ericamaysdiary

[ericamaysdiary]

[ericamaysdiary]

[ericamaysdiary]

[ericamaysdiary]

[ericamaysdiary]

15 aug 2018

i took avon to the park and i saw an unusual bird in the big tree so i took a picture and sent it to devin so he could identify the bird and he decided it might have been a woodpeck which i think it was

dragos and i watched some mad men then went to pick up avons food, then went to this boutique called philistine that ended up being a really great shop. we had gone to get joannas bday gifts but ended up finding a ring for myself and a coat and ring for dragos. i also found this really nice gemini necklace but i had a hunch that i could find it on aliexpress (philistine sells it for $25!!!) and i did! so when i got home i ordered it from aliexpress for $4

we parked outside of bellwoods brewery on ossington and i waited in the car while dragos went in. a girl stopped walking because she liked this socrates quote on a chalkboard outside of the chiropractor there and needed to take a picture of it so i told sabrina about the interaction and we laughed about how ridiculous everything was

we ended up going to riverdale farm even though that was supposed to be its own trip but it was nice. a lot smaller than i remembered it being with a lot fewer animals, but we had a nice time. after that we got a coke from a little shop near riverdale park and drove home to take avon to the park. afterwards, we came home and watched mad men. im feeling anxious about money but im trying not to.

[ericamaysdiary]

10 + 11 + 12 aug 2018

i’m bad! i’m so bad!

im just going to sum up main events

on the 10th, we went to dani’s birthday in the evening and that was a nice time where i felt really energized and social and was making new friends, but at some point one of their friends was really drunk and talking to me with his arm around my waist and kept asking the same questions over and over even though he’d heard the answer. i told david and dragos and david was so mortified that he told chuck and dani the next day and they were really upset! but at the end of the night -- last call at churchill’s -- most of our group disbanded but dragos and i were still feeling really good and almost went to find an after hours with these two girls but part of the way they decided to go home and i just felt like walking and talking with dragos so thats what we did, up until christie and bloor. also, when we were outside mahjong bar some guy came up to talk to us and i thought that was real sweet, like we must have looked like people you wanna know. 

the next day, we went to dragos’ parents’ apartment downtown to celebrate his father’s birthday and eat sushi with his family. avon went and bea kept calling her annie and calling me ata, which i accept. at some point we started playing a game where bea would give me a ball and i would give it back, or i would show her how to blow air in her face, and she loved it. 

today was my penultimate shift at work and it was pretty dreadful because my temples were sore from friday night’s activities and i couldn’t really open my mouth or chew, and looking over my shoulder hurt, and jess was around for most of my shift. i did 12 monograms for this woman who bought a bunch of leather journals and just wanted them engraved for herself because she’s a novelist, and she told me at some point that this was a healing process for herself because she had to put four of her cats down this week. at the end of it, she told me she felt like we were friends and shook my hand and i felt that was sweet. i worked twenty minutes overtime doing some monograms and then left to hang out with karl. we went to the emtc indigo to pick up an order he’d shipped there and then went to lazeez. at some point a man came in and demanded a refund for an order he’d placed bc he said he heard bad things from other people. afterwards, karl went to the employees to tell them he thought that man was whack and wrong and that this was the spot and one of the employees gave us free drinks and that was all real sweet. karl got some ice cream at baskin robbins and then drove me to islington. i got off at broadview and taste of danforth made me very cranky as i walked through it to try and find dmac and dragos but when i found them everything was better and we hung out and it was good

[ericamaysdiary]

9 aug 2018

i havent written in a few days and feel very bad about it but im going to try again now.

our morning walk took us to danforth and logan so that i could visit moss and buy a card and a gift for lynda. in the pavillion with the fountain there were a lot of toys and candles left in memory of those affected by the shooting and i hadnt seen it before so it was pretty striking. when i went to moss, the plants in planters that i would have planned to get as a gift werent what i expected so i elected to get her a planter and put my own plant in it. i also decided to get this planter ive been eyeing a while that looks like a statue’s head. the cashier told me he liked my shirt and it caught me offguard but was v nice and i like the store a lot. 

