Lesson Learned

It’s only since I began dating Susan that I was obliged to adopt the tradition of Christmas stockings.

As it was explained to me, the contents of these stockings typically lack the excitement and festive appeal of other Christmas gifts. They tend to group themselves under the rather unfortunate heading, “practical things” and include deodorant, razor blades, shaving cream, socks, keychains, floss or a toothbrush.

Fortunately, to break up the monotony, the Christmas stocking may, on occasion, include candy, or a chocolate orange.

I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I can, and do, buy those items for myself, as required.

I say, why bother?

To pull them out of my Christmas stocking verges on pointless and I’m afraid I cannot, for the life of me, express the same appreciation for deodorant as I have reserved for real gifts. To have to shop for "practical things" for someone else and then, individually wrap them before stuffing them into a stocking, is downright chore-like!

Really? They have to be individually wrapped; each bottle of hand sanitizer? I’ve got things to do!

This year, I asked my wife whether we might forego the madly mundane Christmas stocking. I perhaps, too honestly, admitted the only item I looked forward to finding in my stocking was the chocolate orange.

Here's a look at the contents of my Christmas stocking this year.

Santa's sense of humour sears. Don't doubt each of the different flavors of chocolate orange came individually wrapped! I had no idea there were so many! My appreciation for the Christmas stocking has grown considerably and, for a while anyway, I’ll be quietly eating my words.

Settling My Nerves

At some point this morning, I awoke to the sounds of someone moving things around our dark room. With help from the light in the hallway, Susan was searching for a boot. The pants she had sent for dry cleaning are ideally styled for these particular boots, but she could only find one. No other boots would do.

She planned to wear the dry-cleaned pants and these boots to her company Christmas party tonight.

Eventually, her search moved to another room and I drifted back to sleep; actually, it was more collapsed, than drifted!

I got up much later this morning, ready for a fine Friday, when I noticed one boot on the floor in front of me, with a note beside it. My first instinct was to immediately throw on a heavy coat, wig, dark glasses and set off for some distant continent.

The note didn’t even include the word “please”! My mission, should I freakishly choose to accept it, was find the dang boot! There’s no way to accurately evaluate the psychological and physiological stress I experienced as I hesitantly began searching, by process of elimination.

Here was a seminal, defining moment; a chance for a common man to emerge hero, or zero. I, generally, steer clear of moments like these!

Fortunately, I found the boot.

Susan called a couple of hours later to inform me she had gone out and purchased a skirt! She, evidently, assumed, having married an obvious zero, I would not be able to find the specific boot. Apparently, she was certain I would fold under the pressure of crunch time.

Cooly, I told her I had found the boot and explained to her exactly where I had located it. Thinking I was off the hook, free and clear, she casually informed me the dry-cleaned pants don’t only go with the boots, they also go with a particular black leather jacket and belt!

As my breathing sped-up, the trees of the forest closed-in around me; I was not out of the woods yet! How stupid of me not to have anticipated such extraneous variables. Nervously, I searched a couple of closets and found the coat and, a few minutes later, through beads of sweat, attentive scaning and dollops of blind luck, I even located the belt!

Toss me the hero hat, I’m still settling my nerves.

Honk If You Understand

Do you ever infuriate yourself?

It sounds difficult to do and yet, I do manage to infuriate myself quite a lot. I get angry at myself for forgetting things. I get angry at myself for being too clumsy and for not being clumsy enough! I get angry at myself for being too quick and for not being quick enough! I get angry at myself for being too slow and for not being slow enough!

You get the idea. I sometimes find myself so aggravating, I positively exhaust myself.

I’ll eat too fast and then bite my tongue. I’ll carry too many items and drop one of them. I’ll bang my elbow on door jams and stub my toe on stairs. On it goes!

I don't ask for these idiotic outcomes and yet, I get the feeling I'm not doing enough to guard against them.

