Local Mysteries

I promised positivity so I have managed to find a silver lining in each circumstance.

Why is shopping for clothes in this country a lot like trying to ignore a creepy guy in a bar?

The moment you walk into a store, number 32 appears and asks seductively, “ya getting thru?” Getting through the doorway? Yes, I managed that.

What I would prefer, “Hi, welcome to “store name” we have sales on “blah, blah and blah, my name is blah if you need any help.”

What we get? Nothing short of a stalker, following your every move, continuing to let you know that when you get to the register tell them number 32 helped you. If by help, you mean studied the silhouette of my body, suggested heinous options, breathed down the back of my neck and possibly pick pocketed me, then yes, number 32 did in fact help me.

How do you get annoying clerks off your back? Ask for a pair of jeans that are “not skinny.” One of two things will happen. They will either tell you they don’t have any and leave you for dead trying to find a pair, or they will search high and low for a few minutes giving you enough time to hide behind the pants rack and wait it out. At this point, keep your eyes on the floor and do not make any further eye contact. Do not make any sudden movements. Do not reach for anything higher than you are capable of reaching. Do not initiate conversation or make any requests. Most importantly, do NOT turn around, they might still be lurking…….

Silver lining: I spend way less money on clothes and I get to play a game of hide and seek in which I always win and no one knows I am playing.

Why should purchasing daily coffee be a punishing experience?

Let me refer to this local coffee establishment as a Starbucks wannabe.  The staff has the talent to carry on a phone conversation that lasts clear through the hours of operation via earpiece while staring into your soul as you place your heavily inconvenient order. They can’t however, make an iced beverage. Why must we either have it hot or blended? Am I the only one who finds it warm outside? What happens when you dump ice into a cup of boiling liquid? Correct! It melts! I have walked the staff through this before.

1. Brew single/double shot of espresso.

2. Pour into cup.

3. Add sugar if the guest requests it. Do not point me to the sugar at the end of the counter. Sugar will not dissolve in a cold beverage and I will end up sucking sugar particles through my straw and being forced to snack on them.

 4. Add cold milk.

5. Add ice and put a lid on it. Done.

You know why the Starbucks staff is so happy? They drink the coffee!!! What do you think of a restaurant where the staff does not eat the food? There is no possible way that the staff of this establishment is drinking the coffee.

Silver lining: I save money by making my coffee at home and in the odd event that I do order an iced beverage at this establishment, I teach one more barista something they should have learnt on day one of training.

Last but not least………dear sweet MovieTowne. I love your popcorn. I would just about see any movie to experience your warm, buttery, popped perfection. But WHAT is up with your concession line?? Thirty minutes is absolutely ridiculous. Like a true addict, I leave home extra early and anticipate the wait just to get a fix. I start to cold sweat and my mouth waters. Eeek! Fourth in line and movie starts in five minutes!  Ahhhhhh what to do? I can wait, I can wait, positive self talk. I recite the order in my head a few times, “one regular popcorn and a water.” “Oh my gosh, Dasani or Blue Waters?” The Dasani bottle used to fit better in the cup holder but now they are the same shape! “Oh no! I’ll just wing it.” I recover.  Don’t worry dear MovieTowne, I would never bad talk you without offering you a solution. Instead of a “cash only” line (which absolutely does not move any faster than the other line) how about this? A line strictly for…..wait for it…….purchases of popcorn, drinks and candy! You’re welcome. In other words, ready made food.

Silver lining: I have learnt to cope with popcorn addiction.

Of all the definitions of a “mystery” this is my favorite:

Mystery (noun) any truth that is unknowable except by divine revelation.

The closest I have come to experiencing divine revelation here on Earth is through latte therapy. When unsolved mysteries far less puzzling than the Bermuda Triangle, the Zodiac Letters, the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, The Shroud of Turin and Stonehenge continue to plague you…….think of a solution.....

…………while having a Latte.

Planning A Wedding vs. Planning a Marriage

If we put as much time and effort into planning our wedding day as we did into planning our marriage, maybe the marriage success rate would be higher. Most people spend anywhere from six months to a year planning a wedding but never consider planning a marriage. TheKnot.com provides a very handy checklist for the newly engaged to check off.