we walked back home and passed this house w the most beautiful garden and dragos took pictures with it because they complemented his shirt. when we got home we hung out a little and then left to go to bulk barn and home depot. at bulk barn i had brought a few containers to fill and felt good about it, and one of the containers was just a tupperware and there werent any qualms about it so i think i wanna bring containers to bulk barn always.

at home depot, i was completely taken by the prayer plants they had and copped some variegated ones, for myself and jennifer, and also a red-veined maranta because i miss having one. it took me a while to choose my plants and i ended up spending over 40$ which i wasnt expecting at all. i met dragos at winners where he needed help deliberating over clothes and then we went home. at home we were abuzz w energy for putting things away and dragos asked what i was planning to wear to dani’s party tomorrow so i tried it on and dragos started trying on outfits for a while. eventually it was time for me to go to meet chere and calyssa but dragos brought up that i hadnt helped walk avon or helped with laundry and i felt really bad so i agreed to go w them to the park and then after the park i agreed to go to food basics and i ended up being like 30 late and i felt awful because im always late.

when i was cashing out at food basics though i had two packages of dragos’ tofurky deli meats and the cashier was this older black woman and she looked at the deli meats a while like she was really interested in them and she asked me “you veggie?” and i was like “oh, no, my partner is!” and she was like “ohh but not you?” and i was like “no!” and it was a sweet encounter. i realize now that i had two good encounters with cashiers and im big into that.

this games cafe struck me wrong at first maybe because it was such a sensory overload -- it was really loud and kind of chaotic compared to snakes and lattes -- but in hindsight it might be better than snakes and lattes in the way that weird incels who work there aren’t theatrically explaining games. and also because snakes and lattes have a history of racist treatment. 

after we played some games, we got hungry and decided to get some okonomiyaki from a place nearby but by the time we went, they were getting ready to close the kitchen and only accepted take out orders so we did that and we took our food to the food court in bloor yonge. 

when i got home, i ate a piece of salmon and we watched mad men.

[ericamaysdiary]

5 aug 2018

getting up early was a pain and because it was sunday there werent as many buses available to the subway. i managed to get to pape in time but it didnt come soon enough and i got to islington a minute late, missing bus. i tried to look past it because i had worked overtime the night before so it didnt seem like i was losing money and, in fact, i got to work a little earlier and was only about 3 minutes late.

i worked my whole shift on monogram and it mostly went well. i had another kobo conversation with a customer where i managed to convince him to buy a kobo and a case but we were out of the one he wanted (which was the most expensive!) i told lynda again tho. i had a bad monogram interaction where the customer wasnt happy and i was under a lot of speculation from customers next in line, but i think i handled myself well and by the time the customer left, we were on good terms. a customer after her was very sweet and told me to take a breather if i needed to which was very sweet i almost cried just because it was so sweet. by the end of the shift, i messed around and monogrammed a pencil which freaked everyone out.

after work, i bused to the fountain near sukhothai to meet dragos and we got a table at the restaurant. it was a great dinner even though the table beside us was really loud. the food was blessed and dragos says gaeng massaman is his new favourite thing. i dont think i could even attempt to make it.

afterwards we went to a patio nearby to continue our conversations, and left at like 11:45 when sab needed to pee. dragos and i agree that sab and matt are very sweet and we like them together a lot. oh and also while we were on the patio we saw ivana and that was lovely because we rarely see ivana but shes a great person.

at some point i went to the bathroom at the pub and the tiling of the floors reminded me of a man in sevilla who was inlaying tiles in a pavillion by corte ingles by hand. lately ive been thinking a lot that spain with dragos was one of my favourite things and i could probably be so happy to move to spain.

