A couple of people have asked me recently what I do in a given day and so here it is…my schedule for remaining sane during forced joblessness.

8am - Finally give up on trying to sleep while the dog licks you knees: go walk the damn blasted thing

9am - Get back from ‘walking’ the dog and curse that weird personality flaw which compels you to ‘run’ the dog when this time you swore you were going to take a nice leasurly wander instead

9-10am - do random chores (take out the garbage, unload the dishwasher, do a load of laundry, sweep up, etc.) in order to strengthen ‘domestic goddess fallacy’

10-10:30am - enjoy a giant bowl of oatmeal with too much (see definition for ‘just the right amount of’) sugar because, ooops you seem to have spilled sugar into your bowl again

10:30am-noon - work on the project of the day whether that be baking dog biscuits, applying for jobs, building a wall, etc.

noon - pick up the next door neighbors dog aka our only source of income

12:30pm - make and eat lunch

1pm - cleam up after lunch and finish morning activities

5pm - start thinking of a good (enough) reason to skip the most boring yoga class ever

rest of the evening - make and eat dinner, clean up, reluctantly attend yoga if 5pm wasn’t productive, check email compulsively every two minutes for an hour or so, watch some of the crap they have on tv these days

11pm - collapse into bed after another challenging day of doing nothing

Yep, my life is lame…it’s official. “Oh no!” you exclaim, “How could that be?” you question, “What shall she do?” you wonder, “Why do I care?” you conclude.

Well my dear blog-friends, this year Bert and I have no Halloween party to go to. We never get kids around to our apartments (which I think might be a function of always living downtown), and all we have to look forward to is falling asleep - probably before midnight - to the drunken warblings of passersby who actually have a life.

When did it get like this…when did a good evening involve a rented movie and a nice dinner, why does it suddenly bother me?

In conclusion, Happy Halloween everyone. Enjoy your parties and costumes and trick-or-treaters. No, no do not spare a thought for us poor pathetic lame-o’s. Really, it’s ok. We’ll be fine. Sniff, sniff…ok I’m going to go now.

After a rather heavy post yesterday I thought I’d start off the week with a collection of typically guy things to say that have dropped out of my husbands mouth over the past month or so…here we go

5. Me - Hum, I’m not sure I have enough rice to make all of the sushi…it’s gonna be close (talking to Bert)
Bert - Mmmm, this rice tastes good (shovelling a large spoonfull into his mouth)

4. Bert - Jaime have you seen my keys/wallet/head lamp/gloves?

3. Bert - Wow, I have got to see Doom, how could a movie that’s based on a video game be anything but awesome!

2. Bert - Mmmmm, meat!

1. Bert - This football game is too chaotic to nap in front of.
Me - There’s a different game on TSN.
Bert - But that game’s not in HD. (said, of course, with his eyes closed)

Ok, so as a brief introduction to Quebec politics for those people not living in Canada. It looks like the Partie Quebecois (PQ) will win the next provincial election because the liberals got caught up in a financing scandal the proportions of which shocked Canada but wouldn’t even have been noticed had it all taken place in the US.

The PQ led the last vote on whether Quebec should seperate from Canada or not, and, even though they lost, the campaign had a number of side effects…

1. The leadership fo the PQ blamed their defeat on the ethnic vote

2. A number of companies were spooked by the idea of seperation and so moved out of the Province

3. The Canadian Government started to spend money promoting Canada within Quebec (money that was mismanaged - see liberal scanadal above)

4. Property values dropped.

Since moving back to Montreal I have spoken with a number of native Quebecois regarding the PQ. So far a majority of them agree that electing the PQ will negatively affect their personal financial situation and the overall health of the Quebec economy…and yet they still plan on voting for the PQ. They don;t believe that seperation will imporve the lot of health or education in Quebec, nor do they seem to think that it will provide their children with a wider range of opportunities…and yet they still plan on voting for the PQ.

I have been trying to figure out why rational people seem to be ready to make a seemingly illogical political decision and so far all I’ve been able to come up with is:

a. disdain for Canada, within much of Quebec, overrides personal feelings of preservation; or
b. people in Quebec don’t remember the events of ten years ago; or
c. Quebec is sick of losing it’s goalies to other North American hockey teams and so, the people of Quebec are willing to make personal sacrifices in order to safeguard their goaltending heritage.

I can understand ‘c’, and ‘b’ is demonstrated on the global scene every day (see Rwanda - Sudan), but ‘a’ seems entirely improbable…which makes me believe that it is true.

Last night we celebrated the last night of the hot-tub season with bruschetta, olives, shrimp coktail and rather too much red wine. We sat in the hot-tub, food balanced on the edge while we tried to pick out constelations from our perch in the middle of this big-city of ours.

This morning I was out walking the dog and it was such a beautiful day. The sun was glittering off the broken glass on the path like wet sand on an pristine beach. The frost on the edge of the soccer field looked like spilled lime. The leaves on the sidewalk crunched underfoot giving hints of what lay burried beneath them in the gutter.

The good weather rubbed off on my fellow dog walkers as well. We all stood huddled together like a brood of penguins, our hands burried deep within our pockets as we talked about such beautiful topics as the state of the education system in Quebec and the latest audition that one woman’s dog attended last week.

Yep, as I wandered home happy that I didn’t have to run too much I couldn’t help but appreciate this fine city of ours. Vive la Montreal