Tinker, Taylor, Mom and I

 

 

Continued from Hurry Up, I’m Late for My Life

 

My LSM (long suffering mother) picks up on the second ring. “What’s wrong?”  I don’t blame her for her anxiety. I can’t remember the last time I called her during daytime working hours.

“Nothing. Except that I probably will never have children unless I act quickly” I blurt out in a rush.

She sighs. “Well, haven’t you met anybody recently?” The old college try.

“NO mum. Forget about that. You need to help me pick some sperm. Now!”

My poor LSM. Where did all her hopes and dreams for her daughter go? It has all come down to the two of us cruising the online sperm catalogues.

“Oh boy…” she sounds unenthusiastic.

“Just get online mom- today is the deadline for me to call the bank and have them deliver it” blah blah blah

The following is a brief excerpt from the painful exercise of getting her to quickly navigate the donor bank site.

“OK, I have to turn the computer on…” She proceeds to turn on her century-old computer. Thirty minutes later, it is finally running.

“Alright, so, I’ve narrowed it down to a few decent candida-” she cuts me off.

“OK, so how do I get on the website? I thought I had the address…What is the address again?” Oh god. This is interminable. 

” OK…so I am on now…I don’t see any pictures” she is mumbling to herself

“MUM!” I bark at her. “Are you kidding me? Can you please move a little faster?”

“Why do they tell you he doesn’t have attached earlobes?” It’s true. There are all sorts of nano-bytes of useless information on each guy.

” I don’t know mum- too much information. Let’s focus now.”

After an agonizing period of time, we narrow it down to two guys:

1 .A Taylor Kitsch look-alike- who is 19 (!!!) years old

2. A dark haired kinda Tom Cruise look alike, who is 30 yrs old.

For a variety of reasons (of which I will spare you), I settle on candidate #2. Even though, for the record, I love Canadian born Taylor WAY more than maybe-fairy, jump- Oprah’s- couch Tom.

Oh well. I’ll always have Friday Night Lights.

The deal is done.

Less than two weeks later, I am at the drugstore, looking for ovulation kits.

I feel so grown up. Look at me! I’m looking for OVULATION kits. Like, I am grown up enough to actually be PLANNING to get pregnant! Ha! No condoms for me!

I get it. At 40 years, I should be beyond this. Let me have this moment. 

Now, just have to wait to ovulate…..

………

Day 14 comes and goes.

…….

Wow. Who would have thought that waiting for an egg to drop would be that anxiety provoking. I hadn’t even been inseminated yet.

……..

Then: PING! The wonderful double line on the pee-stick.

Time for insemination!

 I have a date with Tom Cruise. Even though I’ll be thinking of Taylor Kitsch.

TBC…

In the meantime: relive the awesomeness that was Friday Night Lights

Hurry Up, I’m Late for my Life

Well, obviously I’ve been remiss in blogging. 

I have found a new, and more exciting love: Twitter. 

I recognize that I am late to that game (but who are we kidding here, I am late for every game, with the exception of my early development of breast buds, but that is for a different blog post). Anyway, I am using Twitter for professional purposes, so those of you who know me, PLEASE follow me! I love twitter so much. 

This all started after attending a medical conference in November. This conference was life altering in many ways. First, I attended a seminar on the use of social media in medicine, which resulted in my newfound Twitter obsession. 

Then, I attended a talk on “Fertility after 40″. Of course, I found it serendipitous, considering that I have played with this idea all year, ever since my 4oth birthday last year . I had, in fact, taken all the steps necessary to proceed, except for the most important: “The Picking of the Sperm”. Yes, it does deserve the capitalization, because it was that momentous. 

You may recollect that at some point last year Ryan/Jackson/Jake,  henceforth known as “He who shall not be named” had casually suggested he could be the “donor”. Of COURSE I latched onto that throwaway comment, like a drowning girl in a flailing ocean of unknown sperm. It took me a long time to get up the guts to text him (Yes, I recognize this should have mandated a phone call, let it go) regarding whether he was still willing to consider it. When I finally did, at the end of the summer, the answer, understandably, was, no.  ”Sorry, I feel like a bad friend”…yadda yadda. (Note to self- strike while the iron is hot, or drunk)

Once the answer was definitive, I perused the online donor catalogue.The “catalogue” is extensive. Like, too much information. I was unable to move forward with this cohort of candidates. 

Hobbies? “Typing”. Seriously.

