So I rushed out to Canadian Tire, the store where I Do Not Shop because once the owner of one of the franchises called me the C-word, this after destroying the engine of my car.   And he also made me cry.  But that was fifteen years ago and I’m trying not to hold grudges in some kind of pseudo-Buddhist-self-calming-flaky-hippie thing I’m attempting as a way of staving off the anxiety attacks that I constantly have regardless, and besides, they have cheap inflatable pools.   I dragged my reluctant kids to this house of horrors to procure the pool and of course the store is so overcrowded and stupid that you can’t use a shopping cart so I dragged the 30 pound awkwardly shaped box by hand, forcing The Bun to carry the chemicals and The Birdy to carry the cover.   Along the way to the till — which, by the way, was approximately 80 miles from the pool section of the store — I passed no less than ten employees who all smiled pleasantly and ignored me.  The cashier, not surprisingly, was rude.   Likely I’d be rude also if I was reduced to being a cashier at a store owned by a man who bandies the C-word around, but not SO rude that I sighed dramatically and rolled my eyes when asked if I could actually emerge from behind my till to scan the barcode with my cordless scanner so that the customer did not have to lift said 30-pound awkwardly shaped box onto the five foot high counter for my convenience.   But hey, that’s why I’m not employed by the Most Miserable Store In Town!   Needless to say, I was halfway out the exit door when finally a young salesman, who had been watching my progress with two preschoolers and 50 pounds of crap from one end of the store to the other, said, “Can I help you with that?”   So I said, “Actually I think these last three feet to the car are probably the easiest!”

Then The Birdy fell off the concrete boulevard thing and skinned her nose on the pavement.

Finally I got the stupid Simple Set pool home and The Bun was itching to just DIVE IN!  And why not?  The box said it was “ready for water in ten minutes!”   What the box DIDN’T say is that it’s “ready for water in ten minutes!” if you’ve already spent a week and a half making your back yard entirely and perfectly 100% level.   It did mention that being level was preferable, but it did not say the truth which is that if your ground is even slightly off level, when you go inside to eat spaghetti and meatballs for the tenth day in a row and leave the hose running, it’s likely the entire pool will collapse sideways and cause a tidal wave of algae-treated water to slosh down your back steps and into your basement.

At this point, I wish this story had a punchline and I guess the only punchline that it has is that guess what I’m doing right now?  It’s 11 pm on Friday night and I’m… putting on waterproof shoes to go outside and stomp on the remaining half-collapsed walls of my stupid SIMPLE SET pool so that I can get the rest of the water out so that I can spend my Saturday digging up the sodden, marshy grass and levelling the ground using only my iPhone, a two-by-four and a sharpened shovel so that maybe on Sunday or SIX WEEKS FROM THURSDAY if my destroyed back is healed by then, I can spend ten minutes getting my pool “ready for water”.

Last year’s wading pool is looking better all the time.

When I found out, I was at my mum’s house, reading the paper.   I’d just flipped open the first section and there was a big, colour photo of Martini (no one really ever called her Martha) and Larry, under a headline that said something about a stolen car and nine charges.   I didn’t get it.   I looked at the picture and re-read the headline.   I couldn’t make it fit.   The headline mentioned a dual fatality, a Saanich couple, and a stolen car and a 25 year old man.   It still made no sense.   I folded the paper over and went to make a cup of tea.   When I got to the sink, I noticed my hands were shaking.   I actually thought to myself, “Why are my hands shaking?  That’s so weird.”

It was like my brain had already processed the information on one level, but on another I was in such deep denial I still didn’t understand.   That’s never happened to me before.   I always thought of denial as something more conscious.   I really, truly didn’t comprehend.

I sat down again with my tea, carefully unfolded the paper with my shaking hands, and read the article.   And that’s when I found out that Martini was gone.

One stolen car.   One kid out for a joyride.   Two deaths.

People always say nice things about other people when they die, but in this case what Martini’s son says in the article is the truth, she didn’t have a mean bone in her body.   She was the nicest person you’ll ever meet.   Only now, you won’t get a chance.

I’ve spent a few days thinking about what happened and feeling angry about the circumstances and feeling so sad for Martini and Larry and their kids and all their friends.   I’ve also spent a lot of time regretting.   The truth is that although we’d been friends for sixteen years, I hadn’t actually seen her for months.   I’m always busy, you see.    Always.   And I blow people off because I don’t have time and there is always some future when the kids are in school and I’ll be freed up to go for walks and coffee, but for now, I say, “Too busy.”   I’m sorry I was “too busy” to see her last time she called, I’m so so sorry.   Because sometimes, you just don’t get another chance.

RIP Martini and Larry.    I miss you already.

So here we go, this part made me laugh out loud, spitting part of a 10x reheated cup of coffee onto my poor abused keyboard:

“As for taking this big step forward in their relationship, Harris says, “I can start [having] a real life again. I’m looking forward to some sort of normalcy –- making dinners, waking up early, cleaning house. It’s perfect.””

!

Oh, Jillian.

Actually I don’t even really need to comment on that, I think that after your fiance has been caught out cheating on you not once but TWICE post-engagement and had the audacity to have another woman PICK HIM UP AT THE AIRPORT on his return home from PROPOSING TO YOU and then took her to bed along with who knows how many other women who weren’t totally repelled by that hideous tank-top with the contrast binding that he was apparently still sporting, and you take him back, and you move in with him, and you gaily continue to plan a wedding, I guess that your idea of fun being getting up early, cooking and cleaning is not that shocking.   And yet I’m still shocked.   Not SHOCKED as in OMG!  Shocking!   But shocked as in, really?   Wow.   What I used to find annoying about Jillian Harris, I now find sort of… pitiful.