[ericamaysdiary]

4 aug 2018

i didnt have much of a morning before leaving for work and on my way there, i realized i had somehow calculated to be an hour early which was a ridiculous mistake but worked out in the end because sabrina went on her break around then and i got to hang out with her, and she asked me and dragos to go to sukhothai with her and matt the next day.

the shift itself was pretty great, i was feeling good despite feeling a little sick in the morning. i managed to talk confidently with a customer interested in kobos to help her decide which would be best for her and sold her the kobo and a sleepcover. i made sure to tell lynda before she left so she could fit it in her notes and she got all wistful about my leaving, and we chatted about my new job. i also spent most of my shift monogramming since candice didnt feel entirely confident devoting a whole shift to the laser. at some point i worked with this family to monogram a wooden board and it looked beautiful.

i missed the bus that would have gotten me home by 10:30 so i clocked back in and worked another half hour. when i got home at 11:30 i felt quite sick and made myself some soup while we watched the great british bakeoff finale.

[ericamaysdiary]

3 aug 2018

i took avon to the park and we had a great time together because i got her to break into her really fast runs which is a lot of fun for us! when we got home, we hung out together until dragos came home with iced coffees.

we watched an episode of masterchef while i made myself breakfast and ate it, and then we left around 3:30 to go to balmy beach park to meet anna, gideon, and bodie. it was a lot nicer than cherry beach in my experience, largely because it didn’t smell like dog pee. it was also a far larger beach. we set up with our mats and had the dogs off leash and that was real nice. eventually we got hungry so dragos and gideon went off to get food and beers and anna and i moved our mats to a spot halfway in the shade. they came back with fish tacos and burritos and chips and somehow it was exactly what i wanted to eat right then. around 8:30 i needed to pee and the bathroom was closed and anna and gideon needed to feed avon so we all left.

[ericamaysdiary]

2 aug 2018

dragos and i went to fairview mall because he had a dentist appointment so while he did that i went to forever 21 and their buy one get one free for sale items gave me an excuse to drop around $86, but im pretty convinced i got some new wardrobe staples that’ll help me out for my new job.

on the way to fairview dragos and i were talking about harry potter and he said “harry potter is the opposite of israel” and i said “yes because israel state is bad but israeli people are good and harry potter’s core content is good but the followers are bad” and he screamed “YEEEESSSS” because we understand each other perfectly.

after, we went to yorkdale so that i could get a new audio cable for my bose headphones and also check out uniqlo. uniqlo was incredible and everything i tried on was so comfortable and fit me so well, so i bought 3 pairs of pants, and two stiff neck shirts that im very happy about. i got a combined 55$ off from a gift card dragos’ mom gave me for my birthday last year and a coupon so i ended up spending $135 which i NEVER would have dropped but i looked so good i couldnt not, and they’re all wardrobe staples too. while i paid, dragos got a spicy salmon bahn mi and he let me have a bite and it was delicious.

when we got home, i ate and took avon on a walk and while on that walk, we met an incredibly small white dog walking off leash in the grass beside its owners in a very unsure little wobble. when it saw avon it very clumsily but very determinedly geared up to try to headbutt avon and it was the funniest thing in the world. i talked with the owner who was an old european lady and very nice and she said her dog was 14 years old. when i left she thanked me and i thought that was sweet.

when i got home, fiona and jennifer picked me up and we went to ikea. i brought them some of my homemade butter tarts and they loved them! at ikea jennifer got us ice creams and we walked around admiring everything. i forgot to get shower curtains and hooks but didnt realize until we were in line. hopefully i can pick some up soon.

i spent about $100 here too but half of that was this chair-towel-rack hybrid that i got for dragos to store his in-between clothes. on the drive home i told them about my mom’s superstitions from living in the philippines and they loved it and i told them my moms kind of crazy and did an impersonation which involved her canadian tire/home depot plant scam in which we returns a dead plant from her garden under the guise that it’s one she bought from them and exchange it for a new, living plant. “they dont know they dont have forensic, what theyre gonna do?” 

once we got home, i started to put the ikea stuff away and i assembled the chair-towel-rack while we watched the great british bake off. i couldnt fully screw in some of the screws so the seat of the chair rolls in and out but dragos assures me no one would ever sit in that chair so it doesnt matter.