Favourite music? “Rock, because I like the beats”. I like rock too, but..

Favourite book: “comics”.

Etc etc. Not to mention these young guys (most in their early 20′s) had still barely gotten over their teenage acne.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pick one.

So, a few months went by, and I remained frozen with indecision.

And then came the seminar “Fertility at 40″. The OB/gyne giving the talk started off with a flippant comment about the typical ignorant woman who keeps waiting for the right time and then suddenly expects to conceive at 40 years  old. “Like, how dumb,” (I paraphrase) I looked around. Is she speaking DIRECTLY to me?

She put up various slides with various stats: “The chance of conceiving is practically 0%”, and then, after you conceive the risk of miscarriage is up to 60%.”

WHAT?! Well, 60% of o is 0 isn’t it?

Ha. So there, lady.

I sat there, with a deepening sense of dread in my gut, or, perhaps it was my ovaries. I looked around in a panic. Was I the only one in here upon whom this information had a personal impact?

A young woman in the back raised her hand “What about freezing your eggs?”. The answer, of course, is that by age 40 there is no reason to freeze your desiccated eggs, but at age 34…

Most of the other female physicians in the audience were much younger, and eligible for egg freezing, but not me. Suddenly the sound of my ticking ovaries was SO LOUD, that I was unable to listen to any more of the talk. I started squirming in my seat, and, as soon as the speaker completed her terribly mean talk, I bolted out of the conference and forfeited the rest of the seminar day.

I HAD to get inseminated. ASAP. It just happened that was the first day of my period, so it was possible, if I acted quickly, that I could order some express sperm and have it in time for 2 weeks from now, when I ovulated. I just had to get home, pick the sperm, and call the fertility clinic to reserve my spot.

It was 2:30. The clinic closed at 3:30. I still had to take the subway home.

During the never-ending subway ride, I contemplated my situation. How could I have let things get this far? WHY did I procrastinate on this, like everything else  in life? Why did I leave it until the last, old egg is ready to commit suicide due to loneliness??

As I exited the station, a sudden glut of oblivious stationary people obstructed the fast lane of the escalator.

“DON’T you see???” I shrieked internally. “HURRY UP!! I am late for my life!! TICK TOCK!!! Can’t you hear it??!!”

I made it home just in time.

(to be continued….)

The Carpe Diem Thieves

They say there are no original ideas left.  I know this, because my ideas are continually being stolen by others. 

It started years ago- when the makers of the TV show “Roswell“ stole my idea of teenaged aliens trying to live amongst us. At least I think they stole my idea, because  I never actually watched the show, on principal, due to my outrage over their nefarious theft of my uncompleted high school novella.

Actually, now that I’ve googled Roswell, I realize that it’s not that much like my teenage novella, which I wrote a good 10 years before the show premiered in 1999. In fact, this makes me bit anxious, because perhaps I should get back  to that manuscript, in case I can still salvage it and become famous. But I will hold off, for now, because I have been procrastinating writing this blog post…

Regardless, at the time I was stung at the realization that my original idea was scooped, and I had nobody to blame but myself. You see, I have a long pattern of procrastination, complemented by the fact that when I finally do start something, I often don’t finish it. This leaves an opening, you see, for others to access my leaky brain and steal my ideas.

I have been reminded of these faults, time and time again, over the intervening years. Recently, as I was planning this post on the perils of procrastination, I received further confirmation of the truth of this law.

Somebody beat me to my title.

I’ll Seize the Day Tomorrow  is a new book by Jonathan Goldstein, the host of the hilarious “WireTap” on CBC. The book is supposedly about the year before the author turns 40, which sounds suspiciously like this blog, which, in essence, is about the year I did turn 40. So, maybe, technically, because he was 39 and I am 40, I stole the idea from him. And besides, he beat me to the publisher. I only just started writing this post 20 minutes ago, ten of which I spent reading about Roswell.

Anyway, what really drove me to write this post, and beat down my nemesis Procrastination, was the new show created by not-procrastinator Mindy Kaling. Yesterday I sat down and watched the first three episodes of  ” The Mindy Project”. I did so because more than one person has recently remarked to me how much she reminded them of me.

Now, I’m not so sure about the comparison, as her character gets a fair amount of action in the first three episodes, i.e sex at least once, and at least three dates (Please note the original (abandoned) premise of this blog, which was supposed to be about  finding 45 dates between three friends in one year. Suffice to say, not much action happening over here).

