I was dismayed to discover that $1 drink days at McDonald’s is officially done for the year, meaning that summer has in fact come to an end. I am in mourning – not so much for summer, but for $1 Diet Coke. That is an excellent price for Diet Coke, and it comes in such delightfully large cups. Goodbye, Summer 2015. I won’t miss your smoky air, excessive heat, or clothing worn for comfort over style.

BRING ON THE FALL!

I’ve never pumpkin spiced anything, but man oh man do I love fall.

As of this writing, I am officially 12 days away from my trip, which is both forever and not nearly enough time. I finally caved to the siren song of packing, and I’ve been 98% ready to go since Monday. All that remains to be packed are things I am currently using: medication, moisturizer, makeup, money, macbook, mariachi band, marsupials, mayonnaise, Monk. Every other letter of the alphabet is all packed up neatly in my suitcase, and I am ready to go.

I’ve got the pre-travel willies, though – the kind where I envision all sorts of terrible things happening and/or get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff I want to do. When this happens, I start to have second thoughts about traveling: sure, I COULD go to Europe and have Adventures and whisper secrets into foreign winds and the like, but I could also sit at home on my couch and watch reruns of Bob’s Burgers. While the latter is always tempting, I know the former is going to be amazing. At least, I hope. It’s my first solo trip, after all. I can’t even imagine the sort of ridiculous trouble I could find myself in because Kimli.

Excited. And sure hoping my cough-barf-at-3am goes away before I leave.

“So I just tell her your number and she can mail you?”

“Yes, just give her my email address exactly as I’ve told you. You have to spell it exactly like that, or it won’t work.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“kimli at deeay dot com” (note: this is the shortest “email number” I’ve got)

“k .. i .. m .. ad?”

“No, it’s Kimli – k-i-m-l-i AT, a-t”

“Okay, k-i-m-l-i at ..”

“deeay dot com. That’s d-e-e-a-y ..”

“d .. e .. a ..”

“No, two Es – d-e-e-a-y”

“d .. e .. e .. a .. y ..”

“Dot com”

“d .. o .. t ..”

“No, just a dot. Like a period.”

“dot .. con. c-o-n?”

“No, mom. dot c-o-m.”

“Okay, it’s kim dot d com?”

“No, mom. Let’s start again.”

Eventually she was able to repeat it back to me somewhat properly. I am not expecting her cousin to ever actually email me.

Also, at this point, I think my mother might be a Master Troll and has been playing me all along.

Doing things without technology is stupid and complicated.

For Reasons, we’ve decided to give my mother some money each month. In today’s modern age of beeps and boops, this should be a relatively easy thing to do. However, as my mother is approximately as technical as a bowl of mashed potatoes, it’s turned into this bizarrely complicated process that has me one roadblock away from training pigeons to transport cash in little money sacks tied to their legs.

So, giving money to someone. I use Blue Bank, but mom has account with Green Bank. No big deal – I can transfer the money electronically! Except the recipient needs to receive notification of the transfer, which is sent either by email or a text message. My mom has no email, and no mobile phone. The easiest option is off the table, because it’s 1963 and going to the bank is an Outing that requires pearls and a matching Chanel suit and husband refuses to give me money for such foolish finery.

Okay, second option: going to a TD bank and setting up a monthly transfer. Except banks don’t do that anymore, because they want you to go online and use e-transfers to send money to and fro – after all, it’s much easier that way. Sooooooooo I’m now back to my original dilemma – the one where my mother is as technical as a pair of mismatched socks – let’s go to option three.

Option Three is Playing Mommy. I handle a couple of mom’s bill payments, and I’ve done so by creating utility accounts in her name then adding my own auto-pay information. Unfortunately, banks are minutely more secure than the phone company, in that their “prove you’re you” standards are higher. I can fake being mom for some things, but it’s harder to do with a bank. Unless I had Power of Attorney, or something.

Oh wait, I totally have that.

I have no way of proving it, though. All the paperwork is in Victoria.

So, Option Four: open my OWN Green Bank account, and transfer money through it. Except (and you knew there would be an except) Green Bank Website is broken and I can’t complete the account creation process OR save my progress so I can finish it on a different computer. I’m back at square fucking one, and all I want to do is Good Daughter stuff and technology is MAKING IT DIFFICULT.

My remaining option is to go to a meatspace bank every month and transfer money manually like some kind of opium farmer from the Mesozoic era, also known as that pearl-and-pantsuit option mentioned above.

This will not do.

I wonder if I have cheques. Maybe I could just give her post-dated cheques, and she can go to the meatspace bank and cash it.

Why is this so complicated. I hate everything.

Ed’s out of town on business. Whenever he travels, I have a ritual I like to perform: I go 36 hours without human contact, from after work one day until the start of work two days out. I arrange to work from home in the middle, order food in, and don’t speak to anyone that isn’t also behind a keyboard. It is a serious hardship to have to acknowledge the delivery person, so sometimes I’ll cook my favourite foods that Ed isn’t crazy about and go the whole time not wearing clothes. It’s awesome.