In one incident which seems to have gained legendary status in our home, I was hurriedly rinsing utensils in the sink before putting them in the dishwasher. Out of the corner of my eye, in the midst of all the clattering, I was fairly sure I saw a butter knife fall through the slot and down the drain. It was too dark to see down there. Questioning whether a knife could even fit through a drain slot, I slowly lowered one of our butter knives into the drain slot and then, accidentally dropped it down the drain!

To this day, two butter knives still sit in the kitchen drainpipe.

Infuriating!

Last night, I got home after midnight. It was dark. I was about to put my key in the door when I noticed an insect of some sort on the door frame, near the keyhole. Not fond of spiders, I took out my smart phone in the hopes of identifying the bug. The glow of the screen allowed me to determine it was a moth. No problem. As I turned the screen off, I somehow started the car alarm honking. It was blaring loudly, over and over!

The quiet neighborhood echoed with the sound of the infernal car alarm.

I know my own car remote pretty well, so I pressed the alarm button to stop the honking. Pressing my remote started my car alarm blaring! It had actually been my wife’s car alarm that I had triggered, but, since we both drive vehicles made by the same automaker, the alarms sound identically obnoxious. Now I had the alarm on my wife’s SUV honking, along with the alarm on my car!

Infuriating!

As neighbors began to turn on lights and peer out windows, I ended up dropping my smart phone on the cement stoop. I first turned off my car alarm and then, in the dark, stared with great concentration at the remote to my wife’s vehicle. We haven’t had her vehicle for a long time and, while it does hang on my keychain, I’m not as familiar with her remote. On top of that, in the darkness, the alarm button on her remote seemed to be pretty much the same color as the “lock”, “unlock” and “trunk” buttons!

@#%$^&^!

It took me what seemed an eternity to finally stop both alarms from honking.

%^#@*&^!

Naturally, the mishap woke my sleeping wife. My son, who’s a night owl anyway, greeted me in the hallway with a giant, patronizing grin, miming applause.

Infuriating!

Getting It Done

Last night, it was windy.

Our assignment for the six o’clock newscast took us to Garon Arena in Montreal North for a live interview with Penguins goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury. He was at the arena to do the ceremonial puck drop, launching the “Equipe McDo” 2012-2013 hockey season.

Our microwave truck operator, Sylvain, was pretty sure the wind gusts were still within the microwave mast’s tolerable limits. After pulling wires from the truck to the spot inside the arena where Louis, our cameraman, had chosen to set up the interview, Sylvain was preparing equipment outside the truck. He had left one of the truck doors ajar with the key in the ignition. As he worked, the howling wind pushed the door closed, locking him out of the truck!

He burst into the arena and announced there would be no “live” because he’d locked the keys in the microwave truck. There wasn’t enough time to have someone at the station drive the spare key to our location, plus, traffic was pretty heavy. Sylvain called our boss to say the “live” wouldn’t happen.

As he hung up the phone, I suggested calling CAA and getting them to unlock the door. That made Sylvain remember taxi cabs offer a “door unlocking” service. He called a cab as the seconds ticked closer to our assigned broadcast time.

When the cab arrived, Sylvain worked on one side of the truck, as the taxi driver worked on the other door.

They finally got the truck unlocked and, as the 60-foot mast swayed in the wind, Fleury walked in, signed autographs, posed for pictures, did the live interview and went into the arena for the puck drop.

Once again, Sylvain holds it all together (See blog "Merci, Mille Fois" April 1, 2012) and makes it happen.

No sweat.

Our camerapeople do a swell job and, hey, my sincere thanks to cameraman, Martin, for warning me my zipper was down as we stood out on the sidewalk at the corner of Ste-Catherine and Peel one evening in mid-September, waiting to do a live report.

Sure, now I triple-check when I change shirts, but why couldn't he have noticed earlier!

Dud Duvet

It started with me thinking I was doing a good thing. It ended with me kicking myself.

