I forgot what day it was and then I walked to the Beer Store. True story.

It’s Saturday! Who ever posts anything on a Saturday? Well, apparently I do now because this blog is the one thing in my life I can make work according to my own warped sense of time.

I’d like to put the garbage out but, oh wait, that was yesterday. I forgot. And now I get to wait another two weeks before I have the chance to put out the garbage. This every-other-week garbage and recycling pick up is all fine and dandy until you miss a day and then, BAM, you’ve got a month’s worth of garbage festering in the July heat, piled up above the rim as you make a sport out of doing handstands on top of it in order to please fit just one more bag of assorted landfill.

I’d also like to bring the two older kids to the arts and crafts class I registered them for at Michael’s. But that was yesterday too. They sat around watching TV instead while I spent the morning opening emails and then peeling a two-year-old off my lap every three minutes. The class is only $2 a piece and they’re offering them all summer but I just feel so defeated. I’d have to go back there in person and figure out another day that works and then — let’s be real — I’ll probably forget about it again.

I blame the summer. I do. When the kids aren’t in school or camp, there’s really no discernible difference between the days around here. I mean, usually I can keep track because I know that Cosmo TV is rerunning Girls on Tuesday nights and Last Comic Standing is on Thursdays, but I haven’t even been watching TV this week. You guessed it, because of summer.

Summer and it’s stupid little dresses and bathing suits. I happened to find myself standing in my underwear in a fitting room with a three-way mirror last week and, no matter how hard I tried, there was no flattering way to suck in my tummy and angle myself that would look good in all three mirrors at once. It’s like running on a treadmill twice a week over the winter and then abruptly stopping and eating whatever you want for months on end isn’t enough. I was going to have to exercise.

So I’ve been exercising, which I don’t even mind. It’s fine. I’ll run a couple times and week and do some other stuff at home in between. Except that I am completely incapable of both exercising and living the rest of my life. It’s like all the blood is going to my puny little wannabe muscles and I can’t seem to write an email, bathe my children or remember to take out the garbage.

Yesterday was a rest day or I can promise you I’d sitting in a chair staring blankly at a wall right now.

Yes, it was a rest day, but I still wanted to be somewhat active. Sadly, I had a kid claiming to be sick, so we were pretty much housebound all day. Plus, thanks to my enthusiastic reentry to the world of exercise, I couldn’t walk up the stairs or bend over to pick up an errant ball of masking tape covered in Christmas tinsel without feeling the burn. Oh god, it hurt. The whole day just hurt.

So I gathered up some empties after dinner and walked over to the Beer Store to get my $2.20 in deposits, just for the exercise, you know. But, what the hell, it was Friday night and I’d been slacking off all week  exercising! I crossed the parking lot to go the LCBO because I am too fucking fancy to drink the beer they sell at the Beer Store. I brought my seasonal sampler six-pack of locally-brewed craft beer up to the register, had the cashier scan my Air Miles card, of course, and paid for my beer.

I was still standing there, putting my change into my new grown-up lady wallet, when I heard the cashier. “Can I see some I.D.?” Huh. I looked up and saw a young man who was clearly in his mid-to-late twenties. Really? Really. You’re just gonna card him like that when you didn’t even have the common decency to card me? Right in front of me? Are you trying to make me feel bad?

It’s enough to make a girl think that Air Miles aren’t worth collecting.

I was already three or four blocks away when I heard someone say, “Excuse me.” It was the young guy from the liquor store. I might have even noticed how attractive he was if we were on the same side of the “to card or not to card” call. As it stands, I’m stuck ogling the cast of Dazed and Confused and a bunch of aging grunge rockers.

“You have a piece of yellow string in your hair,” he told me.

“Oh?” I reached up to the side of my head.

“No … it’s in the back.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

And then he walked off while I was left feeling blindly around in my hair for half an eternity. I finally found it. It wasn’t string after all. It was a thin piece of crinkled crepe paper; you know, the stuff you use to make the grass in your kids’ Easter baskets.

I would say that doesn’t even make sense in July. But, for me, it totally does.