in front of the tiny bathroom mirror, her neck stretching so her eyes could take in as many angles of her hair as possible.

There was no mistaking it. Her hair was ... better.

"Huh," said Jodie. She went back to her desk and, for the first time in months, she smiled.

***

The next day, in the bathroom stall on the left, there was still no toilet tissue.

When Jodie picked her nose she wiped it in the same place on the wall, leaving two smears of mucous, one fresh, one dry. 

When she was done she pulled up the jeans that were always too tight and was amazed when the zipper did up effortlessly. In fact, there were several spare inches of material around the waistband. She looked around, suspicious, and thought, "how could this be?"

She went up to the mirror and looked at herself. Not only did her jeans hang on her, but her sweatshirt was baggy. Even her shoes seemed too big. 

She looked at her face and saw cheekbones where there were none before.

And, suddenly, she had only one chin.

Jodie sucked in her breath and wondered if she had cancer.

"Huh!" she said. 

If cancer made her this thin this fast, she'd take it.

When she walked back to her desk, she was smiling ear-to-ear.

That night she went shopping, because none of her clothes fit anymore. She had gone from size 18 to size 8. 

***

The next day, everyone noticed Jodie.

People at work who had never talked to her before, suddenly were chatting her up.

When she picked her nose that afternoon, she was too busy thinking wonderful, happy thoughts to even realize she was wiping yet another booger on the wall.

When she looked in the mirror, she looked 20 years younger.

***

The next day, after she wiped yet another snot nugget on the bathroom wall, she got a promotion. Bob up in HR had finally noticed her and made her Kirsten's supervisor. She got a big raise. She got a company car. She got moved to a corner office next to Kirsten.

Bob asked her out that night, took her to an expensive restaurant and tried his best to take advantage of her.

She let him.

***

The next day someone was in the right hand stall when Kirsten needed to pee so she took the left stall, something she rarely did. While she was in there doing her business and wondering what was going on with Jodie, Kirsten noticed the pile of boogers accumulating next to the toilet paper dispenser.

"What the HELL?" she said, disgusted, and tried her best to scrub off the mess with an SOS pad from the office kitchenette.

When she finished scrubbing, she washed her hands and tried to fix her hair which was a little sweaty and askew from the physical labour she was so unaccustomed to.

As she brushed at it with her fingers, she noticed it seemed dull. Brittle, almost. 

She stared at herself in the mirror and, as she watched, her glorious mane began to fall out by the roots.

Kirsten screamed.