When’s the last time you got a raise? Just a general survey here, is anyone absolutely rolling in it? Is anybody else encouraged to simply stop doing their job because they don’t get paid enough? No? Well all y’all are apparently schmucks, because it seems all you need to do to get whatever your little heart desires is sign up for a pair of grey shorts as a member of one of several unions related to various job positions within the Toronto Transit Commission, hereafter known as “you jackass sons of whores.”

Let me back up and explain a little bit of what’s going on. The TTC employees, responsible for running our busses, streetcars and subways, as well as all the eletrical work and safety considerations etc. that go hand in hand with running any large-scale organization intended for public benefit, have gotten a little pissy lately. Like everyone on this great green earth, they want more money. They also want more benefits, and whatever else they’ve been yammering about. Currently, they only receive 70% of their income if they have to take time off due to a work related injury, including assault from shadier members of Toronto’s vast public. And yes, it might suck to have your income drop because of an incident beyond your control – but you’re still getting paid despite your absence in the economy, just like everyone else fortunate enough to work for an organization that provides these benefits in the first place. A hell of a lot of us are shit out of luck if we break our leg or sprain our ankle. And you may run the risk of having some punk ass kid take a swing at you because he doesn’t like your face or system, but my job isn’t without it’s risks. I’ve had some serious nutcases in my little reception area, and I’m pretty sure one of them declared Jihad on me. More than once I’ve had to have security escort someone out, but that’s just part of my much-slimmer-in-the-general-wallet-vicinity type job, now isnt’ it?

Now, I’m not saying how it currently goes is necessarily right. After all, it’s not my fault I fell down the stairs (maybe….) But I do think that’s one of those things where it’s just the way it is. And if you do want to change it, simply not doing your job isn’t really the way to go. Shit, if you don’t like a law, change the way you vote. You could maybe go against the law if you’re willing to spend some time rattling your donation cup against the bars and having your friends hand out pamphlets up about two blocks from me, but it’s not all glitz and glamour behind those iron rods of injustice. The simple fact is that the majority of us have no choice but to suck it up and do our jobs in order to pay our bills and put our kids through college. 

But no. The TTC can decide to strike. If I were to go on strike, you know what would happen? I’d be replaced within five minutes by the next doe-eyed multitasker ready to abandon all hope for the future of humanity in exchange for a meagre paycheque. Yes, that does give you a glimpse into my average day. If I wasn’t so good at ranting about it, I wouldn’t love my job so much. But I digress: the point is, I can’t go on strike. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work for just about anybody. The TTC on the other hand, has the city by the short n’ curlies and so can just up and walk away and get handed whatever the fuck they want. Why? Because we as a city had the super smarts to think “Hey, cars aren’t really the best option around here. Gridlock and terrible smog, and the rising cost of fuel and parking and such. Lets build a city-wide infrastructure to support the commute of MILLIONS of people every day at a fraction of the cost of driving.” Good idea! So many benefits with just a few downsides, one of them being the apparent superiority complex given to every beer gutted bastard sitting behind the wheel of a bus.

Some people don’t get to strike. Some jobs are considered an essential service. The nurses went on strike once, back about the time I smashed my clumsy toddler head into the wooden arm of a couch and needed stitches – put in by my DAD, thanks a lot. Traumatizing much? (For him, not me.) And since then, they’ve been made an essential service. This means they can’t strike, but they do get paid a lot (Yes, I know our health care system is ridiculously underfunded, that is a systematic flaw. I know how much nurses make, and I’ll dip my hands in guts for that kind of dough any day.) And there has been a lot of talk about making the TTC an essential service. I know it seems kind of odd to look at the roster there: firefighters, nurses, doctors, policemen, and the TTC unions. Four out of five save your lives on a daily basis. The other one gets you to work. Yeah, sweet, that job I’m sure you love so much. However, as a city, we do need the TTC to function. So there are a lot of pros and cons to making them an essential service, because while it would prevent strikes, it would also give them the right to a lot of stuff – not for stitching wounds and dragging babies out of burning buildings, but for driving a bus all day. And while it is essential, something about that just doesn’t sit right with me. And something apparently doesn’t sit right with those who actually make the decisions, because our government has been hemming and hawwing in their quintessential Canadian sort of way.

