Sitting in bed, Sunday Morning

Sunday morning. Lovely and sunny. The bells of the church are ringing for Mass down on Spring Garden Rd. The denizens of the South end are gathering in the Baptist Church down the road.

Queenie and Himself are sitting in bed. Queenie is blogging. Himself is reading some dreadfully boring magazine about trucks. And showing her pictures of the nice ones. Queenie could give a shit…

What is it about men and magazines about machines?

The fish are puddlin’ around in the tank, grazing the bottom for the remnants of their breakfast. The only sounds in the house are the oxygen bubbling and the keys of the laptop. Missy is asleep. It’s her last day in the house. She’s moving to Toronto to live with her boyfriend next week. PsychoB is asleep. He’s leaving next weekend. Queenie will have the house pretty much to herself for a while after that.

Queenie loves Sundays. Particularly here, because there’s nothing to do. So you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. Although Queenie is going canvassing at one o’clock.

By-election.

If it’s not a federal election, it’s a provincial election. If it’s not a provincial election, it’s a by-election. This one would be in Queenie’s riding.

Queenie was out canvassing on Thursday too. Crappy night. Cold, so Queenie wrapped up well. Then we ended up doing an apartment block so she was too hot.

Lots and lots of people who aren’t Canadian citizens. Who can’t vote. And students. Who don’t vote. Queenie was well ratty by the end of it. We might have got seven votes. And she wasn’t getting phone numbers from people, because she hates imposing on them in that way. So the candidate was getting a bit annoyed, but hey, Queenie didn’t care that night. Although she felt a bit guilty afterwards.

And then we met an Irish couple from Templeogue, who had moved to Canada fifteen years ago and hated it, but couldn’t go home (presumably had sold the house in Templeogue). He was working down in the shipyard in the harbour. There was some issue about his employers not realising his huge worth and letting him work on propellers. Queenie switched her ears off and just nodded while he talked. Then she asked for his vote. He couldn’t. He refused to become Canadian, didn’t want to take the oath of allegiance.

“My father fought in the War of Independence and he’d be spinning in his grave”, he said. Queenie just looked at him.

My father would spin in his grave. Are you so scared of your parents that you imagine their anger can touch you from there? Or is it your own prejudices, that you suspect might be archaic and completely out of touch, so you are using your father as an excuse to be a historical aberration?

Eejit. As they would say in Templeogue.

His wife in the meantime hovered in the background, grumbling at him for not taking the oath and saying ‘I’m a citizen’. Queenie was trying to canvass her over the murmur of the propeller idea but hubbie was having none of it. He pulled the door too a little so he could have the canvassers’ full attention. We gave up then. Moved on down the corridor to the next apartment.

Chinese. Turkish. Iranian. Korean. All of them here to study. Paying exorbitant fees for the privilege.

Education is some moneymaker in this province. Second biggest growth industry after call centres.

Anyhow, time to get up and make breakfast for Trucker Guy. He had to haul Queenie out of bed, dump her in the bath, towel her down and feed her yesterday because she called round to see Shazz with a bottle of wine the night before, and then drank most of the bottle of wine because Shazz doesn’t really drink alcohol. And consequently felt as sick as a dog all day because her days of necking a bottle of wine and then being able to function the next day are well and truly behind her. And she hadn’t realised. Mental note to self to remember this truth.

But Shazz and she agreed that it was a very pleasant evening.

Damn, damn, PsychoB seems to be stirring. A long day in front of the telly watching sport, followed by the weekly boiled chicken debacle. He puts the chicken on to boil the fat off it. (Why he doesn’t just buy lean chicken we don’t know). Then he cuts the potatoes and carrots into little pieces and boils the fuck out of them too. When they boil over he doesn’t notice because he has no sense of smell, so Queenie has to get out of bed and shout at him. (And then spend an hour cleaning the cooker on Monday evening).

When ALL of the nutrients in the food have boiled away for at least an hour, Bruce eats some of his dinner and puts the rest in empty yoghurt pots for snacking on during the week.

One. More. Week. Of this shit.

Queenie can do this.