The Seattle Suitcase Saga

I don’t know why airport limo drivers always get lost on the way to my condo building, but it seems like an epic fail for car GPS systems. Every time I have to talk a lost limo driver through the directions to my door, it makes me grumpy. It’s probably my own fault for always buying cheaper airfare for flights that leave at the crack of dawn before the airport express train starts running.

This time I was on my way to Seattle, and it was just two days after Trump’s election and one day after the women’s march I’d participated in. I’d posted photos of the march on Facebook and Instagram but --  in a fit of paranoia -- had deleted them all in case the U.S. border guards decided I was a troublemaker not admissible to the States.

After my limo driver finally found me, our mutual alarm over Trump’s victory overcame my grumpiness. But we would still be arriving at the airport later than I’d planned, and that was a problem because I was already cutting it close – something I tend to do with departure times.

Inside the airport my fears of being late and missing my flight skyrocketed when I confronted a total mob scene. I found a giant lineup of people who, like me, did not want to deal with the self-service kiosks and were overloading the “Assistance” lineup. (This labelling implies that you are somewhat defective if you don’t want to use the kiosks.) Large groups of jovial Chinese senior citizens with massive suitcases, giant families with neither English nor French, couples in the wrong lineup until the very last second – they were all there, remonstrating and straining the capacity of the three agents working the counters. Everyone seemed to have multiple giant suitcases.

Experimenting with carry-on luggage to avoid paying Air Canada’s exorbitant baggage fees, I had a small, wheeled, designer-brand suitcase I’d found cast-off in my storage locker room. I’ve found excellent furniture, clothes, and accessories this way, and love telling people that the purse they’ve just complimented me on was “found in the garbage.”

I’d never had a wheeled bag before and always made fun of people for being lazy and not carrying their bags. But here I was, rumbling along in the lineup, feeling sheepish but part of the mainstream for once.

At security I felt I was being singled out, though of course it was all “random” as one of the guards told me. My silver belt buckle set off alarm bells, and so did my boots with all their metal hooks. I was frisked thoroughly and asked to go through a body-scanning machine.

In Vancouver airport, I had just under two hours to kill before my flight to Seattle. Following signage, I walked into the Duty Free area on my way to U.S. Customs. But the departure board there said my flight was delayed by 1½ hours. That left me just enough time to take the train downtown and go for a walk along the seawall. I looked for an exit and found a staircase leading downstairs.

But I was stopped by an airport employee. “You can’t go down there. It’s a restricted area,” she said.

I asked how I could get outside. She flagged down an Air Canada agent.

“You’ve officially left Canada,” she said, “If you want to go outside, you have to clear Canada Customs.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

The Air Canada agent said she would escort me through the restricted area and down to the arrivals hall so I could clear customs and leave the building.

I approached a Customs agent in the arrivals hall and explained that I had not really been out of Canada, that I had just inadvertently walked into the zone between “Canada” and “U.S. Customs” and had only been there about 30 seconds.

“You still have to clear Customs,” he said and handed me a Declaration form. “Fill this out,”

“But I haven’t actually been out of Canada,” I said.

“Officially, you have,” he said.

I sighed and filled out the form, No, I hadn’t bought anything, nor had I been to any farms, and for sure I had been out of Canada for less than 24 hours.

I breezed through Customs without having to explain my 30-second absence from Canada.

And when I arrived back from downtown Vancouver, I cleared U.S. Customs without being interrogated about my political affiliations. I celebrated by going for a “flight” of Okanagan Valley wines at a small café.

My positive view of America persisted when I left Seattle to fly back to Canada a few days later. The Seattle airport was fully staffed, so all the security gates were open and there were no bottlenecks. No one searched me, and no alarms went off. All security staff seemed efficient, knowledgeable and polite. I was impressed. Americans have Trump but they’re organized! We have Trudeau but our airports are chaos!

The little wheeled suitcase was not a success, though. It was so small that I was ridiculously short on clothing and even had to buy a new pair of boots because there hadn’t been enough room to bring a second, more winter-oriented pair with me. Of course, the $150 I spent on the boots was more than I would have paid to check my full-size duffle bag.