Anyways, carrying on. They nearly went on strike about a week ago, and there was a whole shitload of “Will they? Won’t they? What the hell are we going to do?” going on. And so the TTC agreed to at least give the city 48 hours notice before going on strike so that the majority of us who rely so heavily on them could make alternate arrangements. Last weekend, they decided not to strike. They accepted the deal on the table for the time being and kept on truckin’ (or bussin’, rather) throughout the week until it could be officially voted on. Friday at midnight: not a fucking bus in sight! Stranded! Not me, personally, once I’m home I don’t really go anywhere I can’t walk to, because, um, I live downtown and that’s the benefit of paying ridiculously high rent. But yeah, right out of nowhere! Never mind two days notice, we got about two hours notice.

This, tactically, was a shitty move. Firstly, who the hell are you trying to paralyze in a city of commuters on the weekend? I’m not denying that some people were very definitely fucked, but overall, not very effective. Secondly, that gives the city 48 hours to retaliate to your ongoing bullshit. So what did our government do? Well, they didn’t declare them an essential service. That’s a very permanent move to make on such short notice. Instead, all three parties of our provincial legislation got together and put a nifty little bill on the table that was passed within half an hour. It said essentially this:

Dear TTC,

You have officially pissed us off. Yes, you may have the city by the short hairs, but you’re forgetting who can smack down the law ’round these here parts. You didn’t hold up your end of the 48 hour deal. So you want to play hardball? Here’s hardball: either get your asses back to work on Monday and settle your shit, or pay $2000 per employee (of which there are a LOT) and $25,000 per union for every single day this idiocy carries on. You also have five days to find someone to help you settle your shit, or we’ll pick one for you. You also owe the city of Toronto an apology.

Dear Toronto,

Please don’t beat up transit workers on Monday, that’ll only give them more fuel for their whining, blubbering fire.

So there! Take that you assholes! Try to hold my life hostage, will you? Just because we need you to function on a daily basis doesn’t change that fact that you DRIVE A BUS!!!!!! I still love my TTC as a system, because I love that we have taken on such a green, sustainable, economically friendly infrastructure and made it something that is really essential. But goddamn if I don’t hate the day-to-day assholes who yessssss keep it running (*clenches fists*), but who whine ceaselessly about it.

My solution? Get a couple of blogs, jerkfaces! Venting does the body good.

 

Okay, so maybe I’m just the teensiest bit sorry, but I really do have a good reason for being so absent as of late.

I kind of fell in love. Like, retardedly in love. As in, sweet old ladies probably vomit in my presence kind of love. Cause I’m so cute and all. I know! What the shiznat, right? Me?!?! How did that happen? Just about two months ago, I was all “Valentines Day is for suckers!!!” and such. I’m what you might call an angry kind of girl. A little bit crazy, definitely twisted, and not an awful lot about me makes much sense. I think everyone and his mother is a douchebag, and I’m a big fan of throwing the word cunt around needlessly. Plus, I’ll smack you in the mouth for the last nacho. Not the kind of girl you want to introduce to your parents, you know?

Well apparently the air between 800 miles has some an interesting qualities of refraction. It turns out that was the precise distance needed for this fellow to see through all of my bullshit and get me for who I am, as opposed to the plethora of things I like to think I am (like someone who’ll actually smack somebody over a nacho as opposed to just call you a cunt behind your back, ha!) When someone is able to think your thoughts for you at least five times a day and can completely appreciate your desire to run down the street in a pink dress while carting along the gas tank of a flame thrower in a little red wagon, well…800 miles doesn’t seem that far anymore.

Anyways, if you don’t know who I’m talking about yet, you really need to get around the internet more, cause it’s kind of obvious. It’s really a wonderful place, the internet. You can spout off whatever lies you feel like portraying as truth, edit the shit out of your photos until you’re perfect just the way photoshop made you (thank you Lovely Friend Cait, for that memorable line), and find someone who fits you as perfectly as an Escher print through a random series of little 0s and 1s. I love the internet! All these bitchface pedophiles are giving it a bad rap.