[ericamaysdiary]

1 aug 2018

this morning i took avon to the park and it was overcast and i think we were both feeling similarly: kind of anxious, kind of unsettled, bleary. she wasnt especially excited to go to the park for whatever reason and then when we got there, a little girl kept taunting her so we had to leave. i ended up shouldering a man at some point in my walk because he and two women, all white, were taking up the entire sidewalk by walking all in a row. i voiced my disagreement to their backs but not loudly enough to be heard. i wish id been louder.

dragos came home with iced coffees and we watched some of the GBBO and i burned some of the mexican rice i was re-cooking but he helped me salvage it and turn it into a fried rice. i ate and we watched the fashion fund’s second season first episode before i left for work. i left relatively early but the subway ride was very long. at some point a whole group of summer camp kids got off and the subway waited while the counsellors did attendance almost comically slow. i ran to the bus but it was late so i waited with an old white lady and a hispanic man with a cane.

when the bus came, the three of us waited in a line and a black woman cut the two in front of me off which i felt no ways about but the white woman was very mad and as soon as she got on the bus she cussed the black woman out and the black woman retaliated by calling the man’s disability “made up” so all in all it was a messy affair.

the bus stopped at a red light and theres police tape around two streetlights at the corner of a food basic parking lot that are askew like they’ve been pulled out of the ground and at first i just accept that the strong winds would have had the power to do it but now that the bus gets closer it seems more likely that a car crashed into them. theres concrete smashed at the base of the street-most streetlamp.

when i got to work, somehow my general manager who consistently posts the new week of scheduling up late, and often on fridays, decided to post it the day i said i was handing in my two-weeks and scheduled me two days past what was my anticipated last day, and all the shifts were largely cash. honestly, i found that pretty petty and i really hate her! 

not a lot happened during the shift but a notable thing that happened was this customer ive helped twice in the past with book recommendations came in and wanted my help finding brother by david chariandy and wanted to return everybody’s son, and he said its because they keep mentioning the death of a son and he just had a son and really cant deal with that, and thats the realest shit.

after work, i chatted a lot with fatima and karl and a lot of tea was spilled and it was very fun and distracted me from the fact my bus home was like 30mins late and i needed dragos to pick me up from broadview. 

[ericamaysdiary]

31 july 2018

i’m writing this one on aug 1 because i didnt feel like writing anything last night but to recap

dragos and i walked avon to the farmers market and got a smoothie and i saw some butter tarts i really wanted but not wanted enough to pay $8 for so i decided to make them later that day. we got a delicious smoothie and had a really lovely morning.

when we got home, i made us some pasta using the leftovers from when we made zucchini noodles and it was really delicious. we watched the most recent episode of the bachelorette. afterwards i think we just hung out a bit more, eventually deciding to go to food basics but i think i was put in a mood because it was already 5:40 and i felt the day slipping away. at the grocery store i had a really annoying interaction with a man who worked there who called me sweetie and asked if i needed help but kind of condescendingly didn’t put effort into helping me, but led me to helping myself. he said they didnt have corn syrup so i went and found corn syrup myself.

we drove to the park and i had forgotten tart shells so after the park, dragos went in to grab them for me (esp because i didnt feel like going back in after that interaction with that man) and he said there was a distressing scene going on at cash involving an old woman speaking (possibly) greek and yelling at a cashier who also (possibly) spoke (possibly) greek. 

when we got home dragos started baking squash and i made red curry and butter tarts and we watched the great british bake off! my butter tarts were delicious and so easy to make -- maybe because i didnt make the tart shells hehe

[ericamaysdiary]

31 july 2018

i feel like i should make more of an effort to construct my diary entries throughout the day because i feel like i lose a lot trying to recount it all now and i just happen to also be incredibly tired.