Once home in Toronto, I decided to put the suitcase back where I’d found it on the storage locker room floor. This was exquisitely bad timing, as the building management were about to do a storage locker inspection in concert with a cleanup.

A couple of days later a perplexed resident of my building gave me a call.

“I have your suitcase,” he said. “It was on top of my storage locker, and I got a notice from the building manager to say I was breaking a bylaw by storing something outside of the locker! Anyway, I found your business card in the suitcase, so I thought I should call you.”

He gave me his suite number, and when I showed up at his door, he was holding my suitcase.

“Actually….” I said, “You can have it. I was trying to get rid of it but the building management people figured it was yours.” I explained about the cast-off area of the storage locker, and apologized for the confusion.

He was happy to get a free suitcase, which I found funny, since his condo looked way more swanky than mine.

But everyone loves free stuff.

Dark deeds in the dead of winter

In the darkest days of winter, I can get up to all kinds of extreme activities, including cleaning and organizing. There’s something about the winter solstice that inspires me to go through drawers and closets. Coupled with my desire to find new ways to save money, it’s an amusement that yields mixed results.

One day I got into my store of camping food, looking for dinners I could parlay into edible indoor eatables. There was an unlabelled silver foil pouch. I suspected it was peanut sauce and fantasized about chicken satay with jasmine rice and tender grilled vegetables. When I dared to slit open the package, however, I found some kind of Thai vegetarian dinner, with tiny corn cobs and bamboo shoots. Sniffing it, I determined that it had not gone off and would be safe to eat. For dinner, I made jasmine rice and heated up the dinner.

But, this years-old dinner was inedible…..Horrible, stale, flavourless, like trying to eat chopped up cardboard packaging. I threw it out after three bites, and made egg wraps instead—and the tortillas, which had been in the freezer since the summer, were stale. So much for shortcuts to deliciousness.

Another night I made vegetarian chili and decided that since it was a bit watery, I’d put in a can of tomato paste. But when I opened the can, I found a well in the middle, full of suspicious-looking liquid, and all the thick tomato sauce up around the sides of the can. I threw it out, pondering the surprise that canned food can actually go bad. I may have to rethink my stash of emergency canned food….

Everything eventually breaks down and everything eventually becomes chaos; on a small scale, I’m fighting this all the time in my apartment. Even discovering mold on my door frame was cause for alarm and thorough soapy scrubbing.

My wardrobe is a travesty. I have the happy problem of having lost 20 pounds and finding that most of my clothes are now too big for me. Even my tights are now loose. And my knee-high winter boots really needed to be replaced, but I’m trying to save money. Unfortunately, there are some holes in the sides of the boots that cold winds from the Arctic tend to blow through, so I may have to duct tape them. Duct tape really is this girl’s best friend.

But following my friend J.’s lead, I have “found” some new pairs of socks in my drawer and have paired together singles that have slight resemblances to each other; for instance, two odd blue socks have come together as a pair, regardless of their being not quite the same shade of blue. Under knee-high boots, these new pairs are not even noticeable to the general public.

I’m spending more time online than is healthy for my back, but when a close friend told me about a great site that aggregates content from amazing sites all over the ‘Net, I went to check it out. To my surprise, it was a porn site: bigg.com….. Then I realized I’d noted a “b” instead of a “d”: digg.com.

On Christmas day I turned up CBC for the annual broadcast of  Handel’s Messiah – but had to turn it off after a while because a countertenor was singing the mezzo-soprano solos. The horror! As a mezzo, I have an innate dislike of countertenors because they take over coveted and rare mezzo roles. My nightmare is that I’ll go see a performance of Carmen, and find that a countertenor has taken the role.

I have door issues. I pull when it says “push” and push when it says “pull.” And I go out the entrance and in the exit. But at Homesense I actually do it on purpose because part of me enjoys seeing people give me irate looks as I enter through the exit. Yes, I do act my shoe size sometimes (10).

My life of housecleaning and online idling is soon coming to an end, but in the meantime, I think about how other people make a living, and make way more than I do. On the street the other day, I overheard a rent boy on the phone setting up a date. “The rate is $250 and I live at Queen and Dufferin,” he said “Top or bottom…..”