But I will concede some similarities:

1. Fast-talker ( I don’t mean smooth, I mean speaks very quickly, for which I often get chastised by slow-brained people)
2. Curvy
3. Supposedly a doctor (i.e doesn’t always act in a dignified manner befitting a doctor)
4. Single
5. Wine lover (often resulting in behaviour not befitting a doctor)

I would say that is where the similarities end. She is only 31 years old in the show, (33 in real life) and I am a immature 40year old. But she did beat me to a developing a TV show sort of about my life.

Some would say I don’t look or act 40. This is because of an excellent side effect of procrastination: arrested development. However , mostly there are no major benefits to be gained from procrastination.

How I may be different if I just seized the day :

• 20 lbs thinner, after discovering the secret to easy weight loss
• a millionaire, after writing a hit book on aforementioned easy weight loss
• owner of a valid passport ( since mine expired some time ago, all my friends must also suffer and only travel with me in Canada)
• an accomplished painter (after I learn how to draw)
• owner of some living plants (supposedly they survive if you don’t put off watering them forever)
• a clean car (although it turns out my new BMW doesn’t need servicing for one year- thank you German Engineers)
• maybe not single (If I just was able to not put off re-registering for online dating)
• possibly be a parent (If I could just open the online sperm donor catalogue)

Yes, I have managed to put off all major adult life milestones (except for being gainfully employed) until the last possible egg is left in my ovaries.

Things must change. They WILL change.

As soon as I start and finish watching the third season of Downton Abbey.

Cruel summer

I am  was bound. If you wonder why there has been not much blog activity this summer it is because the well has dried up. Perhaps it was never full to start with.  It has been too much pressure coming up with so many dates! Especially when I put such little effort into it. 

It has been a cruel summer. Remember  this song? When it was all about not having friends to go out with when you were feeling antsy? When you knew that somewhere, everyone else was having a better summer than you? Let this clip take you back…..

That’s kind of like what this summer has been about.

Lessons I have learned this summer:

1. All work and no play makes N  a very dull girl.

- I opened my own business this year, along with a couple of partners, and it has sucked away the lifeblood of my summer.

At the beginning, I was drunk with the power . “Can you make some coffee ?” was answered with such enthusiasm that I truly felt it brought my secretary deep joy to brew a pot of Columbian (after we taught her how to use a coffeemaker, of course). Now, I am struggling with the daily mire of  hiring, scheduling, dealing with IT issues, and, worst of all, paying my employees’ paycheques! Not worth the cup of coffee, let me tell you…(Why is ” I broke out this morning” an adequate excuse for showing up to work late???)

Even R is a bit glum. She bought a new condo, which is exciting, but when moving day came, she had no one to help. All offers of aid dried up at the 11th hour.  Even I had bust out of town, in a desperate attempt to put some distance between myself and my office.

Yes, I am a bad friend.

Which brings me to Lesson #2:

Being alone often SUCKS.

To all of you smug marrieds who whinge about your lack of  alone time- WHAT. EVER.  A few hours of precious solitude reading your “50 Shades of Grey”  does not even give you a glimpse of what it is like to try to hold an elevator door open with your back (when you are too skinny like R it’s even harder) whilst juggling boxes and dealing with a couple of hired dudes who would much rather smoke up than show up on time and drive their lame truck 3 blocks and help you lift boxes.

Lesson #3:

Even “haute” mexican in excess can come back to haunt you in the middle of the night.

I refer to the preponderance of mexican restos that have popped up in Toronto. We  (finally) made it into Playa Cabana (nice patio, great margaritas and excellent fish tacos, as well as overrated ambience), and La Carnita (overrated food, but it’s relatively cheap and full of men). I am still on the hunt for the best fish tacos- and despite the midnight Tums, am not quite ready to give up the chase. Must be the heat.

 Lesson #4:

Even though Jennifer Aniston, JLo and Halle Berry are super hot, being over 40 does NOT mean you are still a font of fertility.

At least according to my fertility doctor, and my good friend Shannon (see “Gestational Dating“). I will elaborate further in another blog entry. Stay tuned…

Lesson #5: Just “stating to the universe” that you’d like a mere 45 dates between three friends in one year does not make it happen.

And therefore, I am freeing myself from the bonds of the premise of this blog- and will not feel guilt about blogging about everything but!  And no, I am not trying reverse psychology to somehow cheat Fate into delivering the goods. These tactics don’t work with Karma – remember “Reverse Feng Shui“??

