I was talking to my mom earlier, maybe around 2:30, and she told me that she was doing housework. She told me about how she had done laundry, straightened up the bedroom, dusted, washed her floors, and she was in the process of cleaning the bathroom. I paused and said, “Wow. I’ve had a shower, and uh, yeah that’s about it.”

I felt so disappointed in my lack of motivation compared to my Mom the Cleaning Machine(tm) that I hung up and did some cleaning up in the bedroom, washed the dishes, did some laundry, cleaned the kitchen and the table, and I feel a little better now. Sheesh.

Anyway, the reason I had called her was to tell her that I was featured in a section of the Montreal Gazette, in their Saturday Extra section (page B2, woo). It included a link to my blog and some quotes from me and it was very nifty and made me sound articulate and witty.

My first reaction was, “well this is really cool!” My second reaction was to suffer from some mild performance anxiety as I realized that now a bunch of new people would come here and what on earth would I write about?

Luckily for you, I remembered a funny Hayley story from earlier this week, so hi to all the Gazette readers and here’s what had me laughing hard enough that I cried the other day.

Last weekend George’s sister was visiting and she gave Hayley a five dollar bill. It was meant for her piggy bank but instead, she decided she wanted to keep it in a wallet. I gave her one of my old ones and she was very happy to stuff the bill inside. When she went shopping with her aunt the next day, she took her wallet in a purse but didn’t spend it.

Fast forward a couple of days. George was heading out for a bit one evening and we needed toilet paper. He was just intending to stop at a nearby convenience store where you can get four rolls for a couple of bucks. He didn’t have any actual cash on him and didn’t want to bother with the bank card for two dollars, so he asked Hayley if he could borrow the five dollars from her and said he would pay her back the next day after doing the grocery shopping.

Oh HELL no. Hayley was outraged and refused to let him take her money, perhaps not understanding that she would get it back in about 12 hours. George said it was totally her right to say no and said it wasn’t a big deal so he went out and used the bank card and that was the end of that.

Or so we thought.

The next day, George’s dad called and asked if he could take Hayley out and have her over to their house for supper. We said that would be fine, so Hayley got dressed. Then, thinking she might go to the store, she pulled a chair out from the table and dragged it over to the buffet. She climbed up and opened my sugar canister, and pulled out an almost-full bag of sugar. Underneath the bag was her wallet!

When I asked her what the heck she was doing with her wallet in the sugar canister, she looked at me and said, “Well I didn’t want anyone to take my money.”

It took me a long time to stop laughing, but in between I managed to explain that no one would take her money and she didn’t have to hide it from her parents, that we respected her enough to not just take it after she had said no.

It was damn funny though. What a monkey.