Saturday Chillin'

Went pumpkin picking today! It was quite fun, although it was a sad season for apples so that side of the farm hick experience was a little disappointing. But at least I got my quota of fresh wonderful apples for the year - and some effing delicious apple muffins fresh out of the oven on top of it!

Must say I love October best of all the months. Usually it's when the Indian summer comes around, so the weather is pleasantly crisp verging on the occasional warm, and the sun is still brightly gracing us with its presence before ducking down for a more permanent stay in the Southern hemisphere. Also the trees are just turning red at the tips, so you get that lovely green-yellow-red-orange thing going on with a couple of crispy brown leaves you can kick around and stomp on while on your way to school or work. Plus, best of all, everything is preparing for Halloween and you get the best parties of the year to look forward to at the end of the month.

Oh and I guess Thanksgiving is pretty awesome too. You get amazing food. Pointe finale.

Anyway we got to the farm pretty late in the day so I had to cancel the date I had planned, sadly. Afterward I went to work and within the first 10 minutes of manning the front of the store got told off by some hard-done-by Quebecoise who didn't hear my "Bonjour" half of my standard Indigo greeting ("Bonjour, hi!"). She ranted at me for a good three straight minutes about how you don't hear French in Montreal anymore, and when she comes to Centre-Ville, toute est en anglais tabarnak! (Well she didn't swear at me to be fair, but I was fairly indignant at her lecturing me on my job performance inadequacy when it was a simple misunderstanding). Really, Quebec. Get over yourselves. The rest of the province is yours.

Also, just to randomly add, after work, I was walking down St. Catherine's and saw this guy crossing the street and seriously throw out his ankle. He limped to the side of a building to cling for dear life to its concrete support and alleviate what seemed to be the agony of his injury. As he passed me I asked him if he was alright and offered him some Advil. I felt so bad for him, I figured giving/accepting pharmaceuticals from a complete stranger in this instance would be justified. He happily took two liquigels and went on his hobbling way. So I guess that was my good deed of the day. Unless of course my pills wreck his insides because he has some strange foreign allergy to Western meds.

Nice People

This actually happened yesterday, but I forgot to write it down.

I was working on cash, and this woman came in to pick up an order. She didn't have any photo ID on her, which is required as the pick-up policy, and it sort of created a bit of a hassle. I felt bad, so I conferred with a fellow cashier and we told her we'd be able to swing it this time but we'd need it in the future to avoid giving someone's order away to the wrong person.

Then I went to find the order, only to realize that it wasn't there. I hate when this happens, and it's been happening a lot because of the sheer volume of orders coming in of late. I returned to the woman, who was looking rather frazzled in her face by this point, to tell her I couldn't find it, and ask when she had received the phone call. She informed me that she hadn't been phoned at all and that relief of understanding settled on the scene like one of Horatio's episode-concluding one-liners. It tends to happen a lot; customers get the confirmation of shipment email and think it's a confirmation of arrival.

I always feel bad having to tell customers that they came to our store for no reason, and that they have to go back home empty handed. I tried to be as nice as possible to the woman to compensate, and she shrugged.

"I guess I was just so excited I got a little carried away," she said, eyebrows rounded high above downcast eyes.

"Yeah, I can imagine," I told her. "They really get you going with the anticipation."

She laughed and started flicking through the Godiva chocolate bars displayed in tantalizing rows in front of the cash register. "Might as well get something while I'm here."

"You know," I said, leaning my elbows on the cash, "We just got these really amazing new ones in - they haven't even put them on the shelves yet, they're still behind the cash."

She paused, two lacquered nails resting on the dark chocolate raspberry bars. "Yes?"

I nodded. "Yeah - there's one with cheesecake filling. My coworker keeps telling me how amazing it is, and I was going to get one yesterday but my other coworker said I'd explode in fatness if I indulged." I grumbled the last bit and shook my head.

The customer laughed again. "Well I think I want to try that one."

"Awesome," I smiled.

I ducked behind the cash to search through the floor level cupboards. I found one cheesecake, and two other kinds.

