After another week on Weight Watchers, I’m
up by more than half a pound at last night’s weigh-in, and I cry in front of
the Weight Watchers ladies. My shower
head breaks this morning, and the open fixture sprays water all over my
bathroom. I wasn’t even doing anything
exciting with the shower head.
While wiping down my bathroom walls with my
towel, I knock two of my favorite rings down the sink drain hole. After rescuing my rings with the painstaking
use of a chopstick, I get into a text message argument with Alex, and then I’m
running late. The argument is about Alex
not texting me one time when he said he would, and at some point the subject of
tranny porn comes up. Don’t ask me,
because I don’t know why either.
My back is really hurting and I have to try
three times to get my shoes on. I don’t eat breakfast, because I’m late for
work already, and afraid that eating anything would cause me to gain more
weight instantaneously and then I’d have to wear my bathrobe to the office. It
will be the only thing left that fits me.
I notice a random cracker crisp on my floor
in the hallway while I’m rushing out the door.
I’m too sore to pick it up. I
step on the cracker crisp by accident.
There are now cracker crisp crumbs all over my hallway, which wouldn’t
be there if I had picked up the cracker crisp.
During my drive to work, I gesture rudely
at a biker who falls onto my car. It’s
Bike to Work Week, otherwise known as Everybody Gets to Be Really Fucking Late
to Work Week because bikers don’t know what they’re doing. This one loses his balance trying to look
cool at a red light, and falls over onto the hood of my car. This would be fine, providing he manages to
wipe off some of the bird poo with his body.
The bird poo miraculously remains undisturbed.
I get to work and notice I forgot to remove
the XL sticker pasted over my boob. I
notice the XL sticker pasted over my boob only after talking to nearly all of
my colleagues with my XL boob front and center.
I leave work to walk across the street to
get my tea. There’s a Tim Horton’s
outlet in the hospital across the street, and I need Tim Horton’s steeped tea
to function. I walk through the hospital
atrium and see my friend Louise from my old job. We never spent time together outside of work
and meetings, but I always liked her a great deal.
Louise is bald. She didn’t used to be bald.
Oh no.
We’re so happy to see one another. Louise and I talk. She wants to know where I landed, and I tell
her about my new job. She tells me about
her current chances. She found out today
she’s facing another round of chemo and a clinical trial. In 65% of patients, the first round of chemo
knocks it out. Louise is part of the
35%, and had been hoping she wasn’t. She’s
80% better though, and just needs another 20%.
She hasn’t been at work since February. She
remembers the exact date she got the news and stopped going to work, and we
laugh. Not that it’s funny, but she
tells me about how there was before and how there was after, and it’s so hard
now to even think about the before and she laughs and I laugh because I totally
get that.
Then we hug for a long time. Louise tells me she is so glad she saw me
this morning and says she has to run along to the cancer clinic. We wish each other all the very best luck in
the world. I’m so glad I saw Louise this morning too.