I was bound but now am free! 

P.S  I am fully aware that Kanye West has a project called Cruel Summer coming out soon. For  those of you that sadly found yourself on my site instead, here is a little taste of Kanye and Jay- Z doing their thing:

For the rest of you, I leave you with an Ace of Base remix of Cruel summer with the most delightfully supercilious dancers (buddy in white and his lady friend) that you may have seen in some time…Enjoy!

To Krakow with love

Well summer has hit, and Toronto is HOT. When I first moved here from out west, I was enamoured by the sultry tropical humidity. I discovered my hair was curly, I had perpetually soft, glowy skin, and every summer night was invitation to act like we were on a beach vacation.

Fast forward 16 years, and I am sick of my frizzy hair and perspiring 5 minutes after getting out of the shower. And those crazy summer nights? Mostly replaced with blasting the air conditioning so that I can get a restful enough sleep to function at work the next morning. Not so much the Cote d’Azur.

That being said,  summer is fun in Toronto! Every weekend there is something happening, and the weather is an excuse to get walking and re-discover all the great neighbourhoods this city has to offer. That usually means, for us, eating and drinking in all the aforementioned great neighbourhoods…

In the last week alone, we have visited a few places new to us:

Gusto 101- great patio, not bad food, but ran out of wine at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon!

Earls- OK fine. There’s not much of an excuse for going there. Patio full of young financial bucks in expensive suits, and secretarial type girls all hoping to connect. But they serve Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc by the glass! Which is good, because the music is so loud, you can only have a conversation with your beverage.

Burger Bar- full of hipsters, but ate a DELICIOUS chipotle infused burger there. Lots of beer, but a crappy selection of wine. After leaving, we were compelled to continue our evening in search of a better glass of wine. We meandered farther down College Street, until we reached another new little hotspot we hadn’t tried.

The gay host eyeballed us, and evidently deemed us not A-list. Admittedly, we were a bit dishevelled, having dressed for Kensington Market, not College Street. He disinterestedly started to tell us about the long wait until he suddenly recognized R.

“OMG, aren’t you  Nathaniel’s friend?” he chirped brightly.

Nathaniel is a particularly handsome gay male friend of ours with whom R had  gone to a party recently.

He ushered us to the bar right away.

At some point in the evening R noticed a guy was looking over at us. Or rather, looking at her, of course. However his appearance was confusing our gaydar. First, he was fit. Second, he was wearing a tight t-shirt with  royal blue shorts. Finally at one point the host went over and there was more- than- is- normal- for- a- straight- guy bro hugging between them, so we dismissed him as another gay guy who probably recognized R from her gay party circuit. Besides, we were looking exceptionally schleppy that day, so what were the odds he was actually interested?

So imagine our surprise an hour later ,when,  30 seconds after leaving the restaurant, the host came running out after us shrieking R’s name.

We turned around, and skulking out after him comes the guy in the gay blue shorts! And a Paul Bunyan beard, which for some reason I didn’t really appreciate until right then. Your gaydar is only as good as your powers of observation. 

For those of you who are too lazy to click on the link I have so helpfully provided above, here is a picture of the legendary Paul Bunyan.

We then go on to have a sort of odd conversation, given the fact we were in the middle of the street, but managed to get a fair amount of information about Paul Bunyan before he skulked back to his friends with R’s phone number in his pocket.

And this is when I realized that there is a new trend amongst the interested and available men in Toronto. They are all from Poland. OK, maybe also Lithuania, as per the tall one from the Hazelton Hotel the other week. But according to my diligent research, which I so painstakingly do to make this blog educational for all of us, Lithuania and Poland share a border, so that pretty much makes them basically the same. Kind of like Canadians and Americans. Ha ha. 

Seriously, why so many single Polish men in Toronto all of a sudden? More importantly, guess what I learned from my extensive field research? Apparently they like their women curvy in Poland!! This is according the  Polish cab driver who asked me to go out with him the other night while  he was driving me home from Gusto 101.

Other gems from my cabbie:

-Polish guys like their women like good whiskey: “18-20 years and single malt. Get  it- single?” (I didn’t have the heart to ask about 40-year-old whiskey. However, I did google “40-year-old whiskey” and can tell you that “whiskies that reach 40 years old will be really incredibly complex, often having lost over 50% of the cask’s contents to evaporation.” Huh. Well not in Toronto, where the humidity keeps us fresh!)