This here is Josh, in all his manly glory:

Here’s a few excerpts from the inside of his head, in all their excellence.

So here’s the tale of it all. I’m sure you’re all avidly drinking in the details and have already read his account of how we met, but here’s more. You know those sickly sweet couples that are always holding hands and telling you adorable stories about how they met and you really just want to stick ‘em with a chopstick? Well I’ve never gotten to be on the other end of that chopstick, so just patronize me a little bit here, okay? I’m obnoxious about everything else, I might as well be obnoxious with spreading the love.

I owe a lot to May and Talea I suppose. Talea because it was through her post that Josh found me, with my gloriously biting tale of woe from the Toronto Independent Music Awards, which I still say sucked big ass donkey balls. Also because she is completely supportive of my internet love (as are all my friends, but Talea’s sort of a pioneer to me). And May because it was she who sent me along to cover that fateful disaster of a show in the first place! And who is now my shining beacon of domesticity now that I find myself rapidly turning wifish. And because they both called me up within minutes of Josh proclaiming his love for me in the public forum that is his blog to read me excerpts and fawn over my deliciously sweet boyfriend. Think about it: your best friend announces that despite all her left-wing, city loving vegetarian ways, she has falled madly in love with a rebel flag waving meat worshipping southern boy she hasn’t even met. The first thing any girl would do is try to talk her out of it. But no, they got past the initial oddities of it all and now give their full fledged support. And as any lady with a strong group of ladies knows, this is of the utmost importance. And Josh, in his infinite manly wisdom, knows the importance of and appreiciates their support too. Also a shout out to Romi for listening to us both gush about each other to her before we finally started gushing about each other to each other.

So all that having been said and explained, where have I been? Well shit, I sure as hell haven’t been in North Carolina, that’s for damn sure. I’m kind of broke right now, and a lot of shit is up in the air with work and life and the fact that I don’t even have a passport. So instead of facebooking and blogging, or even paying enough attention to the world around me to find something worth blogging about, I’ve been spending nearly every waking minute of my time online with him, sinking my nails into every precious second. He most often comes home from work at lunch to chat with me, and races home afterwards again, and I’d stay late at the office just to have a few more words. Eventually I sucked up the idea of paying for the internet and got it at home just because I missed him so much on the weekends. I even got myself a webcam, wooooaaah! I know, you’d think someone who now spends nearly all her free time sitting in the glow of that little blue light would be all over the blogging, the doritos and the mountain dew, but no. We’ve been folding laundry in two seperate worlds and watching shared youtube clips for kicks. And as for my wifishness, or wifeliness, or whatever it’s called, well I’m hardly recognizable sometimes.

However, now that I do have the internet at home, I should probably stop ignoring the rest of my life (Seriously, the dishes? Let’s not even go there, my OCD will start screaming) and maybe pay a little more attention to the medium that brought us together in the first place, right? So here I am, back in blog world, and while I can’t promise I’ll be able to spit out a daily dose of observatory sass-back like I once could, I’ll try not to disappear for weeks at a time. And I’ll try to avoid asking the world their opinions on baby names and such (you probably won’t like them anyways, shut up Talea). I’ll still be all “Oprah-bitch this! And fucktardery that!” and all the rest of that deliciousness you’ve gotten nice and used to, but to make a long and super-awesome story short, that’s where I’ve been. On my ass in love.

Anyways, I know I just said I wouldn’t be all “ooh, what do you think of these curtains?” and all that stuff that makes even a newfound cute-bot such as myself gag, but another thing I’m sure you’ve gotten used to besides my rampant awesomeness is my tendency to post pictures. (Also my tendency to exclude myself from my own rules.) And it just so happens that my pictures as of late revolve around my latest and greatest ability: concocting super awesome birthday ideas for loved ones! May has lovingly taken me under her super-wife wing and is coddling my emerging urge to get my bake on! And since Josh is the latest and greatest addition to the list of loved ones, and since it was indeed his birthday recently, it only makes sense that an appropriate level of well documented fun was had on his behalf. Just because he’s 800 miles away doesn’t mean he can’t have….