Close to my condo, a large Tim Horton’s is about to open, and they’re looking for staff. For about two seconds, I considered applying. It would be convenient, after all. But I don’t think the uniform would be a particularly good look for me. And they’d probably put me on the morning shift. I’m terrible first thing in the morning

For example, last week when I first woke up, I reached over to my chest of drawers to grab something and knocked over a brass ornament with sharp edges. It smashed into my mouth and cut my lip. Stemming the flow of blood, and applying ice to reduce the swelling, I realized this was going to make me look like I either had a giant cold sore or was just punched—so perfect for making a positive impression on new clients and inspiring confidence in my competence….

Road trip gone wrong

 In the end, it’s the numbers that always get me. Party invitations that go out without the date. Missed trains and flights. Event promos sent without the event’s address. Misunderstood mortgage terms—all these numbers go into my brain and immediately vaporize. I have to be ever vigilant and make sure I check and recheck numbers constantly.

Friday of the Thanksgiving weekend, I and my adventurous friend, just back from four months in the wilderness—let’s call him Wilderness Man—decided to go on a road trip that included a stop at his family cottage in eastern Ontario and a hike in to my isolated property on a picturesque river. All we had to do was pick up a rental car and drive a few hours northeast.

But the two rental agent guys claimed I was not “in the system” even though I knew I had booked a car. And of course there were no spare cars floating around on such a busy weekend. Patience is not a virtue I possess, so I hounded the rental agents to keep checking. There was not a trace of my online booking.

“I can prove I made the reservation,” I said.  As well as patience, however, I also do not possess a smartphone, which I could have used to look through my old emails and find the confirmation. I needed to go home.

“Take the shuttle,” one of the guys told me, gesturing to a van that had pulled up outside.

At that moment, Wilderness Man arrived, and I had to sheepishly brief him on the screw-up. I promised I’d be back in a minute with the confirmation number.

Back home, I pulled up my emails and found my car rental confirmation, noting with horror that it was for the following Friday.

I had to then ignominiously return to the car rental agency and admit to all three guys that I had massively screwed up and booked the wrong weekend.

Plan B was to find another rental agency with a spare car. None were to be found anywhere near the GTA, nor along the 401 corridor all the way to Kingston. Then Wilderness Man pointed to Barrie on my old-fashioned paper map. And there actually was a car available in Barrie—it just meant going completely out of our way in the wrong direction.

Wilderness Man and I  lugged all our gear along Front Street to Union Station. I observed that we both had more stuff than either one of us would have taken on a one-year trip around the world.

On the Go bus, it was a two-hour trip north through farm country to the downtown Barrie bus terminal. We had no idea where the car rental office was, and suspected it would not be nearby. Wilderness Man refuses to buy a cell phone because he spends half the year off the grid, and I have a cheapie that does not let me Google anything. So we were stuck in 1999.

I approached an idling cab, mispronouncing the street name where the Barrie car rental place was located. After repeating the street name numerous times, only to be observed with puzzlement by the cabbie, I approached the next one in line and got the same response. The two cabbies conferred and tried to decipher our destination. At last they hit on the right pronunciation. Triumph!

As expected, the rental agency was a $20 cab ride, far away in the distant suburbs in the middle of an ugly strip mall.

“Why would anyone out here need to rent a car?” Wilderness Man mused. “They all have cars and would have to drive here to rent a car. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Never mind, it works in our favour,” I said.

 “People must come here just to rent moving vans,” he wisely concluded.

We hit the road and started driving north and then east. We were at this point about four hours behind schedule.

“Just think,” I said, “If I hadn’t booked the wrong date, we’d be at the cottage by now!”

The journey east went without incident, except in a small town when I pulled out in front of a large pickup truck that came speeding out of nowhere, the driver angrily blowing the horn. For some reason, I found this hilarious, and perversely delighted in driving at exactly 80 kph on the highway, with the pickup driver fuming behind me.

At twilight we pulled off the highway and drove a short distance to a small cottage community. Wilderness Man’s family cottage was right on the lake, and the sun was just starting to sink down below the trees, flooding the lake with pink.

“It’s beautiful!” I exclaimed.

As I unloaded the car, I heard Wilderness Man fumbling with the lock.