-Polish guys don’t like girls too skinny- “I need to be able to find her in bed”

-The girls should also enjoy  perogies, which I find much more palatable than cow’s tongue.

-Kraków is way cooler than Warsaw.

-There is a rocking Polish disco in Toronto, and apparently I was a fool to not accompany my cabbie there. I declined politely, stating that if it wasn’t a work night, I would for sure be up for a night of whiskey and perogies. And probably salsa dancing.

To be fair to our hipster Paul Bunyan, he emigrated to Canada as a child. But luckily he is still Polish and from close to Kraków, otherwise we would so not date  him.

The Gaydar Tango

Last week a couple of friends and I went to the Thompson Hotel to attend Azure Magazine’s annual best in architecture and design awards gala.  For those who love design, it was a smorgasbord of titillation.

To see some of the winning designs, click here.

Seated next to us during the main event was a nice guy decked out in a fancy dinner jacket. When chit-chat turned to what we all do for a living, we found out that he was an architect, and he found out my friends were lawyers.

“Wow, you must be smart” he cooed. “You must be single.” he added.

My friends frowned. “Well, you’re beautiful and smart. so obviously you’re single” he explained.

Internal eye-roll 

 Leave it to a gay guy to say the right thing.  Why are all the good guys taken or gay?  In fact, I am sure that even some of the taken guys are gay, which is a topic for another day…

Which brings me to the Gaydar. According to a recent study, people are able to gauge, within 50 milliseconds, whether someone is gay or not, just by looking at a picture. There are interesting perspectives to this information which have implications for discrimination polices, etc. However, I am more interested in how many women are fooled into not trusting their instincts.

How good are women’s gaydars? A few weeks ago I was out with R and our friend Natalie for cocktails and tapas.  Carlos, a friend of Natalie’s, joined us.

 Natalie has had feelings for Carlos for many years. He is kind, thoughtful and well-educated. We have been discussing ways that she could let him know of her real feelings without ruining their great friendship.

However, I’d never met Carlos until that night. 

He showed up on very short notice. Good sign, we declared.

Well groomed, wearing a pink shirt.  Nice metrosexual touch, I thought.

 Shirt tucked in.  b—b-bbblip….

We chatted about our plans for the weekend. “Today I spent the whole day checking out this great antique market” he enthused.

BLIP… my gaydar picked up a clear signal. By the end of the night, a weak but audible signal was being received.

Later that evening, I gave Natalie my assessment “Are you sure he’s not gay?” I posited tentatively.

The question is: is this good or bad news?

 If the glass is half full: at least it’s an explanation as to why you are not yet in a relationship with this wonderful single guy.

If the glass is half empty: how much time has been spent hoping for something that was never destined to become realized?

How does one refine their gaydar? It most definitely does not always take 50 milliseconds. 

In Toronto, a sense of style is not always a giveaway that a guy is gay. There are a lot of well-dressed straight men in this town.

However there are still many more straight men with mediocre style. I do not necessarily have a problem with this. In my experience, a guy who cares too much about his appearance is likely fairly superficial, and I don’t need a guy prettier than me.

Last weekend R and I spent a glorious early summer evening on the patio at the Hazelton Hotel, watching the strange collection of Yorkville plasticized people parading by.

Suddenly two guys swooped over to our table.

Opening line: “Which one of us do you think is better dressed?

Clearly they had scoped us out, and thought to lure us with their tactic of twenty questions. The tall one cornered me, and the semi-cute one cornered R, of course.

Here is a snippet of the bizarre charm assault on my end of the table:

“Do you know how to make Borscht?”

“Do you think I am better looking than my friend?”

“Do you like to eat cow’s tongue?”

“Are you in a creative field?”

“Me? I am a ‘code artist’”

“Why do you say IT like that? There is nothing wrong with IT”  (Editor’s note: I have absolutely nothing against IT guys. In fact, I pay a very handsome guy a very handsome price to be my IT consultant and keep my office running smoothly. Although he has a degree in Philosophy and used to be in a rock band so maybe he’s not a typical IT guy??)

“If you don’t Tango do you at least salsa?” (Editor’s note: what is up with the salsa crazy guys around here??)

“ I don’t know Gotan Project. Who sings that?”

 “Maybe we should go out sometime. You can cook for me”

“ I like the meat on a metal stick.”

“How tall are you?”

“No, not skewers, it has to be a metal stick”

“If you don’t salsa or tango, what sports DO you do?”