To list a few:

Budget, invitations, stationery, wedding cakes, wedding flowers, reception ideas, ceremony and vows, DIY wedding ideas, bridal party, your guests, music and dancing, photo and video, wedding favors, rehearsals, transportation and sticky subjects.

If I learned one thing during my Catholic Engaged Encounter it was that a wedding is for one day, a marriage is for a lifetime. See mom? I did learn something. Cheesy but true.

Ok so I have only been married for eight months give or take but I would like to share some thoughts on those necessities that websites like The Knot make us crazy over.

Budget: Whether you spend a little, a lot or a “not too big, not too small, just the size of Montreal"amount on a wedding,  your guests will eat, they will drink, they will dance and they will most importantly go home. You will then go on living life, which is not free so keep that in mind. The E! Channel is not filming or paying for your wedding so do not feel obligated to "Keep Up With The Kardashians." We all know how those marriages turn out anyway.

Invitations: Invitations are a means of simply that, inviting your guests. Whether they are floral, textured, square, round, pocket, modern, rustic or vintage, your guest will open it, say “Awww” and stick it with whatever magnet is available to their refrigerator which in no way coordinates with the invitation that you and hubby carefully created on numerous websites while falling asleep at dinner or behind your computer at work, seeking approval from mom, mom-in-law, maid of honor, the pool man and your nosy aunt before narrowing it down to four and and just closing your eyes and choosing one. So don’t stress. Spell your names correctly, give us a time, date and location and we are there.

Stationery: This is for ‘Thank you” cards. Make it easy, match them to your invitations and order them at the same time.

The cake: Tiers, flavors, fillings, round stand, square stand, décor, and embellishments. The only people who care about your cake are you, your mother, your mother-in-law-to-be and your decorator. Most of the time, WE don’t get to even eat it and we knock it over on the dance floor anyway. Or in my case, its ends up with glow bracelets sticking it out of it. Sorry aunty Angie! Advice? Make sure you choose a flavor you love. DO freeze the top tier like your momma, your mammy, your granny and your auntie told you to. I was out of dessert the other night and I pulled mine out of the freezer, unwrapped the many layers of wax paper and scotch tape and saw the tiny stab wound my husband and I made in the cake last December right before we fed each other our first cake as husband and wife and it made me go, “Awwwww.”

Wedding flowers: I was lucky enough to have a mother-in-law who specialized in floral arrangements. I handed the reins over to her on this one. Advice? Pick a color and let someone else do it. You don’t know what looks pretty even if you think you do. Our mothers have been reading issues of “Better Homes and Gardens” since before we could tie our shoelaces so let them handle it. Take a moment the night before or the morning of to go and look at your venue all decorated and say, “Awwww” because on the day you don’t even know you have feet. Everything truly is a blur and you won’t remember it.

Reception Ideas: Food, bar, done!

Ceremony and vows: Stick with the standard “repeat after me.” You will NOT have an enormous sense of confidence that you THOUGHT you would to pour your heart our to your loved one in front of 200 of your closest friends and family members. That’s your husband’s job, ha-ha! DO think of something hilarious before you walk down the aisle because you look ugly when you cry and it’s a happy day. So if you must cry, practice in the mirror before you do it front of all of us.

DIY: Don’t DIY. It’s fun to leaf wrap one mason jar and fill it with glass gems but it’s not fun to do it 100 times when you have a dog barking for his walk, a pile of files to go through at the office, dinner to cook for your husband, an empty treadmill that you should be on and too many loads of laundry to do.

Bridal party: OMG, who is going to make the cut? Unless you want a 20 person bridal party, you are going to hurt some feelings. Big bridal parties are hard to photograph and Cindy Lou's arm will be cut out of every photo. Your oldest friends are not always your closest friends. So don’t feel obligated to have them in it. Sally from pre-school who you haven’t seen in 25 years does not need to be in your wedding just because you two used to dress up in sheets in front of the mirror holding hairbrush bouquets and play “Bride” and you send her a Christmas card every year. Who are you likely to be close with for the rest of your life? Being a bridesmaid is WORK. Save someone the trouble and the awful dress. This way they can enjoy your wedding and not be enslaved by you all night long.