we took avon on a long walk before going to the park, then came home again. i decided to cook some of the mexican rice and beans id made before in the pan to season it more and try to get it to stick to the pan, and that turned out really well. dragos and i ate them with some grilled cheese and pesto sandwiches and the red onions id pickled and watched deadpool 2. after that i went outside with avon and we sat in the sun. i talked to some of my plants to try to encourage growth, and then brushed and pet avon. 

we went to jennifers around 3 and hung out there for a while. she gave us some rye raisin bread and goats cheese from a farmers market and it was very delicious. steve told me his boss (soon to be mine too) bought a journal from chapters that’s kind of burgundy and leather with gold engraving like “BE AWESOME” and we talked about how nice it would be to get her another inspirational journal with her name monogrammed on it. 

jennifer, fiona, dragos, and i went through some places we want to go to in new york and i put them onto a map on jennifer’s laptop. we then planned to go to ikea that night so i started to look up storage solutions because dragos and i agree we could work on tidying our place w some great storage. we ended up rescheduling our ikea trip for thursday. i stayed to try some potato hash and sausage they had made which was very good, and then dragos and i left to pick up some beers and a pizza he had ordered. we got home and i immediately started to wash the dishes on a manic upswing of home-cleaning inspiration that ended as soon as i sat down. we ate pizza and watched the fashion fund on netflix and downloaded the fall but we’re kind of hooked on the fashion fund. i wrote out and printed my two weeks so i’m glad to have that done. when we left to walk avon there was a topless man in the hallway but he walked into an apartment so we didnt really see him, but on the way back he was there and he had a suitcase full of stuff that was kind of emptied out on the floor and he was like “im cleaning the mess” and we were like ya no worries

[ericamaysdiary]

29 july 2018

i took avon to the park this morning while dragos was at the gym but there was a little kickers session going on as well as some older kids doing soccer drills so it was hard to let avon run because she would keep running into these territories so we just went home. avon and i sat on the balcony together once home because i believe she asked me to (i had let her out on her own bc she wanted to go out but then she came inside and barked at me) but eventually a dog barking in the yard somewhere agitated her so we went inside.

dragos’ mom came over with bea and i decided going to lunch with them would be worth being a little late, so we walked down to il fornello. bea is one of the cutest babies i know in real life and im obsessed with her right now. at il fornello i got a smoked salmon eggs benedict and dragos’ mom got this really good pasta. dragos got a tofu scramble that was nowhere near the tofu scramble he made and he didnt say so explicitly but i think the disappointment was clear. i reconciled the fact i’d miss the bus to get me to work 30 minutes early and decided to aim for the one to get me to work right on time. i managed to get to the station right on time but the bus had just left which was devastating but fortunately for me, karl offered to pick me up and take me to work. it was a great opportunity for us to have a chat about some things going on on his end that he wanted to meet tomorrow to talk about, and at the end of it he loosely called our plans off since i wouldn’t be coming up to mississauga and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to come into toronto so at least we managed to chat during our car ride. 

my work shift was actually pretty boring and i dont remember much of what happened except that i got to work with hana and sabrina and that jamie lynn acting as the supervisor meant we never really saw her so we were free to just mess around. sabrina finished her shift around when i went on my half so she hung out with me in the break room and that was really sweet!!!

on my bus ride home i thought about how weird it is on dundas from, like, hurontario to dixie because of how it just seems like there are all these businesses and plazas that just hang around in the middle of nowhere, and you have to drive to get anywhere, but then i realized that just outside this bubble, there’s probably residences and it shouldnt have but it kind of blew my mind. 

i got home and ate my eggs benedict leftovers while dragos finished a documentary on the harassment women gamers face. i just sent him rent money and i’m a little stressed because i’ve never had less than 1000$ in my chequing before but im expecting around $600 with my next pay check so hopefully i can save my money until i’m back in the green zone. 

