Scrambling and Miscues

We had our lesbian neighbours over for wine and appetizers last night. I think the night went well but S thinks we won’t be seeing them again. Its’ not that things went horribly wrong, quite the opposite. Upon their arrival, S gave them a tour of the house upon their arrival while I put the warm appetizers in the oven.

With the tour over, we chatted about the similarities and differences between our two houses. While the warm appetizers were baking, we brought out the cheese, crackers, shrimp and wine. We chatted about the neighbourhood, our jobs and families and all of the other stuff that people usually talk about when getting to know each other.

Around nine, they said they should be going since they had a friend coming in from out of town who would be staying with them for the weekend. We walked them out and said good-night. As soon as they were out of earshot, S turned to me and said, “Well, we won’t be seeing them again any time soon.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. At no point in the evening did I get the feeling that they weren’t having a nice time.

“They didn’t say ‘hey we should do this again’ or ‘we’ll do this at our place the next time,’” S replied.

“Oh,” I said realizing that S was right. When Samantha and Maureen left, they just put on their shoes and said bye. There was no mention of getting together again. I wasn’t looking for new best friends but it would have been nice if they’d extended an invitation our way. If nothing else, at least we’ll be friendly neighbours and say hello when we see each other on the street.

An entry about last night would not be complete without re-telling the events that took place before Samantha and Maureen arrived. S and I had gotten the cheese and crackers when we did our groceries last weekend but we didn’t get any pastry-type appetizers or shrimp so I agreed to pick those items up after work yesterday.

I left the office at five and hopped on the first streetcar that I saw. I usually walk a bit further and take another streetcar but didn’t feel like making the trek. Traffic was excruciatingly slow and I couldn’t tell if it was because of the rain or if people were just being stupid. I had thought the Friday before a long weekend would’ve meant people stayed home or left work early. The roads seemed more congested than usual, not less.

At one stop, I noticed everyone getting off the car. I took off my headphones and asked another passenger what was going on. He let me know that the streetcar was going to be short turning a few blocks ahead. That didn’t help me at all since I needed to go further than where the streetcar would be turning. I exited the vehicle in the hopes that the next streetcar would be the right one. The next four streetcars were all short turning well before where I needed to go. I stood under my umbrella cursing myself for not having made the initial longer trek. Had I done that, I would have avoided all of the mess of short turning streetcars.

Eventually a streetcar came that wasn’t short turning so I hopped on. We continued to trudge along slowly as we found ourselves behind five streetcars that all had to turn up ahead. I glanced at my watch and noted that it was taking me the same amount of time to make half the trip I usually do.

I exited the streetcar where I would need to transfer to another line and I found that a crowd was already forming. That’s the first sign that there hasn’t been a vehicle by in a while. I glanced down the road in the hopes of seeing my connecting car, but to no avail. The crowd got larger as more and more people were dropped off of vehicles from other routes.

It was nearing six o’clock and if I had any hope of getting to the store and home in time to tidy up, I’d have to forget transit and get a cab. It took a few minutes, but one finally came. I stuck my arm out and saw that the driver put his signal on to pull over. As he approached me, a woman ran ahead of me on the sidewalk and stuck her arm out for the cab. The way the commute was going, I was envisioning her getting in the cab and leaving me behind.

The cabbie pulled up to me and the woman turned around looking confused. “Oh, I wasn’t trying to steal your cab, I didn’t see you there!” she said.

“You want to share it?” I asked. I let her know where I was going and she replied she was going further so sharing would work. When we got settled inside the car, I took out my wallet to give her some cash.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m going to expense it to work,” she said. She had what I thought was an Australian accent. I asked if she was sure and she explained it was because of work that she was in such a hurry.

The cabbie dropped me off at the requested intersection and I bid a good weekend to my cab companion. I practically jogged to the store as the minutes ticked by. I had written S and let her know about my commuting troubles so she’d know why I was running late.

At the store, I asked where I could find pastry-type appetizers. I was directed to one section of the store but found that there wasn’t anything I was looking for. I wanted to get some cheese-filled pastries and the items before me were all burgers, chicken breasts, spring rolls and dim sum. I asked a teenaged employee where I could find what I was looking for.

“You mean like hors d’oeuvres?” he asked.

“Yes!” I replied.

“They’d be over there,” he said pointing at the same section I had just been in. I asked him to show me in case I missed it and he took me to where the frozen meat was. “This is the hors d’oeuvres section,” he said.

“But these are burgers,” I pointed out to him.

“Oh, then I don’t know,” he admitted. I wanted to call him a twat along with a few other choice phrases but refrained. I was hot, sweating and in a hurry. I called S to ask if she thought I should get some spring rolls and dim sum. She didn’t answer the phone so I sent her a message. While I waited for her response, I asked two female teenage employees if they knew where I could find what I wanted. They looked at each other and then one told me to try the section I’d just been in then. I called them twats in my head and told them I’d already checked that area out.

S got back to me and told me not to get the spring rolls and dim sum. With that, I started making my way out towards the checkout, but not before deciding to try another set of freezers. Sure enough, what did I find? An entire section of pastry type hors d’oeuvres. I felt like going back to each of the four employees and showing them where the shit was. Alas, I had to rush home so made my way to the check out.

I pretty much jogged home as I wanted to get things tidied and set up before our guests arrived. Upon walking into the house, I saw that S had taken care of the tidying up. When I saw her I told her about the experience at the store and she told me she was so hungry she felt weak. That’s never a good sign as S is more prompt to have the rage when she’s hungry. We snacked on some bread and crackers and that seemed to keep her hunger at bay.

After all of that scrambling, we found ourselves with some time before Samantha and Maureen arrived. We sat and talked about our days and opened a bottle of wine. A few minutes after 7, the gals were knocking on our door.

The other mentionable part of the evening was S locking the cat in the spare bedroom. We keep that door closed because the cat peed in there last year so we deny her access to it so she doesn’t think its an acceptable place to use as a bathroom.

While giving the neighbours the tour, S opened the door and then closed it without noticing Sophie sneak in. During the course of the evening, I wondered why Sophie hadn’t reappeared. She usually runs away when there’s a knock on the door but then comes back when she figures its safe. I excused myself and went looking for her upstairs. I looked in the office and saw that she wasn’t sleeping in her usual spot so I continued down the hall.

I opened the spare bedroom door and was immediately hit by the smell of poop. The door was just open a crack and Sophie came tearing towards me and flew down the stairs. I went into the room to check it out and noticed that there was both pee and poop on the comforter. I called out to S to let her know what happened.

She felt really bad about it but it was an accident as she hadn’t seen Sophie sneak in. It wasn’t too bad, Sophie was only in there about an hour so it wasn’t like we kept her locked up without food and water for an entire night. After cleaning up the mess, I gave Sophie some treats in the hopes that she wouldn’t retaliate later while we were sleeping by clawing our eyes out.

So that was our Friday, a lot of scrambling and miscues. At least the wine and food were good.

Related posts:

1. Futon Fun
2. Snippets
3. Cold Snap
4. Jumble
5. Morning Sickness
6. TTC Strike
7. Low Key Weekend
8. Birthday BBQ and A Day for Moms
9. The Trek Home
10. “Get our coats”