Guests:  Treat your guest list like a bonsai tree. Look at it from afar. Decide how you want to shape it. Remove the weeds and continually trim for maintenance.

Music & Dancing: Remember that the cameras are rolling even when you have had your thirteenth vodka and Red Bull with intermediate champagnes. I know I forgot to remember and now I have a three DVD wedding video, the last of which is full of horrible dance moves performed by mostly me.

Photo and video: I would seriously opt for a raw, live video as opposed to one set to music with cute fading in and out making you and your husband look like an ad for eHarmony. This way you get to hear all the things that people thought they were whispering as you walked down the aisle. Drunken people posing for what they think is a still photo but is actually live video is pretty awesome too.

Wedding favors: Wedding favors are like the candy stands you get wedged between at the grocery or Target before checking out. You don’t need them. You want them.  They look enticing in photos. $1.99 times 200 hundred guests is a lot of money. I wanted bubbles. I chose tiny silver monogrammed jars of bubbles from a website in China. When I got them, I had 200 monogrammed stickers to peel and stick on my hexagonal shaped bubble jars………by myself. Dementia almost set in until thankfully “Father of the Bride” happened to be on, so I watched it and I  “awwww” and happily continued sticking. I also had hundreds of glow bracelets and necklaces that my bridesmaids hurriedly cracked and snapped together somewhere between eating, dancing, holding my dress while I used the bathroom and taking shots. Here’s the clincher…….CONNECTORS! They didn’t just snap and connect; they had separate connectors, hundreds of tiny clear plastic connectors. God bless their precious hearts, we were all aglow in no time.

Rehearsals: Rehearsals are long; time consuming, confusing, obligatory and nerve wracking. But, they do lead to dinner so go ahead and have one.

Transportation: Do opt for transportation. It’s affordable and after all, you spent how much on bubbles?

Sticky subjects: What?  TheKnot.com did not provide you with a checklist for marriage? Just a wedding? While planning a wedding is exciting and a once in a lifetime (hopefully) event, marriage is FOR a lifetime. So compromise! When he told you he’d rather an outdoor than indoor venue did you storm out the door and drive off in your car? When you wanted salmon on the menu and he preferred lamb, did you send him hundreds of mean texts all day long? Hopefully you answered “no” to those questions. There will be many more decisions to be made in marriage and ones that are far more important than fruit filling or custard. So look back on the blissful, carefree days of planning your wedding when planning your marriage. When he comes home with 8 lemons when you SPECIFICALLY asked for 12 eggs, just sigh, make lemonade

………And have a Latte.

Things I Remember That I Can't Forget

In the third grade we were individually required to write and publish a book. All this really meant is that the book would be covered in a semi hardcover fashionable fabric, typed, illustrated by yours truly, bound and stamped with a shiny gold seal. This is when my two bestsellers were written. “The Cat who had no Claws” debuted on my parents’ mantle for the while right next to “The Girl With Too Many Names.” Recently, over a latte I re-read these literary masterpieces. The first book was simply about cat’s struggle to catch and eat birds without the necessary claws. The latter, however was about a girl who just had TOO many names. This poor girl would have to recite these names every time she was asked what her name was. The other side of the problem, she had to be called by ALL of these names or she would not respond. One name (that I had given her) really caught my eye. “Speakeasy.” I had never heard this word before or even said it, but I liked the way it sounded. Ironic that a girl with so many names could speak….easy (or easily to be grammatically correct.) By definition a speakeasy is a (noun) saloon or nightclub selling alcoholic beverages illegally, especially during Prohibition. Why on Earth? I truly think that I had just made it up and it just so happened to be a real word. Once in college I had seen my American History professor grading our essays over a pint (or two) in the campus bar. Needless to say I received an A on that paper, yet today, I shamefully retain little to no American History. I pictured my third grade teacher editing this book over a glass of wine putting huge red check marks all over the page. This led me to another image of Ralphie’s teacher in his own daydream correcting his composition on the Red Ryder BB Gun that he so desperately wanted for Christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8L86Z8YgeQ

That particular third grade teacher did in fact tell me that I had a “gift” for writing. I never forgot that. Every single time I wrote any piece of creative writing I thought of it. 