[ericamaysdiary]

28 july 2018

i slept in 15 minutes past my alarm and avon was restless in the most adorable way; i turned onto my side and she stuck her head under my arm to be held, but i think she just wanted attention because she didnt stop. when i finally got up, i showered and once out of my shower i boiled some water to make half a packet of spaghetti. when i went to strain it, the strainer kind of dipped into the sink. when i went to pick it up i guess my hand was remembering how heavy it was when it was empty because the weight of it now took me by surprise. i let the strainer tip over and all my spaghetti fell into the sink, half of it in the basin of the sink and the rest in a bowl that had been soaking overnight. i had to spend the last ten minutes before i was to catch the bus scooping spaghetti into the garbage and stressing because i didnt have anything prepared for my lunch yet. by the time i had finished cleaning i had missed my bus and i was so frustrated i kicked over the trashcan and spilled the spaghetti on the floor, so i had to spend another few minutes cleaning that up. i packed some of this bland mexican rice and beans i made and had to wake dragos up to cry in his arms and ask him to drive me to the subway. once i got out of the subway i realized i hadnt packed headphones.

i finished the book i had been reading 3 stops before my station. i watched out the window across from me as the subway came out of the tunnel and i thought maybe my not having headphones would be an opportunity to “center myself”. i spent most of my bus ride trying to fall asleep but i couldnt get my head comfortable on the seat. eventually i put my rolled up scarf behind my head and that helped a lot and i managed to nap a bit.

at starbucks the barista was the younger sister of a girl in my grade at high school who also works at that starbucks, and this sister recognized me and gave me my coffee for free which was very sweet. my shift was a short, 5 hour one but it really flew by because i was working the laser machine and towards the end of my shift, the laser machine was really taking off in interest. twice during my shift i had people cut me off to tell me they weren’t interested in me even telling them about the service and it really blew my mind that people can be so rude. after my shift, sabrina started hers and i hung around the laser machine while i waited for aaron to come and the whole time i was telling customers about the service. i think the manager i hate probably thought i was just fucking around while clocked in but she’s sorely mistaken! when aaron arrived we convinced him to engrave his water bottle but there was a woman getting a bunch of things done first so we ended up waiting an hour before we could do it! but we engraved zaddy and it was hilarious because lynda and this one customer would come over to ask to see it and aaron was so ashamed.

then aaron and i left and drove home and had some beer w dragos and devin before walking down to boodle fight. it was such an enjoyable experience w our friends. i also love being able to talk about my plants with devin since i dont really have any friends of my own who simultaneously love plants and actually care for plants.

 at boodle fight, the atmosphere felt so nostalgic and when i was taking the stairs back up from the bathroom i convinced myself i knew the smell, maybe from being babysat by filipino lolas while my mom worked. the food was incredible and i think everyone liked it a lot. we kept talking about writing a positive yelp review to offset a negative one.

we walked back home and watched a mini doc on incels and then watched terrifier, then all 4 of us walked avon before aaron and devin left.

[ericamaysdiary]

27 july 2018

as usual we started our day off taking avon on a walk. when we got home dragos made me an avocado and brie sandwich that was probably the best id had in my life. we watched the tokyo nights episode of parts unknown and made plans to go to boodle fight tomorrow night. on the way to my commute, my bus was 12 late so i got to work about five minutes from starting and some white lady cut me off in line at starbucks and pretended she didnt see me which was infuriating but i still got to clock in on time and eat a little bit before starting my shift. sab had already been working and i packed her a dinner to take home. i had to close w the manager i hate again and she tried to connect w me by telling me she “feels my pain” about commuting to work because her ex used to live in north york? she started by asking how my commute to work was and i was like “it was fine” “dont u live like in the middle of toronto” “danforth” lmfao whack. otherwise i had a pretty nice shift, promoted the old foil monogrammer a bunch. leaving work, i got caught in heavy rainfall that only got worse as i walked to the bus stop. nothing feels more pitiful and i dont know why, i felt like the most pathetic person.