Drat!

Fall’s colder temperatures prompted me to pull our duvet out of storage. As I spread it over the bed, I noticed the top edge was dirtier than the rest of it. After all, that’s the area hands clutch in order to pull the duvet higher, for added, cozy comfort! It’s also the part of the duvet most likely to be exposed to wandering dog paws!

No problem. In a burst of wondrous initiative, I decided to pull the duvet off the bed and bring it to the dry cleaner! Later the same day, oozing an industrious tone, I told my wife I’d brought the duvet to the dry cleaner. She sounded surprised, wondering why I hadn’t simply stuffed it into the washing machine. Aghast at the image her suggestion had conjured up in my mind, of feathers cluttered in one corner of a lopsided duvet, I told her, industrious tone still intact, I didn’t want it to lose its shape.

Then, quite matter-of-factly, she told me it’s not a feather-filled duvet, it’s just a regular machine-washable comforter. I insisted, with industrious tone quickly fizzling, it’s heavy like a real duvet and hot like a real duvet. She reminded me again, it’s not a real duvet.

Who the heck’s picking up my memos?

I just picked up the dud duvet at the dry cleaners this morning. It cost $33.16, which I could have used to buy three boxes of detergent and two boxes of fabric softener sheets!

Curses!

When I told her how much it cost to dry clean the dud duvet, Susan seemed to find it funny. With industrious tone shrivelled and no longer detectable, trying to come to terms with my cluelessness, I told her on the phone last night, by deciding to dry clean the dud duvet, I was trying to to a good thing. She replied, sweetly, “You did do a good thing; you just did the wrong good thing.”

Sigh.

Not A Creature Was Stirring

The station thoughtfully sent out a memo, reminding everyone our Christmas photo would be taken this afternoon at 4 o'clock.

I thought of it at one point today while I was driving from somewhere to somewhere else. As I thought of it, I thought, "I'm going to forget"! Then, I thought I should rehearse it over and over in my head; "Christmas picture. Christmas picture". That way, I thought I would surely boost my odds of remembering to grab a festive hat or scarf from our stash of Christmas supplies at home!

By the time I got home, the thought had, evidently, disappeared in a puff of grey tinsel matter. In my brain, not a creature was stirring.

Consequently, I ended up leaning against the wall behind my boss for the photo, with a Global Christmas stocking clinging strangely to one side of my red polar fleece.

It's amazing; even though I thought about it and then thought I'd forget, I couldn't help myself! I love Christmas, but there I go, letting myself down!

I thought so.

Snorting As I Go

September 26th, 2012, becomes the day I tasted my first zucchini cake!

Anne was true to her word and very kindly took the trouble, in the midst of her busy day as a reporter, mother and wife, to bring in some slices of her cake for me to try. The container was sitting patiently on my desk when I got to work today. The cake looks like banana bread, although I would have definitely wondered about the green pieces in the slices.

It tastes like spice cake and there’s very little gustatory evidence of zucchini, although when I asked what the moist bits were, Anne replied, “That’s the zucchini!”

While it's still difficult to reconcile the zucchini I see in stir-fry with the yummy cake I ate today, once I started eating the cake, I couldn’t stop!

Later, I went in studio to do a report for tonight's 6 o'clock newscast and while we were waiting for the commercial to end, Jamie, the anchor, demanded, "Cake! Where was the cake?" Caught completely off-guard, I asked, "Huh, what cake?" She explained that she had read my tweet about Anne's zucchini cake and wondered if it had been brought in for everybody. Feeling terribly guilty, I explained Anne had just brought in some for me to try. Jamie appeared consoled, concluding it had only been one piece for me to sample. At that point, I was forced to, sheepishly admit, Anne had, in fact, brought in three pieces of zucchini cake and I had porkishly polished them all off!

Uh oh, maybe I was supposed to share! I think it's time I crawl back under my rock, snorting as I go.