In middle school, I went on to place 3^rd in the 4H Tropicana Speech contest where I wrote a heavily embellished piece on my home country Trinidad (The Emerald Isle) Uh what?  It was all very encyclopedia researched since in 1993 Trinidad might as well have been Tanzania to my classmates. 

"Mom, there's nothing in the encyclopedia about Trinidaddddd!" This was still a time where students used the public library, their parents Encyclopedia Britannica set and their elders for historical information. 

The Second Place winner wrote about her home country, Columbia, and said a few words in Spanish. What? We didn't know she could speak Spanish........AMAZING! 

The first place winner spoke about her native land, England, and pronounced the word “hamburger” in a heavy English accent, which was a crowd favourite, and the auditorium erupted in laughter. Cheap shot Jemma, we all know Americans LOVE hamburgers :)

Today’s positive note:

Children want to hear that they’ve done well. Of all the words you share with the little people make them worthwhile.

Other unforgettable sayings/quotes I remember:

Fork on the left  ------------when setting a table

Lefty loosey, righty tighty -------------------when unscrewing/tightening anything

Right on red ----------------------------ONLY in the states

“Why is the carpet all WET Todd?” ------------National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iByfqls-xbU

“He’ll keep calling me, he’ll keep calling me ‘till I come over” --------------------Cameron sitting in his car stewing whether or not to go to Ferris Bueller’s house. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdcFYNe9U7A

 Seems to happen more with age as you consider the logistics of “going out” when you know you’d rather sit at home in pajamas....

……….with popcorn and a LATTE

Getting Dressed

Men,

This post is not for you. That is, unless you plan on ever courting, seeing, dating, wooing, going steady with, asking out, picking up, befriending or marrying, a WOMAN. Here is some insight into why we (women) take so long to get dressed.

Predicament: WHERE are we going?

The where are we going predicament is tricky because we often start off at said location, which leads to location #2 and #3 and so on. So if location #3 is a nightclub we run the risk of being overdressed at dive bar #1 and #2. 

The typical solution would be that we wear flats but pack heels INCASE.

If the “oh no I haven’t been there before, what’s it like?” predicament arises, we then have to call each and every one of our friends asking what the floor is like? Is it outside? Is it slippery? Is there a covered area? Do people dance there? Do they have those big fans? Is the bathroom far? Are you wearing wedges? Are we pre-drinking? Do you think people will be in dresses or is it a jeans thing? What? Ok, I’ll just wear a skirt.

HIM: “Babe, you ready yet?”

US: “No!”

Query: WHO is going to be there?

Is it just our friends? If the answer to that is yes, then the truth is we don’t care to dress to impress. The go-to jeans and a top will do. We will also continue to "save" our previously planned outfit. NEWSFLASH BOYS: We don’t dress up for you! We dress up for the other WOMEN. What? So and so is going to be there? Ooh well you know she likes to dress up so I’m wearing my new leather leggings with that metallic top and a chunky necklace. Ok, right, cool. But wait, I also got a new pair of high waisted’s that make my legs look long and my stomach super flat. I ran like two miles today and didn't eat carbs. I'm kinda hungry though. Oh gosh, sometimes she dresses up classy though, so maybe I’ll do a sheer long-sleeved button up and roll up the sleeves halfway and just put on a dark pair of skinny jeans and heels. Stud earrings? Stud earrings for sure. What? That whole crew of girls is gonna be there? Right, tight dress for sure. I won't eat.

HIM: “Babe, you ready yet?”

US: “No, you want me to mix you another drink?” :)

The LATTE before getting dressed trap: 

“I’m so excited to go out, I love my outfit. Tonight's going to be so fun. Shots! Yeah, shots for sure. Just have to do hair and make up.” Also known as the “false high”. Miley, Bieber and Rihanna are pumping through the iPod. Also known as “getting ready music.” And no, we can’t hear you clearing your throat  and sighing out in the living room, we ain’t ready yet. Truth is, the best part of our night is that moment. We are READY! Dressed, hair did and made up.