It seems, that in Toronto at least, salsa is a big thing with the straight guys….

For the unitiated- including my Eastern European friend from the Hazelton, here is Gotan Project. Close your eyes, turn off your gaydar, and just believe….

Related articles

• Is gaydar real? Study says people can tell who’s gay just by a glance (canada.com)

Somebody’s eating Breakfast at Tiffany’s…

 

 

I’m sorry it’s been awhile since I blogged. I have been working on a big project, which has involved blood, sweat and tears (mostly others’), stress induced weight gain (mostly mine) and $$$$. 

Yesterday I suddenly found myself with an unanticipated break. I flitted around my place, fruit fly-ish, unable to settle down to a task. I was slightly irritable, which I decided to blame on PMS – bordering on PMDD, but was probably more due to the fact that I have put myself on a diet of coffee with brown sugar, in an effort to reduce the weight I gained during the last cortisol fueled month (I’ve decided that coffee and brown sugar is a good diet mostly because it is the only food in my place, aside from one bag of unopened Tostitos, which I’m pretty sure isn’t diet friendly).

In a surge of productivity, I decided to embrace spring (spurned on by the fact that it was 30 degrees C outside). This involved finally putting away all the woolens, and trying to find my previously stored summer wear.

A struggle with a storage bin resulted in my third toe being stripped of its dermis, and a discovery that I never did put away my summer clothes, unless you count balling them up in the back of my armoire so that they emerge nine months later wrinkled and slightly musty smelling.

No matter, I felt I had conquered the first task of spring, and I was motivated to move on to bigger and better challenges. I donned my wrinkly cargo pants and decided to head to Canadian Tire.

The purpose of the mission was to buy accoutrements for my BBQ.  This year, my BBQ will not hide shamefully and dust-covered in a dark corner of my terrace. It will emerge, and fulfill its grilling destiny. It does not need a man to light its fire! Just because I am single doesn’t mean I don’t deserve weekends full of spicy kebabs!

At Canadian Tire, all the couples in the BBQ section heightened my irritability.  Some worked together in a state of yuppie bliss, others  chose to try to divide and conquer, only to have the woman whine loudly to her boyfriend in the next aisle: “Baaaabe!! Baaaabe! But these are wood chips! Which one do I get????” I hastened an exit out of the store, only to collide with a slow-moving couple wheeling their shiny new bikes out of the store.

“Oops- sorry!” said the guy sheepishly. His wife giggled. I smiled stoically and winced away the pain. I am not the B word…I said silently to myself.

At home, I threw my new BBQ accessories balefully in a corner, and contemplated my bloody shin. No bandages left, since I had used the last one this morning after my tussle with the storage bin.

I limped morosely to Shoppers Drug Mart, looking like a homeless person in my wrinkled clothes and bleeding leg, cursing the fact that I don’t live in the suburbs and can’t drive to the pharmacy like normal people.  In fact, my neighbourhood is ranked 97- a “Walker’s Paradise” on the index of walkability. Check yours out here: www.walkscore.com

At SDM, I pondered the wide variety of Band-Aids available, and decided to buy several boxes, in anticipation of a summer of injuries. A young couple standing nearby interrupted my cost analyses with their giggling. What’s so funny about bandages? I thought, and looked up. Ohh. The Band-Aids are right next to the condom section.

 I took a deep breath and decided to be generous. Young love. How sweet, I thought. They couldn’t be older than twenty. Maybe it was their first time- hence the condom buying titillation.   I watched them debate between chocolate flavoured or jolly rancher coloured (so nice of Trojan to cater to the young people). I noticed the new cool packaging on offer and thought: hey, when was the last time I bought condoms? Note to self: must check the expiry date on the ones at home….

Feeling magnanimous, I hobbled to the checkout only to be beaten there by the couple on- the- cusp- of- their- sexual- awakening. And that’s when I saw it. She was holding a Tiffany’s bag.  What? How could that pipsqueak afford to buy her something from Tiffany’s?

I was just there last week admiring a trinket: “Thirty one thousand dollars”  breathed the saleslady.

“Oh, it’s a gift…” I breathed back, implying that perhaps if I was buying for myself I would spend that money, but not on a friend….

No wonder the young woman at the drugstore was giddy over buying condoms!

Someone is eating Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and it isn’t me.

But I will have my kebabs!

kebabs from journey kitchen

http://www.journeykitchen.com/2011/08/lamb-kebab-sliders-with-coriander-mint.html