“What’s going on?” I joked. “Don’t tell me the key’s not working….?”

“It’s not,” he replied.

We stood there for a second, taking in the immensity of the problem.

“I have no break and enter skills!” I said. Wilderness Man pulled out a bank card and tried to move the dead bolt with it. It didn’t budge. Then we circumnavigated the cottage, attempting to jimmy open every window and standing helplessly in front of them, looking blankly at these insurmountable barriers. There just seemed no way of breaking into the cottage.

“It always looks so easy in the movies,” Wilderness Man commented. We knew we’d have success if we just threw a rock through the door window, but the problem with that idea was that it would result in a smashed-in window…

Wilderness Man suddenly realized there might be a spare key at the second cottage his family owned just up the road. Of course, this entailed trying to figure out how to get into that cottage without a key, but after a lot of searching in the dark, we eventually found one hidden somewhere. And once inside, Wilderness Man phoned his mother, who told him where the spare key was for cottage #1. We were in!

To get home on Sunday night, we were supposed to drive back to Barrie and then take the Go bus to Toronto. This seemed like such a dumb idea that we decided to drive to Toronto and pay the extra fee. As we drove west along the 401, gaggles of Canada Geese flew above us in rag-tag flocks, heading north, which was completely the wrong direction, honking at each other. They weren’t even in proper V formations and they appeared confused and unfocused. I was really happy to see that in nature there are always screw-ups and therefore my own problems with numbers are just part of nature.

It's a gas!

I hate throwing things out when they're broken, and my first impulse is always to fix the object in question. For instance, my fan is fixed with elastic bands, electrical tape and duct tape. It looks like something someone threw out in 1956, but it works! 

With my shower curtain that I'd had for about four years, I'd repaired the rips with Scotch tape and duct tape, but these fixes weren't holding, due to the propensity of the shower curtain to get wet and compromise the stickiness of the tape, which then hung off it in soggy curlicues. Also, after trying half-heartedly to scrub the grime and slime from the bottom of the shower curtain, I finally decided it was time to buy a new one.

I'd heard about "eco-friendly" shower curtains that didn't "off gas" toxic fumes, so I went out to buy one. After all, who wants endocrine-disrupting gases insinuating themselves into the atmosphere of your home? I suspect my endocrines are already suffering from living in downtown Toronto and breathing in fossil-fuelled transportation devices.

I wasn't happy with the price of the "eco-friendly" shower curtain, but I figured I'd sacrifice money for the sake of not succumbing to phthalate-induced illnesses.

When I got home, I laboriously took down the old, ripped shower curtain and, regretfully, threw it down the garbage chute. Hanging up the new one, I noticed it had a very strong smell that I found highly unpleasant. Still, I expected this smell to diminish after a few hours. 

It didn't. In fact, the awful smell permeated my whole apartment. I could have sworn I smelled it when I got off the elevator in the hallway! Drastic measures needed to be taken.

I pulled the shower curtain down off the rail, letting it fall into the tub, which I then filled with hot water and expensive bubble bath. I left the smelly shower curtain in there for a few hours before rehanging it. After it had dried off, though, it still emitted a very strong chemically odour.

I pulled the shower curtain back down and hung it outside on the balcony, hoping that maybe the "fresh" air would kill the fumes. But no, this didn't work.

That was it: I was forced to throw out the shower curtain -- that was two sent to landfill within one week -- and I bought a new benign-smelling one that had no boasts about being better for the environment. So much for my environmental cred…..

My date with an Italian…..

What's a girl to do on a hot July weekend when Formula 1 racing cars are speeding around a track just a 10-minute walk from your place? She gets outta town. This downtowner decided to take off first thing Saturday morning in a rental car and head for the Uplands backpacking trail in Algonquin Park.

The rental was a Fiat, the kind you see in the TV commercials where all the Fiats drive by themselves from Italy, under the Atlantic, and arrive on North American shores pumping Euro-dance music. Cute, eh? I thought so, not realizing that CUTE is not exactly the attribute you want in a car that needs to take you over a long distance without aggravating you over dumb little details.

The Fiat was another Rubiks cube for me. 

The first sign of trouble was the key. I couldn't locate it on the FOB. When I asked the parking lot attendant where the key was, he pushed a button on the FOB and the key shot out of a slot on the side. 