"I've also got tiramisu and chocolate truffle cake."

"Well you've got me craving cheesecake now," she chuckled.

"Alright - excellent choice if I may say so!" I rang it up for her.

"Actually add another one in too," she said, pointing a long finger in the direction of the cupboards.

"Sure thing," I smiled.

I looked through the boxes of severely depleted chocolates - my friend seemed to have raided the boxes a vast amount - and with a consternated brow said, "I'm having a bit of trouble finding another...I think my coworker might have eaten them all."

"Oh, are you sure?"

"There's a lot of tiramusu - she says that one's excellent too...?"

"No, no, cheesecake, cheesecake," she said. "Definitely has to be that one!"

I dug deeper into the cave of boxes. "Okay, lemme see..."

With a couple of more rifle-throughs, I managed to get my hands on one.

"Last one!" I declared triumphantly.

The customer smiled and I added it to her bill, sliding it over to her with a mild pang of regret that I'd never get to taste the famous Godiva milk-chocolate coated cheesecake.

"Do you need a bag for those?" I asked.

She looked at them for a second before shaking her head and hand at the prospect. "No, no, should be fine."

"Alrighty, it comes to $8.55."

She handed me her card and as the receipt printed, she said, "Wait do you think you could give me a bag after all?"

"Sure," I said, a little exasperated as I always am whenever a customer asks for one after everything's been paid for (they cost a whopping $0.05 and we're not supposed to give them away for free).

"I'll just hold onto this one here and I'll put the other one in the bag," she said.

"Sounds good," I smiled pleasantly, and handed her the bag with the chocolate inside. She took it, carefully put away her card and zipped her bag, then took her time rolling the chocolate in the plastic bag.

In one swift and understated movement, she slid the package back across the counter to me and patted it once. She didn't say anything at all, just smiled.

I picked it up and held it to my chest, mouth in a wide O. "Oh my god, are you serious?" She just smiled. "Thank you so much," I said, genuinely close to breaking down in a full-on weep at how touching this simple act of kindness was.

"Thanks for being so kind," she said, and walked off.

And there we go, folks: moral of the story is karma does exist.

The Whipped Cream Bed

At work today I was trying desperately to put some lost books back to their rightful homes in the interior design section - and failing miserably. That section is a lost cause (along with Photography, Hobbies and Crafts, Fashion, Kids, Business....essentially all that is not straightforward fiction). But anyways I'm not here to whinge about poor organization at the corporate level: I'm here because I need to share my absolute admiration for all that is interior design and home improvement.

I can't say that in my life I've ever had a chance to design my own space. When I was 12, my sister and I were finally given our own respective rooms, and this was a momentous occasion. But even though I got to choose the colours of my walls and how it was set up, none of the furniture was my choice and there were some pieces that I had no choice about not having in there to begin with. The extent of my decorating muscle being exercised was me choosing what Green Day posters I wanted where and how many different funky stickers I could put on my mirror while still being able to see my reflection. For seven years my room barely changed, except once in arrangement, until I peaced out to Australia.

In Aussie-land, I had my first taste of an empty room and no history of physical objects to burden and clutter. Granted, it was a room minus a personality - a standard college dorm - but that was all the more exciting. I bought posters in a frenzy to mark it as my territory and revelled in the clean, empty space that was not more than I could manage. It had everything I needed and everything served a purpose. It was a room that felt energizing when my room at home had always felt claustrophobic and like a timeless void that sucked up the majority of my life with sleep, Facebook, and literally sitting and staring and doing fuck all.

Within the first three weeks of my being away, I skyped my sister and told her she could have my room. She'd been wanting to swap for a really long time by this point, me having the bigger room, and her having the childhood bedroom with the colours and designs her nine-year-old self had thought were the epitome of appeal. I don't think she believed me at first, but I told her I couldn't go back to my life at home so changed and then go to sleep staring at the same ceiling I'd stared at through all my teenage angst. So she informed my mother and a month later they set out boxing my things and repainting (at long-overdue last).

