Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall

So today I went so a someone’s house for a Shalom meeting. I had never been there before, and Google Maps was still acting up, so I was a little hesitant.

When I told my mom, she offered to drive. When I showed her where the place was, she all but withdrew her offer. She told me “maybe” and that she’d let me know a little bit before.

So fast forward to the night of. It’s six-thirty and the bus I would need to take (were I to need to take a bus) would leave at six-fifty. I call my mom and she says that because it’s dark, it’s raining really hard, and she didn’t know the area, that she’d be unable to drive me.

So, thirty minutes later, I find myself walking alone, through the dark, under heavy wind and rain, in an area I’d never been before, on my way to a house that was as far away from the nearest bus stop as possible.

You know how some parents tell their kids that if you’re ever drunk (or something) to just call them and they’d come and pick you up no matter where you were?
Apparently I don’t have those kind of parents.

When it rains it pours

Another bad day today.

And it all has to do with books, interestingly.

So, my plan for the day was to go downtown and buy a book, get my new upass on the way home, stop by my parents house and order some (2) books, buy some chips at the 7-11, then have a nice relaxing walk with the dog.

I spent three or four hours stumbling around downtown trying to buy a book. I tried the Chapters on Robson, but they were sold out. Well, that’s not entirely true. According to the computer terminal database, they had one copy left. So I went to where it should be and couldn’t find it. I went back to the terminal and looked it up again, but this time it said the book was sold out. The book sold out while I was walking to the shelves from the terminal.

But the machine did say that there was one copy left at the Metrotown branch. Getting there should have been simple enough, but I didn’t know how to get there and the Map on my iPhone picked today to completely crap out.

But I got there. It took some doing, but I got there. I rushed to the Chapters at Metrotown and checked the terminal to see if it is still in stock. It said there was one copy left, but when I got there I couldn’t find it. Apparently, “it might have been re-shelved incorrectly or something.” So I left, having wasted my entire afternoon with nothing to show for it.

Then, as the sun was just disappearing over the horizon, I realized I was lost. You know how two posts ago I used the example of getting lost downtown by myself as something I might be terrified of? It turns out I totally am. It was very brief, but it was terrifying. I reoriented myself and made my way to the CanLine.

The campus was likely to already be closed, and I thought that I didn’t need to go to my parents house to order the books, so I just went straight home.

There were two books I wanted to order.

The first was “Last Words of Notable People: Final Words of More Than 3500 Noteworthy People Throughout History“, which I had just learned about today. It’s a library reference book, and I wanted it the second I learned what it was about and that it only cost $9.50 (from $90).

The second was the pre-order of the box set of the audiobook of “The Fault in Our Stars” read by John Green. I really like stories being read by their authors. It also came with extra feelies and a DVD of him talking about his book (something I also enjoy). Plus, they were only doing a limited run of 3,000 (because this was a fan requested thing and they had already hired a person for the official audiobook), so the whole “there are only X many that exist and this is the only time to get it” was sort of a thing. I like souvenirs, basically.

My mom had asked me what I wanted for Christmas (and basically said that if I didn’t tell her, she wouldn’t get me anything) so I was going to get these two things.

So I called her to ask if I could order some books as her Christmas gift to me, and she said to order them on Christmas. Seeing as both books were in short supply, I asked if we could order the books sooner and she said she’d be coming over to pick up my sisters later today (she had dropped them off while I was wandering around downtown) and to just order them then. I was hoping she would just give me her credit card number so I could order them before they ran out, but I decided not to press the matter further.

While I was waiting for her to arrive I found out that the Last Words book didn’t ship to Canada. I was sad.

When she finally did arrive and I went to order the other thing, I found out that they had just sold out. And I was really sad. And nobody cared.

When I told my mom that the thing I wanted her to get me for Christmas was sold out and it was a limited run and they wouldn’t be making any more ever and that I was really sad, she just said “Oh, okay,” and left while saying I needed to clean my room.

But I did get the chips though, so that’s a plus, I guess.

Christmas Party

Today? Today was great.

But… and there’s always a ‘but’ with me, I guess. But it could have been so much better. Like, I had the entire day planned. Wake up, shower, prep for tonight, bus, pick up, bus, set up, etc. But, and I’ve learned this long ago, anything I decide to spearhead only ever goes ‘okay’. It stays afloat, but just barely.

For the two boxes of ice cream I brought (there were two of them), I hand picked each one the day before so that none of them were shaped weird or too big or broken or covered in ice.

You see, I come up with contingency plans for what I can and the plans are never used because other, unforeseen things come up instead.

Like, did you know I had three different playlists of Christmas songs for tonight? One regular one, one that was entirely orchestral and choir-ly in case someone complained the songs were too modern, and one modern one in case someone complained the songs were too dry.

