It's a theme, see? Whaddaya think about that, see?

I've decided to talk like a fella stackin' dirty glasses in a speakeasy, so don't give me none a your guff.

I got nothin' but the same old thing. It's the waiting I hate. I should just move past it, find the bootstraps, and yank 'em up to my crotch. There's this job, see... and I wish I hadn't decided I wanted it because now I'm waiting. And this industry is like some big, incestuous family so most likely before they even tacked up the official post, as they must officially do in their officious way, they probably already knew who'd fill it. And it prob'ly wasn't me, see.

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Grey and drizzly sets me on my proverbial and literal ass. My ass, she needs to be moving because all this waiting has grown me a new set of cheeks. Two sets, actually.

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I volunteered to call a bunch of soccer parents about tryouts next week. Doing this has confirmed my suspicion that people are selfish, rude bastards that lack social graces — at least about 75% of them. These will be the aforementioned Old Bats on Wheels that'll be crankily running the show with their self-righteousness and airs of entitlement in the future. This makes me wish for a Granny Bomb to explode over mankind to create a legion of powder-smelling, pie-baking, back-patting, flower gardening, cheque-writing, philatelic old people. You know, like they used to make, see.

Even now apparently 80 is the new 60, and they're all riding their Harleys through Roger's Pass, breaking hips doing triathlons, and spending their kids' inheritances on cultured pearl necklaces and Depression Glass on E-bay. But they're still nice.

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I was discovered by an old friend on Facebook recently. I hate Facebook. I know I have mentioned this before, and that has not changed. And no, I don't want to be your friend. I probably allowed it anyway, but I only put it up because of the lure of old friends and lovers. If you know me here, then know me here and don't bother with me there. I still find the site to be awkward, un-fun, scattershot, and not at all absorbing and I don't understand the "crackbook" nickname at all. Perhaps I am missing something. But I don't care.

Anyway, this old friend was from jr. high and high school and I have not seen her in about 11 years due to my self-imposed exodus, and even before that, our relationship as adults has been minimal. But she is one of those people with whom I'd slip back into something comfortable, and I am excited to hear from her.

She's as weird as ever, too. I know this without really even knowing this. She is Helena so it is thus. Helena was a nonconformist sort of girl in high school — oh, not in that angry, Doc Martened punk-rock way because really, that WAS a conforming, identifiable group — as original as they liked to think they were. No, Helen was different in a much braver way. Though we, as her friends, who both loved her and mocked her behind her back, didn't see it that way at the time. Sometimes, we were embarrassed by her. But she knew it almost encouraged it, the cheeky monkey.

She was the girl with the wrong brand of jeans, the Chinese market maryjanes, the cardigans, the glasses so big several sets of eyes could have peered through them (aka: the Charles Nelson Reilly specials), the hair that would do nothing but hang there, uninspired. She was big chested and slightly pigeon-toed. She was the girl that drew fanciful doodles of brides, who read Harlequins, who lived in a chaotic, messy house full of antiques with doily-topped couches. And for many years her mother suffered from leukemia, by turns very very sick and somewhat better, and then dying shortly after we graduated high school. Only in retrospect, away from the self-absorption of teenagehood do I think about how traumatic that all must have been for her.

Helena was perceived as a geek, as an academic, if she registered on the radar at all in the school hallways. She was editor of the yearbook. One time Helena, Jane and I got on a city bus and we passed a pack of boys as we went to sit at the rear. They snickered and said things under their breath, and Helena, assuming they were making fun of her, zeroed in on them and said in a very prim voice "Don't judge a book by its cover!" That was Helen. (We always found the "a" at the end of her name awkward so everybody called her Helen). Well, Jane and I turned red with embarrassment and then set off laughing so hard tears came. Helen Wheels. Helen's Melons. Helena who named one of her children Beverley. I'm glad to have her back, in whatever way that is.

And so that's me on this tripp Tuesday, see? Time to don some glad rags, pour another cuppa java and see about the hubbub, Bub.