Thursday, June 25, 2009

Corbeille ambulante




À peine quatre jours de grève pour les quelques 30 000 employés de la ville de Toronto qui ont troqué leurs camions de vidange pour des pancartes, ou délaissé leur siège de sauveteur à la piscine municipale pour assiéger le coin John St. et Wellington, et nous voilà déjà au bord de la catastrophe.




Bon, j'exagère un peu. Les seuls désagréments que j'ai connus depuis le début de la grève inclus mon manque d'exercice causé par la fermeture de la piscine de mon quartier. Quoique j'y suis allée juste
 une fois depuis que je reste à Toronto. Mais j'avais des grandes ambitions pour nager cette semaine. 

Et que dire des bestioles qui se donnent à coeur joie dans mes sacs de vidanges qui s'accumulent dans le vestibule de mon appart. Ça fait deux matins de suite que je me réveille à l'odeur du contenu en déchet de la fin de semaine dernière, éventré sur mon plancher. 

Et avec la canicule qui semble avoir pris la ville d'assaut, je n'ai pas beaucoup d'espoir pour les jours à venir. 

C'est à se demander, par contre, comment ont peut avoir produit autant de déchets en seulement quatre jours...Ma crainte, c'est que les gens se tanneront de trier leur composte et leur recyclage, et finiront par tout jeter.

C'est un peu comme trier ses courriels dans sa boîte de réception. Quand ça se fait graduellement, il n'y a pas de problème. Mais la seconde qu'on perd le contrôle et que les courriels s'accumulent, c'est là qu'on a tendance à tout envoyer à la corbeille. 




Monday, June 15, 2009

Awkward Moments

I obviously have a hard time keeping this blog updated! This is why for the next little while, I'm going to try a new concept, kind of like a series. It's going to be called: 

My Awkward Moments. 

Do you ever feel like you're always saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment, or you're unable to do what "normal" people do in certain situations? It feels like this has become the story of my life. 

Whether it's grabbing my boyfriend's dad by accident, sharing long awkward silences with professors or telling dead baby jokes to an expecting father, it feels although an exterior force is pushing me to embarrass myself. 

So, instead of feeling mortified, I will blog about it and hopefully, some people will relate to my experiences. 

Here's a first story to get the ball rolling.

I was doing my grocery shopping after work today, at Price Choppers in the Parkdale neighbourhood in Toronto. Everytime I go there, there are always what I've come to believe are homeless people hanging outside the store. 

Today, instead of carrying a shopping basket around the store, I decided to treat myself to a nice shopping cart, you know, the kind of carts attached to one another by a chain, that you must pay 25 cents to detach...

Well, when I came out of the store after doing my purchases, I tried to put the damn cart back in the stack to get my frecking 25 cents back, but the stupid thing was stuck and couldn't get close enough to the last cart so that the chain would reach, releasing my quarter.

That's when one of the homeless men came to my rescue. Well, I think he was homeless, but I wasn't sure. 

He told me to step back and let him try. 

That's when the existential questions started firing in my head. 

"Is this the point where a normal person would walk away and say 'keep the quarter', or, should I stay and watch until he successfully retrieves my money?"

"But if he does succeed, what do I do then? Take back my quarter and leave the homeless guy empty-handed?"

"What if he's not homeless and just likes to hang out at Price Choppers? If I tell him to keep the tip and it turns out that he's just some regular guy waiting for his girlfriend to finish her groceries, then I just insulted him..."

"Maybe I could offer him an apple instead. That would be much better than a quarter!"

So what did I end up doing?

I did what I usually do. 

Froze, smiled, giggled awkwardly, took the quarter he handed to me, smiled some more and walked away, feeling bad.

I'm probably just over-analyzing things and I'm sure these situations are not as bad as I think. But then, why do I care so much?

Well, stay tuned for some more of my awkward moments, cos they just keep on coming.