That being said, I never decided what my new room would look like. The most my mother conferred with me on the subject was choosing what colour she was going to paint it. She'd wanted green, which I was vehemently against as my old room had been green too. We settled on blue. The first time I saw the exact colour and the way they'd set it up was the night I arrived home five months later.

I must say I genuinely liked it - and like it still. The walls are rag-rolled blue, almost turquoise, the colour of a blue glacier or what you'd imagine tropical wind looked like. It's got a whole white/blue/natural-honey-wood-brown combo going on that I very much like and really didn't expect to work so well together, but it looks good. I'm happy with it. But I still didn't design it, aside from putting up the posters I carefully rolled and toted back home from Oz.

So anyway, back to how this all came about, I was looking in the interior design section and falling in love. I genuinely never thought much about designing my own space before browsing this section at work. It was just something that never factored into my life and I assumed in a lot of ways that it was an indulgence and a perk of being rich, that it was sheer luxury to be comfortable in your own home. My parents, despite their irate responses that they carefully decided how to decorate the house (23 years ago, might I add, and 23 years of not changing an inch), never really gave a crap how it looked. My mom fancies the cluttered look of cozy-lived-in-cottage, and my dad....well, I don't think he's seen the house since 23 years. So seeing these photographs of people who adore and take pride and joy in how their homes look was a novelty and a heartstopping wonder. It was that moment of obviousness when you're holding a pen and wondering where your pen went and then are delighted to see it already in your fingertips.

I must say that my favourite books were those on tropical homes. Holy bejeezus, I want to live in the tropics. My ideal home for the longest time was living in modern loft that's one big space with an open staircase and giant, single-paned panels of windows spanning the entire wall. But Living in a home with trees around it too, or on a mountain overlooking ocean and jungle with a pool and a deck would be glorious as well. So long as it's open, empty, made of glass and bright bright bright then I will be happy.

Most importantly, however, was that I've finally decided what kind of bed I'd want. My sister just got one for her new room and it's so wonderful - while, wrought iron-style headboard, so soft I literally fall asleep on it as soon as I lie down, and with so many pillows it's like being a nestling of a pillow-laying bird. And the funny thing is, before I saw it, it was exactly what I thought I wanted. Something about seeing it though made me not see myself in that kind of bed. It wasn't, isn't, right for me. When my sister asked me what I'd get for a bed if I were to buy any one I wanted, I couldn't really answer her. In the back of my mind, I've been thinking about it for weeks. Then, flipping through a random book I'd picked up in the section, there it was. Wonderful, fluffy, white, and like it's made out of whipped cream. No bedposts, and flat on the ground with no space underneath - just flowing white linen and duvets spilling over the edges. I can't even find a picture of what it looks like online to post here. But just trust me in that it was my perfect bed.

The desperation I feel for having a real bed cannot even be described. To contextualize: I'm sleeping in the same bed I was sleeping in from when I moved out of my crib. My hands and feet fall off the ends when I stretch out. This bed was also the bed that my uncle slept in, and the one that my mother slept in before that. It is supported by tired metal slats and cardboard. It has no mattress. It is made marginally soft and sleepable by a futon. It gives me horrendous back problems because the middle sags and curves down, and I always wake up groggy and with pains in my neck. It's massively saddening that I'm going to be in this bed for the next two years until I escape from here and head back to Australia. But at least I know what I'm looking for so when I finally invest, I at least can know that it's what I've always dreamt of having. Even if those dreams are a little belated in the formation.

Anyways in other news:

Headline: Comic con is tomorrow!

Headline contenders: I got asked out to coffee at work today, and I also lost my wallet (major bummer).

Recent events: I dressed up at Saladfingers for my dear friend's 20th birthday party, which was an "Internet" theme.

Arts and Entertainment: The Fountainhead is blowing my mind, and I really am praying that the ending will be equally as impressive as the book thus far.

Food: I had a smashing breakfast, after waking up with a happily non-hungover head, of sunny side up eggs, sausage and heaps of marvellous Québec bacon.

Weather: A balmy 12 degrees, considering it's nighttime. Beautiful 3/4 yellow moon tonight, partially under cloud cover.