Cards and Silverware

I got to keep my job. Thank you executive leadership. You have given me my plan for the next 6 months back. I appreciate this. Now I have to conjure up the strenghth and patience it will take to make this plan into a reality. It's a plan that includes a lot of down time, but has magnificent bright spots here and there. I hope it all works out because anything that has a lot of down time associated with it has potential to be devastating if it fails.

I know I'm being all mysterious and vague with this. I just don't want to get specific just yet. I have my reasons, and unfortunately they are too precious to put out on you, blog. I hope you're not offended. I know no one reads you, but that doesn't deter from the fact that someone could read you if they wanted, and for now I want my plan and reasons for not being specific about it to remain hidden. Those who need to know the plan know it. That's all that matters at this point.

On to more specific writing!

I just ate a baked potato. Baked potatoes are the most underrated food sometimes. I mean, I went to the grocery store, bought a potato for 89 cents, brought it home, poked holes in it, and threw it in the microwave for 5 minutes. Add some salt, pepper, sour cream and viola! Dinner is seved bitches. And it's a good dinner too. Like, I'm full from my potato. It treated me well.

As I ate my potato tonight, I thought back to when I was 11 years old and at a wedding reception of some distant family member of mine. I had some sort of meat on the plate in front of me that I was preparing to eat. My grandparents had these Canadian friends of theirs in town who were sitting across from me. Why my grandparents have Canadian friends is beyond me, but they were from Saskatchewan and while they were there, they taught me two very useful things that I still practice to this day.

The first of these is a little card game called 99. I'm terrible at card games what with remembering rules and regulations and timing and everything else. I know how to play cribbage and I know how to play 99. Anything else beyond that is out of my realm. Hell, I don't even know Go Fish anymore. And if we're going to be honest, I forget how to play cribbage unless I'm playing it on a regular basis. Since I can't remember the last time I played cribbage, I can guarantee you if we sat down to play it would be a clusterfuck of who counts first and who draws what. It's a gentleman's game afterall and I want to maintain the ridiculous politeness of the game whenever possible, however my game suffers as a result since I can't for the life of me remember the structure of said politeness.

So that leaves me with 99. The one card game I can confidently explain to anyone and usually it's a hit in the end. It's basically like a Canadian version of blackjack, only better in my mind since it's a fast paced round of excellence. I know I boasted confidence in explaining this game, but I'll refrain from including the rules and regulations in you, blog. That's just going to be both boring to read, and it will make me frustrated because then I will want to play 99, and I can't do so since I'm by myself.

The second thing that the Candians taught me was how to eat with a knife and fork. This isn't to say I wasn't familiar with silverware before this, but I must say I wasn't familiar with the best, most effective way to use it. Had it not been for the Candians, my brother and I would have both grown up in the unfortunate circumstance of fumbling silverware and meat into our mouths in a very unattractive manner. Here I was, little 11 year old Samantha, trying to hold down my meat with my fork in my left hand and knife in my right, sawing away at it only to switch my fork over to my right hand once I had a piece ready to be eaten. The Canadians said "No! This cannot be!". (or they expressed this in a less dramatic way) And they took me under their Canadian wings and showed me the proper way to use a knife and a fork. Don't switch hands. Keep the fork in your left and the knife in your right. Now stab! Stab with the fork whilst it is still in your left hand! Raise the fork to your mouth! Eat and repeat!

It was tricky for me to get at first, but I stuck with it and before I knew it I was a pro at slicing and dicing my meat and raising it to my mouth in one swift motion. Now I can't imagine eating a steak or anything else you stab and slice with a knife and fork any other way. And I consumed my baked potato in this very fashion. You can eat anything with a knife and fork if you put your mind to it. I think once I even ate a burger, an entire burger, without picking it up once. Just to prove a point. Canadians might be full of beaurocracy, and their student loans are shit to work with at my job that I got to keep, but they know how to play obscure card games no one has ever heard of, and boy can they utilize silverware with the effectiveness of 1000 spoon fed babies.

That made no sense, but I don't care.

So thank you Canadians for all that you've done for me. I don't remember your names and for all I know you might be dead, but you added two very important things into my life that I can't imagine living without.