JOSH’S SUPER MANLY AWESOME BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!

That’s right biznatches, pictures ahoy!

So I realize that the frilly whipped cream is not that manly, but I did make sure to get blue candles. It took me a hell of a long time to wade through the mountains of pink candles first, apparently a lot of males were born in April?

Okay, I know I’m not exactly starting off on the right foot with the whole “manly” birthday party business, but I’m the one getting drunk, okay? Also, I don’t have wine glasses. They got broken by a former roomie, who happened to be psychotic. And clumsy.

Look, I couldn’t get it off, okay?!?

Next up on the wifely to-get list: apron. Don’t worry, I’ll stitch skulls and crossbones all over it or something to make it extra rad.

Veggies rolls! Thanks for the sushi Talea! This is like the McSushi that you can get just about everywhere up here (not actually at McDonalds though, that would be gross). You can even get sushi at the drug store.

Home made whipped cream motherfuckers!!!!! YEEEAAHHHHH!!!! You have no idea how good this was, and it ended up pretty much everywhere. There was no way in hell I was going to use some junk like coolwhip to make this masterpiece:

WOOAAAAHHHH!!! LOOK AT THAT!!!! How awesome am I? Very. Very, very awesome. Dudes, this took hours, mostly because I’m lacking in counter space, but also because absolutely everything was made from scratch. Even the berries, I combined the carbon based molecules myself. No I didn’t.

Talea posing very sexily with a very sexy morsel of deliciousness.

Consuming said sexy morsel of deliciousness and realizing how delicious said sexy morsel of delciousness really is. Yes. Try saying that through a mouthful of deliciousness.

And I didn’t just make one thing. This is a man’s birthday party, and men eat a lot. They require a smorgasboard of fun and yummy things. Hence:

Almond lemon squares!!! OOHHHH MY GOD. Oh. Oh, oh, oh. Smorgasmically good. Like ridiculously, retardedly good. Moving on before I make a mess.

Got kind of messy anyways. And as much as this depiction of chowing down may imply otherwise, I did not in fact consume the entire pie right there, even though it was key lime. I did consume it, don’t worry. It just took me nearly a week is all.

Mid smorgasm.

You might think I snuck up on Talea and smooshed her face with a forkful of pie. However, while this would have been hilarious, it would also have resulted in my face getting smooshed with a forkful of fork. And no pie. Which would be sad.

I spilled mah wine. I has a waste

Um, yeah, I kind of spilled it down my shirt as opposed to on my shirt. Because I’m classy like that.

Clearly, Talea is also very classy.

That business about being hungry again an hour after eating sushi must be true since at about midnight I decided that I needed to cook some pasta tubes, stuff them with ricotta and spinach, shred some cheese and stand in front of a hot oven for half an hour. You know, just a quick bite.

We are running out of alcomahols! This is a bad thing!

Maybe just a bit left at the bottom? Jes? Jes? No.

No!!!! Not me too!!!

It is gone. I am sad. Sad and confused. For a birthday party, I am not nearly drunk enough.

This is the next day at May’s house. It was a two day birthday bash! And she made more pie! Awesome, awesome pie!

Look at that love! Personalized pie! It took both May and I to get that little J in there. Please notice the attention to detail in the form of a heart and a tree. That’s because earlier that day Josh had chopped down a tree, and I hearted him for it.

So there you have it, a fun filled weekend of long distance birthday goodness. And may I please take this time to reiterate that just because I’m now an official love-bot, it doesn’t mean I’m any less hardcore. In fact, I’m even MORE hardcore, cause now I’ve got someone who is just as hardcore as me to add his own special brand of awesomeness to our newfound sweet blend of hardcore kickassery! I can kick your ass in life AND the kitchen! Up yours world, you’re in trouble! Now it’s not just me you’ve got to deal with, I’ve got a partner in crime who’s just as bad ass as I am. Hide your women, children, beer, flamethrowers and nachos!

Oh, and I know I said “I think everybody and his mother is a douchebag” but Josh isn’t a douchebag. And his mom’s pretty sweet. It’s just a figure of speech, people.