I’m not the most social person, but I was an isolated only child. As the years passed, I grew up into an emotionally stunted adult – I do enjoy people time, but having only my lonesome (and the cats) in my home does wonders to reset my brain. Plus, I get to eat all the things I like. My palate is as sophisticated as my social skills, so I can eat the same things over and over and over again – but Ed often gets sick of my favourites and insists we branch out. Pfft.

Back to today. It’s premature November outside, so I happily arranged to work from home today so I could get some quiet work done, then planned to order food in. It was right about then that things started to go wrong:

• The place I wanted to order from has a broken website and app, so I couldn’t order online
• I called the restaurant to place an order for delivery, but the number wasn’t in service – they’re in the no-power zone
• I called the place that’s technically closer to me, but they won’t deliver to my address because they’re a block into Burnaby and I’m a block outside of Burnaby
• I decided to pick up the order, since I’m a creature of habit and I really wanted that exact food
• The elevator is broken (again), so I had to take ten doors to get to my car
• I decided to get a Diet Coke from McDonald’s on my way home instead of my way out, but when I arrived the Mack truck had just arrived and was blocking everything
• LIFE IS HARD

I’m finally at home, in my PJs, with some Diet Coke and a cat trying to eat my dinner. I barely survived that harrowing ordeal in the real world, and I am kind of petulant that my 36-hour Me Time was interrupted by outside. I have to go back into the office for the rest of the week and Ed gets home on Thursday night, so this was my only chance. BOO. I WANTED TO HERMIT.

All of my ridiculous non-problems aside, it is officially September and three weeks away from my trip. I am now “allowed” to pack, but I am teasing myself by drawing it out a little. Oh, yeah. You leave yourself only 18 days to pack, you filthy whore. You’re so bad.

If you need me, that’s too bad. I do not exist until tomorrow morning at 9.

So far today I:

• Remembered to take my pants off at work
• Managed to get – and eat – lunch
• Audited the ever-loving fuck out of my original audit, resulting in a MEGA AUDIT that is so compliant they’re inventing a new fancy acronym for it (I suggested “EFC” for “Extreme Fucking Compliance”)

I WIN! So far, I mean. I’m still getting a haircut in 75 minutes and plan to go swimming later tonight so those could turn out badly, but so far today I am rocking this Wednesday.

Last night we gave a lady hard poops.

(I’m on a roll today – it’s not even noon and I’ve already made two poop jokes on the internet)

A large group of friends went out for dinner last night to celebrate Renee’s birthday. After we stuffed ourselves silly, we walked back to where Ed and I had parked our bikes because I had forgotten to bring Renee’s present with me to dinner. While at the bikes, we did a number of civilly disobedient things, like:

• Laugh at the travel cards from the previous post
• Eat a lot of candy
• Stand around talking and having a good time
• Taking a group picture

While all these petty crimes were going on, a lady who looked very very constipated walked by our group and demanded to know why we were there. It was not enough we were parked there – we did not live in her building, so she told us to leave. As we weren’t doing anything untoward and she likely did not own the sidewalk, we declined her helpful suggestion. This made her angry, so she threatened to call the police. Knowing the most illegal thing any of us had done that day was to sit idly by my scooter at an expired meter, we cheerfully agreed that she should call the police. This made her angrier! She called someone on the phone, glaring at us fiercely the entire time as we carried on with our hilarious conversations and candy (there was so much candy).

As she spoke on the phone (undoubtedly to the very Chief of Police), several things happened:

• Two volunteer community “police” walked by our group and completely ignored us
• An elderly lady with a delightfully puffy dog walked by with her companion and allowed us all to pet her fluffy dog and was very sweet
• The constipated woman went into her building but stood at the door watching our every move, including whipping out her phone to film our nefarious activity

The police never showed up, and we eventually dispersed – not because she was recording our criminal asses, but because we were actually in the midst of saying goodbye to one another (there were 11 of us, it takes a while) when she so rudely interrupted us. She filmed us for a good long while before giving up, but not before warning others in the building lobby about the no-good ruffians lurking on the sidewalk outside the building.

Just for fun, our group was made up of:

• Web Applications Team Lead and Project Manager
• Lead Catherine
• Senior Administrative Assistant, Executive Office
• Senior Technical Writer and Manager, Special Projects
• Guy in Charge of #YVR
• A Social Worker who does more good on a random Tuesday at 3pm than the rest of us do all year
• Director of Ed, Sales and Analytics
• A Technical CEO
• Senior Procurement and Outfitting Manager
• Mega DBA
• Noah

Who’s bad?

We’re bad.

That woman must have had the hardest, angriest poops last night.

—

This seems like an appropriate place to acknowledge that although the woman was over the top in her anger and response (and to be truthful, we in our cheek and sass), we all benefited greatly from being mostly white upwardly mobile Canadians. Had we (well, they) been of colour, or in a city less Vancouver, it could have had a much different ending. I am uneasily grateful for this privilege.