Mumbling aloud about unnecessary gadgetry, I got into the Fiat and was overwhelmed by the stylish leather seats and slickly designed instrument panel made to look like a Lear jet cockpit. 

Problem was, I couldn't figure out how to do anything. 

Adjusting mirrors, tilting the seat back, locating the flashers, finding the sound system controls -- all became an ordeal that I partially gave up on because I really just wanted to hit the road. Leaving the underground parking lot, I had to feed the parking voucher into a machine. This was awkward because I was unable to figure out how to open the window. Normally you open a car window using buttons on the door… but there were none on the Fiat. A few hours later I discovered the window buttons in the middle of the dashboard! 

Once on the road, the engine kept revving up as if it were on manual transmission. Suspecting this Fiat was a manual/automatic cross like I'd unknowingly rented once before, I checked the owner's manual when I got to my apartment to pick up my bags. No mention of this type of transmission.

I clumsily packed the car. How was I supposed to push the seat back so I could fit my backpack into the minuscule back seat? Where were the levers? Who knows?……I stuck my pack in the tiny trunk instead. 

I blasted up the Don Valley Parkway. As my speed increased, the transmission shifted like it was on manual. Every time it shifted, the car jerked, leaving my eyebrows behind. I couldn't believe how noisy the engine was! I could barely hear 102.1's retro grunge, and I had to turn up the volume. Still the engine screamed like it was being tortured in the Roman catacombs. 

There were even gear numbers showing on the Lear jet instrument panel. In order to make the car slightly less noisy and shift from gear 3 to gear 4 I had to zoom up to 140 kph. But how long could I sustain this speed? If felt like I was driving a go kart on a Formula 1 track-- or driving in one of those dreams where you don't really feel in control.

The gears and screaming engine really annoyed me as I drove non-stop to the West Gate of Algonquin Park. You may wonder why I didn't stop and check the car's manual more carefully during the trip; well, I was timing the drive... It took me exactly three and a half hours from Harbourfront to the west gate up highway 35 to avoid weekend cottage country rush hour on highway 400. 

As soon as I jumped out of the car, I was accosted by a young couple who'd also rented a Fiat and wanted to know how to push the seats back. "No idea!" I said.

Over lunch, I pored through the manual. There was something called the Sport button, to be pushed and used on tight curves. I was irrationally paranoid of trying it, though. What if it put the car totally out of control and I crashed into some Canadian Shield pink rock? 

After lunch I got back into the car and shifted into Drive, then pulled onto highway 60. The car hummed quietly, with no more revving or crazy jerking. I suddenly noticed that the gear shift had a "D" with a "+" and a "-" sign beside it, and that I'd driven all the way from Toronto with it in "+" or overdrive.

But putting cares about the car aside, I changed into my hobo-esque hiking boots with destroyed soles and a melted tongue…It was time to get physical with my backpack and walk into the woods for some solo camping.

Drain Drama: Diary of mad hour in my bathroom

7:24 - Realize bathroom sink is clogged. Water stuck in sink and not moving.

7:25 - Pull out sink plug and notice how covered in slime it is. Realize have not cleaned it for years, maybe ever.

7:27 - Get on hands and knees and awkwardly look in cupboard under sink. Pull out thing-a-ma-jigger that works the sink plug.

7:29 - Attempt to stand up, and bang head. Swear loudly. Notice water still trapped in sink.

7:30 - Remove all crap from inside cupboard. Notice things I didn't know I still owned and for which I've needlessly bought duplicates…(i.e. nail polish remover)

7:37 - Back down on hands and knees. Unscrew some other thingy. Water begins pouring into cupboard. Desperately screw thing back in. 

7:41 - Dump vinegar and baking soda into sink. Watch interesting sizzling. But no movement on water.

7:43 - Dump eco-friendly toilet cleaner into sink. Watch it float around uselessly. Swear some more.

7:45 - Bring out chemical warfare - DRANO - and dump crystals in sink. Go watch Big Bang Theory for a few minutes. 

8:00 - Back to sink. Ugly blue pond of water trapped in sink. No movement.