The Pre-Drink Problem: 

We are now ready and waiting you for you to finish your 3^rd angry and impatient drink so we have one WITH you. Halfway through that drink we just go to “check" our hair/make up in the mirror. What? Red lipstick AND a smoky eye? I cannot believe I almost went out like that. (What’s happening here is that the uppers from the latte are commingling with the downers from the alcohol.) Mood shift. Maybe I should just redo my hair? Soon we are surrounded by fifteen scattered bobby pins, a sticky hairspray coated curling iron and an empty cocktail glass. We peek out of our room to find MAN ON PHONE. Slip past him and grab another drink. We have bought ourselves another 15 minutes. That second drink goes down way too good and we have now taken our hair down changed into a white tank top and fitted pair of jeans. VOILA! We are Jennifer Aniston. 

Mission accomplished.

Although we should not need a LATTE to make us feel beautiful or reassure us of our natural beauty, it is safe to say when getting dressed, it is best to avoid a second look……

……..after your latte high wears off.

Positive 'Humour'

AMAZING, what a Starbucks latte can do for you! That cold creamy, preferably iced, concoction of perfection perfectly cupped and tagged just for me. It can make traffic seem like a road trip, or turn a lazy day into a 5 MILE treadmill walk-a-thon with inclines reaching as high as 10 and speeds that could compete with a small child at Magic Kingdom. Latte’s are also capable of making humour possible. It’s funny enough that it can be spelled with the American “or” ending or the UK “our” ending. Thankfully, I am a great speller. 

From 1983 to 1989, I spelled these tricky words with an “our” since I lived in a once English colony. To be correct, Trinidad has been under Spanish, French, British and Dutch rule, so lets just be happy that I can speak any one language at all. In 1989 at the age of 6, I picked up my bindle (Wikipedia it if you don’t know what it is) and climbed into the boat set sail for the land of opportunity. Alright just kidding, I packed my suitcases and flew with my family……..in an AIRPLANE. The only opportunity I got, was to drop the “u” and spell with an “or.” I dropped it in 'neighbour', I dropped it in 'flavour', I dropped it in 'colour' and the list goes on. From 1989 to 1990 I dropped the “u”, just in time to return to Trinidad. Yep, we lasted there about 6 months, a winter. A Florida winter to a first time Caribbean emigrant results in your parents dressing you for school like Ralphie and Randy from A CHRISTMAS STORY. So, back in Trinidad I lost the winter gear and picked up “u”…..again. 

1990 to 1993 were good years, I used that ‘u’ left and right, up and down my pages in school until I got the news…..moving again! Back to Florida we went. Sixth grade, where awesome spellers are rewarded with Snickers, Starburst’s, even Twix! Ah the land of opportunity indeed. It was a great two years. Then came the eighth grade. Bushy eyebrows, the last girl in school with unshaven legs, STILL not 13 yet and a mean English teacher to boot. One day, I had to make a presentation and she asked me to stand (even though I was already standing) and for once I didn’t understand. “I am!” I responded, almost in tears. Small giggles from around the classroom started to get louder as I shrunk even more. “Stand up!” she insisted with her evil chuckle. What did I miss? HUMOR! And not with a ‘our’, it was humor, plain old h-u-m-o-r. Now, had I had a latte that day, I might have laughed. 

Today, I am a remarkable five feet nothing and cannot even blame coffee for stunting my growth because I only developed this insatiable habit way into my twenties. Currently, I am back in Trinidad spelling humour the only acceptable way with an ‘our’. Yes, I let spell check and auto correct incorrectly correct me but it always makes me think of that ironically “English” teacher, whose opinion of Humor, I let get the best of me that day. There's a positive in every situation and it's our job to find it. Latte's for me tend to do the trick but when all else fails there's HUMOUR! I might have been able to see it that day, 

had I had a latte………..

#trinidad #latte #humor #humour