Disclaimer: Of all the posts I’ve ever published, this one might be the most embarrassing for my parents. Parents? Please don’t take this personal failure upon yourselves. It took many a year and many a bad choice for me to turn out this way. You taking all the blame would just be self-centered.
Now this post may come across a bit like contrived blogger sweeps efforts where I revisit all the ‘WE WERE ON A BREAK’-esque bits that have been well-received over the years. But trust in knowing that while I’m willing to find humour in something awful happening the first time, the second – while still funny for most – is laced with bitter defeat on my end. Mostly because it illustrates that despite having the ability to learn from my mistakes, I lack the interest in taking any steps whatsoever to avoid making said mistakes in the future. I just simply hate myself more the next time.
After the hell of last week whose bitchtastic mantra seemed to be ‘let’s make everything Ben touches crumble’, I spent the entire weekend planning how to turn my luck around. With lists, shopping trips, scheduled house organization, I created a bubble of preparedness that meant I could stumble through this week half-drunk on Bailey’s and everything would still work out okay. One might say this made me a week bit overconfident.
That ‘one’ would be the universe a.k.a. my arch nemesis.
Even as I turned the knob on basement door this morning as I left the house to shovel the driveway, I thought to myself, ‘Now…wouldn’t I look silly if I closed this and locked myself out of my house again.’ And then I proceeded to watch myself close the door.
I DON’T EVEN KNOW.
I’m just going to pause here so you can shout all the obvious things that any other regular human being would have done in advance to avoid such a situation especially after the last time. Believe me, I’ve said them all to myself already but with much more self-loathing.
So what did I do? Well, I stuck to the plan and shoveled until the sickening hatred boiled down to a pathetic disappointment simmer. Then, in considerably less time than it took me the last time this happened (it hurts to even type that), I bit the bullet and went to a neighbour’s house.
The neighbour who sent the newf the ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ card.
Sigh.
But on the plus side, he thought I was the newf so things were looking up. Although that did mean I needed to overcompensate with a Newfoundland accent and sayings. My finest moment was explaining that my situation was ‘tangly’.
Luckily he didn’t feel the need to explain that this was the Christmas Spirit punishing me for my questionable lifestyle – even though at this point I WOULD TOTALLY AGREE – and cut straight to handing me a cordless and phone book. On the other hand, he did point out that he saw me yesterday when my dad had to come jumpstart my car making for an awkward conversation about the daily tragedies of my white collar life.
So now it’s 8:30am. My driveway is impeccably shoveled, I’m $100 poorer, and my new goal for the day is to find the best neighbourly gift basket I can find so Churchie Charlie next door can finally see the advantage of living next to The Gays.
That and sprinkle extra house keys all over the city.
That and remove the doors and windows of my house all together.
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