An Interesting Story

I had to run out and get some last minute stuff for dinner. You know how it goes, you get everything ready for taco salad and at the last minute you realize that you don’t have any tacos. Instead of taco salad, I was preparing meat, cheese and lettuce on a plate. There is nothing to tie everything together. Thus, the last minute trip to Josh’s No Frills Market.

I like this kind of shopping; there is no time to get distracted from your mission. There is a finite amount of time to get to the store, get in the store, get the stuff, get through the checkout and get back home before anyone realizes that you had gone. Buster was actually left outside, but that just means he doesn’t get a treat for looking after the house while I was gone. In point of fact, for all he knows I deserve a treat for looking after the house while he was out. Just in case you were wondering, I didn’t get a treat.

While I was leaving the store, I flashed back to the last time I made this exact same trip. It was back in February and about -40°C. The wind was howling, snow was blowing and I was wearing boots, parka, toque and scarf and still I was cold. Mind you, I was cold for about five months so that wasn’t a new feeling at all. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked and I had to be on the look out for patches of ice that had my name on them.

It just goes to show that my life doesn’t really differ from month to month and year to year. I am good with that; in fact I prefer it to not knowing what is happening next. I have always liked stability, knowing that I have a certain amount of money coming in each week and knowing how much money it cost to live for that week. I would like to know what we are having for dinner the next couple of weeks, but that never happens and I feel that I’m living on the edge by not knowing.

In a way I envy those people who can just take life as it comes, not knowing what or who is around the next corner. I don’t think people are born one way or the other, I think it is more a result of how stable their early lives were. There are also people who have discovered that they can deal with the unexpected quite well. I came from a pretty stable household and I knew that breakfast, lunch and dinner would come at a certain time each day. I knew that the tooth fairy would come when I lost a tooth, Santa always came down the chimney shortly after my brother and I fell asleep Christmas Eve.

Every now and then in my life, I have found myself in situations that were completely out of my control. Initially, I kind of panic, but eventually I will realize that the universe isn’t going to snap me back into my comfortable life. When that happens, I have just started to deal with my situation, probably not as well as some would, but ultimately things have worked themselves out or I wouldn’t be here.

There is a part of me that wishes I would be thrown into a situation like Bilbo Baggins was wizards, dwarves, orcs, dragons and all. I doubt I would do as well as Bilbo did, but it would certainly be an interesting tale to tell the grandkids.

I have a large scar on my right forearm and I plan to tell Hurricane, Tornado and Tsunami that I got it in the knife fight I won their grandma in. I can’t wait until I hear it back from their parents, should be an interesting story.