Oh wells.   No time to waste feeling badly for her as she clearly is pretty happy that there are some nice bright throw cushions to use to cover up the stains on Ed’s oft-abused couch.   I’m thinking at the very least they should get a new sofa, or at least have the one that he’s currently inhabiting dipped in boiling water, bleached and professionally dry-cleaned and also sanitized.   I’d kind of worry that I’d catch an STD just from sitting on that thing, frankly.   But what do I know?   I’m just a gossiper.

Oh, reality TV.   How I love thee.   Especially when you spill over into, you know, reality.

OK, I’m done.  I swear, I’m never blogging about these people again.   At least until they announce their marriage and subsequent insta-Divorce.

Or at least, I probably won’t.

*I actually had a conversation with The Bun’s teacher today that likely made no sense to her at ALL because he goes to school in the morning and due to some kind of small stroke or TIA or brain fart, I suddenly became convinced he was in afternoons.  MY OWN CHILD.   WHO I WAS IN THE PROCESS OF PICKING UP FROM SCHOOL.   IN THE MORNING.

Two children — two babies — two different families. It’s the worst thing I can imagine and my heart goes out to these two families, the Spohrs and the Myers for their unspeakable, unimaginable losses. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.

When I read the blogs of these two women who have lost their babies this week, I’m struck by the comments, the hundreds of voices all chiming in to say, “I’m sorry.” And at first the lists just look like long lists of the same thing over and over again, and I imagine being on the other side of that list seeing everyone saying really all they CAN say and still feeling the pain that no one can take away. Then tonight when I was putting my daughter down to sleep and thinking of the families of Thalon Bryce Myers and Madeline Alice Spohr and putting myself in their shoes and crying for them and for those gorgeous babies, I was also thinking of something I once read (or saw in a movie, or hey, maybe I’m making it up, I don’t even know anymore) about a cultural tradition somewhere (I don’t even know where) wherein when someone is in mourning, a group of women (I want to say eleven) come to their house and sit with that person in a room and all of them cry and wail and weep together for some period of time, perhaps simply until the mourner themselves is able to stop crying for enough time to begin to carry on. Obviously, I’m fuzzy on the details, but you get the gist. And it struck me that the internet is a bit like a room in Shana’s house and Heather’s house and all the lists of “I’m sorry” are coming from people who are all crying and weeping and wailing together with these families — for these families — just like we’re all in one room, and maybe all of us crying together for days or weeks or however long it takes will help just a bit. Somehow. To let these families know they aren’t alone, that people all over the country, all over the world — brought together by these blogs, this internet community — are thinking of them and praying for them in all different ways and sending them love and sharing their sorrow.

I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll post this, it just seems like I can’t really post anything else about Easter or how the kids have the flu or how we took them to feed the ducks today and The Birdy ate the bread intended for the actual birds. Or even crappy stuff, like how I just remembered how it’s tax time and I’ll have to face the receipt mountain one of these days or how I haven’t finished writing a book in over a year. None of it seems particularly funny or interesting or even that crappy to me right now because I’m stuck on thinking about all this sadness and wanting to reach out to these families and hold on to them tight and absorb just a bit of their pain.

None of it is right, there is no explanation, no fairness, no reason why. I remember when my babies were just babies how I’d listen to them breathe on the monitor and then go check them when they weren’t breathing loudly enough and how I was so shocked when they were still alive, shocked and so utterly relieved, each time terrified that this was the time when the breathing would have stopped. It didn’t make sense, and when I confided to my mum that I as often as not had to wake my son up just to make sure, she said, “Babies don’t just die. They’re tougher than you think.” I hate that she was wrong. I hate it. My baby didn’t die, and for that I’m so grateful, but babies DO die, and it’s random, and there’s nothing anyone could have done, nothing anyone could do. And that is the heartbreaking truth.

Shana and Heather, we are all of us so so so sorry.

There just aren’t enough words.

So if it’s OK, we’ll all just cry and weep and wail with you for a time in this virtual room, and maybe that will hold you up long enough to keep going, and at the same time, hold all of us up somehow.

Five things, that’s all it is.    Five things that have graced my life.   Five good things. More info here.

Hey, we all need a list of good things, just so we remember that it’s not all parking ticket disputes, exhaustion, and — if you’re me — back pain and random numbness. That one’s pretty specific, but you know what I mean.

1.   The click of a new friendship. I went a long time without making new friends. I don’t know. I’m totally afeared of friend-rejection so I never really put myself out there, I kind of lurk in the background and skulk. But then when I lucked into some amazing friendships and that is just the best.

2.  When my kids dance to the closing credits of a movie.    Like real, full on, tumultuous dancing. They call it “the word music” and they practically kill themselves. When I say “practically”, I mean it because The Birdy is always smashing her head on the World’s Ugliest Fireplace or the floor or her brother, and The Bun tends to miss when he leaps from the couch to the ottoman either squashing her or maiming himself on one of the plastic toys that carpet the place.

3.  The fancy leaf pattern that the coffee girl made in my latte this morning. I love that they bother. For real. I mean, right away I covered it up with a BPA laced plastic lid, but the gesture moves me every time. It makes me want to hug a barrista. A lot of people don’t bother with details anymore.

4.  Construction paper projects. Crafts save my life, even though I kind of hate crafts and never do them myself. I mean “crafts” in the loosest sense of the word: glue, paper, googly eyes, paint, pipe cleaners. We call ‘em “projects”.

5.  Blue sky. Oh, blue sky. STAY.