8:01 - Contort body into unnatural shape again and go back inside cupboard to uplug thingy. 

8:03 - Ugly blue water pours into cupboard and onto arms. Scream like banshee and run to kitchen sink to wash skin.

8:08 - Sulk over chemical burns and hives forming on skin. Rewash with extra soap.

8:11 - Take wire coat hanger and straighten it. Put down into drain and wiggle around. All sorts of hard scum comes back up. 

8:14 - Turn on water. Ugly blue water pours into empty cupboard. 

8:15 - Clean up mess under cupboard. Get bucket and put it under drain. Remove thingy. Water pours into bucket. Genius!

8:22 - Try putting chain down drain. Suddenly lose grip and chain falls down drain! Swear like sailor. Stomp around in circles scaring cat.

8:27 - Using a plier, fashion a small hook on the end of the straightened hanger. Stick down drain and carefully "fish" for chain. Swear and feel like crying and laughing at once.

8:31 - Eventually get hold of chain and bring back up out of drain. Very slimy. 

8:35 - Call male friends asking for help. None available until Sat. Unacceptable!

8:45 - However, hear back from Frank, who offers to bring over "snake" tomorrow. Plumbing appointment set for 12:30 EST.

Epilogue: It took three tries, but Frank's snake finally busted through the giant clog, and water could flow again. If you've never seen what soap and hairs do when they bond together in a drain for years on end, I can tell you it ain't pretty….

Lock up your fruit trees

The urban foraging season is here! I was thrilled to find a big rhubarb plant growing in a yard beside a U of T building this week. Assuming no one was ever going to pick it and it would just go to waste, I stealthily snuck into the yard, and cut a bunch of rhubarb stalks, took them home, and stewed them for dessert. Recipe: Simmer the stalks in a bit of water until they're soft, add sugar, and voila…. sweet/sour deliciousness.

Every spring I'm on a quest for abandoned rhubarb. One year I found a nice big plant growing on Sudbury Street. I pulled out my knife and was about to hack off some stalks when I looked up and realized I was right out in front of Dufflet desserts; very likely it was their rhubarb they were planning to bake into some delectable dessert. As it was 2:00 in the afternoon, I jumped on my bike and got out of there fast before someone inside noticed the rhubarb robber...

In fact, nothing is safe from my predation. If your fruit-bearing tree or bush has branches shooting over your fence onto the public space of a sidewalk, look out -- my highly sensitive fruit-raiding radar will hone in on your fruit and pick and eat it. Plus, I have several secret locations where I usually pick berries.

I was discomfited to see the new configuration of the park at Clarence Square. A section of it has been cordoned off and made into a leash-free dog-run area. This is great for the dogs, but not so great for me, since there's an apple tree now inside the dog area. I used to pick apples from it in the fall by hitting them with a stick so they fell onto the ground… Now? The ground is not looking too sanitary.. So goodbye, Clarence Square apple pies.

If I trusted Lake Ontario, I'd be out fishing at Harbourfront every morning to catch dinner. But how healthy is that environment for fish? According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, mercury, PCB, and dioxin levels have dropped drastically in Lake Ontario fish…. But -- I just can't do it. It's like when I went swimming at Cherry Beach a couple of years ago -- the water was officially clean enough to swim in -- but it just felt wrong, and I did not linger. (Plus, there were tall weeds threatening to wrap themselves around my legs and drown me like in a horror movie.)

I've been goaded further in my foraging frenzy by taking an edible and medicinal foods workshop. Suddenly, after going on a guided walk through a Rosedale ravine and sampling a profusion of edible plants, I'm looking funny at every plant I see growing anywhere in the city. No plant is safe from my herbivorous gaze.

Garlic mustard is everywhere (it's an invasive species, and we can help eradicate it by eating it), and my big love now is gout weed. It's so delicious! I can pick handfuls of it for on-the-spot salad eating. Stinging nettle and burdock are everywhere too. Most exotic are the Japanese knotweed plants, which look like bamboo from another planet. These are also an invasive species and should be devoured. The only proviso is that you need to eat them right away; otherwise the stalks get soggy and lose their flavour.

With all these plants and berries growing all over the city, I may not need to feel so bad about being unable to afford organic farmer's market prices!