Same with the songs during the moment of ‘silence’. I had the song the dude wanted to play (song X) and I wanted to play a second song to round it out. I had two options for the second song, one that I really liked, and one that I did like but not quite as much but was the same kind of song as song X and would, I don’t know, flow or something.

And during the second song the dude asks if he can read from the bible and I said okay and when he asked when I said “After.” But instead of waiting, he just gets up and cuts off the song. Then he starts reading some extended essay and I want to cut him off but I can’t cut him off because he’s reading from the bible and I can’t cut off someone who is reading the bible in a church.

I really hate when things are hijacked from me. You could say it’s a character flaw, I guess. And I was super pissed when it happened tonight. Sure, okay, yeah, I guess he couldn’t have known, but he shouldn’t have expected me to let him wedge in a thirty minute essay in the middle of the plan.

But the worst part is that there’s nothing I can get angry about. There’s no key event, no unifying thread, no linchpin that I can focus in on. I can’t get mad at the fact that not that many people showed up. I can’t get mad at having two boxes of leftover ice cream in my freezer. I can’t get angry that I only lead two nights out of the year and they both went awry. I can’t get mad over the sharp pain in my leg that woke me up in the middle of the night and lasted all morning. I can’t get mad at the handbell party for being on the same day. i can’t get mad at the fact that a lot of the regulars are in handbell. I can’t get mad at my internet that keeps cutting out while I try to type this. And I can’t get angry that there isn’t anyone I can vent to.

Like, I can’t/don’t talk to my family. I’m on speaking terms with most of them, sure, but speaking isn’t talking. ‘Have you walked the dog yet?’ isn’t talking. ‘Here’s your dinner,” isn’t talking. There’s never a “Are you okay?” or a “How’s life?” or even a “How was your day?” I’ve gone days without talking to anyone. Hell, I can barely get my mom on the phone.

So, instead, I play video games. I watch movies. I, well, I write, I guess.

But it’s so very lonely.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re saying that I should just go out and meet people. But I can’t.

And you’re saying Of course you can. But, no, I can’t.

Because I can’t depend on my family.

Hypothetical: I go downtown by myself and walk around to pass the time and look at things. If I get lost, I am lost forever and completely on my own. I can’t call someone in my family to help pick me up, and the only one I could call would be my mom and she’d complain about it the whole way if she wasn’t to busy/tired to do it at all.

You all have someone. Mother, father, sister, brother, friend, and so on. Someone who’s got your back. A support structure. A safety net. Someone you can vent to. Someone who, when you’ve had a really, really, really bad day they’ll wrap their arms around you and tell you that everything is going to be okay.

And that’s another thing. Rare are the days when I’ll come into physical contact with another person. Handshakes, hugs, high-fives; nothing.

Imagine the loneliest you’ve ever– okay, that’s not entirely fair. Imagine the second loneliest you’ve ever felt, and imagine feeling that every day.

But enough about the negatives.

Because today? On the grand scale? Today was great.

Tipping

So the other day, some friends and I went to that sushi place at Lansdowne (shiny black facade, small zen-stream thing right inside (edit: it’s the Sui Sha Ya Japanese Restaurant) for lunch.

It being a sushi place at lunch, we ordered from the all-you-can-eat menu. For those of you that don’t know, the only sushi I ever eat are California Rolls (‘cuse I’m weird). Rolls were ordered in 1’s (rather than 3’s or 6’s), so I ordered 18 for myself, which was rounded up to 30 since the others wanted some as well. We wrote all our food on the order form, and made a copy on a napkin to make sure they weren’t going to keep a bunch of food until the end, and charge us extra for not eating it.

Everyone else got all their food, while only 13(of 30) pieces of California Rolls arrived which all fell apart to some extent.

When I inquired about why we received only less than half of the California Rolls we ordered, the waiter suggested that perhaps they forgot, and handed us an order form to order more. Not wanting to wait another indeterminate amount of time, and not wanting to have both orders suddenly arrive or something, so I just called it a wash. The 13 wouldn’t fill me up, but I would at least be ‘not that hungry’ for a while.

When we payed, one of my friends footed the bill (with bills), and just told the rest of us to toss in some tip. Before we could, however, the waitress came and took the money. We were a little confused and thought we should give more tip than whatever change would have been left from the bills that had been put down, but then I reminded them about how they gave us less than half the California Rolls that we ordered, and we agreed that we were less than satisfied.

Just before we were about to leave, the manager brought the bill-tray back (with the change) and told us to give more tip. When he saw our surprise at this request, he suggested that ‘since there were four of us, we could each toss in a dollar,’ before leaving us with the tray.

I was pretty angry when I parted with my dollar. When he came back, I handed him the tray and said loudly “Don’t worry about the rest of my California Rolls.”

I don’t think he was paying attention.