Salsa counts as a vegetable right?

We're producing Peter Pan.*  I'm directing, David is the tech director and Rissa is dancing.  Sunday is our big rehearsal day.  Our family is at the rehearsal hall all day, which means that no one is home to prep dinner.  Which means that by the time we get home for dinner?  We have Resort Food.  As in the kind of food you RESORT to having when you simply don't have the energy to prepare anything healthy.

Last night?  NACHOS!  Rissa thinks she's died and gone to Heaven.

"Until the show opens we get to eat crappy food all the time, don't we?"

She has given me a list of foods that she thinks would be appropriate options for our Sunday dinners:

Kraft Dinner
Badly Breaded Chicken Nuggets
Frozen Pizza
Poutine
Pasta with canned Alfredo/Carbonara sauce.

If you see someone on the street in a simple carbohydrate/sodium coma?  That'd be me.

* Shameless plug - Peter Pan is playing in Port Hope, ON - the last weekend of February first weekend in March, 2013 

Winning the lottery wouldn't be enough...

Before we bought our beautiful heritage house, we had a meeting with the bank where they looked at our debt ratio.   I was depressed.  I was sure that we wouldn't be able to afford the house.  But then, miracles of miracles, the bank said yes we could.

The bank lied.

In the 70s?  My family lived in Nova Scotia and we'd buy a lottery ticket where the grand prize was $100,000.  It was SO MUCH money!  We would spend hours and hours dreaming as a family about what we would do with those winnings.  The trips we we take, the cars we'd buy, the pool we'd install.  If we won $100, 000 now, it would only pay off a third of our debt.   If we were to win the Early-Bird draw from one of those Home Lotteries?  We would still owe money to the bank.

The bank says, "Here, have a credit line!  Here, have another credit line!"

We say, "Are you sure we can afford all this?"

The bank says, "We are completely sure!"

The bank are lying bastards.

They talk about the benefits of home ownership.  You're not throwing money into a black hole of rent - you have 'equity' in your home - it's an investment.  What they don't talk about?  Is the fact that you'll never have disposable income again once you own a house.  Maintenance on a house is expensive.   And maintenance on a century home?  Forget about it!  There's a reason they are called money pits. 

We are so fucking house poor.  Every job?  Costs at least $1000. Minimum.  And when you're in a heritage home or even heritage district, you can't just go the economical way.  The Heritage Committee can't tell you what you can do to the inside of your home, but they are fascists about the outside.  If we were to replace or repair our windows to satisfy the Heritage Committee?  It would be about $1000, per window.  We have 37 windows - not including the basement windows.

You don't think about this when you fall in love with a house.  You are seduced by the butler's pantry and servants' staircase and claw footed bathtub and sloped ceilings in the attic.  You salivate over the wood-burning fireplace and transomed windows.  You don't think about the fact that it will take, according to the rate at which we are paying down our debt now (which is the 'one step forward, 3 steps back' ratio), 75 years to pay off our debt.  I just did the math.  I'll be 119 when I'm debt free at this rate.  Not a problem!  The women in my family are long lived. We'll pay it all off and then we'll be able to afford that trip to Disney - with the grandkids, great grandkids and possibly great grandkids.  It'll be a helluva party!

Hippalicious...

I am an archer.   My arms stretch in opposing directions, pulling the nylon.  But unlike the Olympic bulls-eye 229 feet away, my target is closer.  The nylon/spandex thong in my hands is pulled near-to-tearing so that I may circumnavigate my hips. I'm Magellan!

Boy shorts don't cause this problem.  Boy shorts squoosh everything into their containing fabric.  Thongs don't have enough fabric to do that, hence the stretching.  I mean, sure, I could lose 20 lbs so that I didn't have these hippalicious bits, but the odds of that happening?  Pretty small.

It's just part of the morning routine.  You know...  You brush your teeth, you scrape all the coaty bits off your tongue, you re-adjust your bra straps annnnnd.... you stretch your thong.    Then after you put your bra on, you make sure your nipples are pointing in the same direction and you tuck your back pudge into the bra band.

There was a time when being hippalicious was not an issue... When I was 12 maybe... nope!  Not even then.  It was when I was 10... 'Cause the spring when I was 11?  I stole money from my parents and went to the Tasty Twirl and had ice cream  every day until I was caught and grounded for the entire rest of the summer.  My diet of high fructose corn syrup, proved to be my downfall.  Basically my criminal activity from age 11 has haunted me for 33 years.  Crime does NOT pay.

Six Degrees of Separation.. according to Rissa

At the dinner table:

I say to David, "You know what Will Smith movie we should see again?  Six Degrees of Separation..." 

"Six degrees?"  Rissa looks perplexed.

"Yes, it's a phrase that talks about the interconnectedness of..."

"That's like this big."  (She holds her fingers apart by this much, indicating the angle.)  "That's wee."

"Yes it is pretty small," David and I agree.  "There was this movie with Will Smith when he was much younger..."

Rissa isn't paying attention.  She's looking at her fingers.  "It's really only this big.  (Her eyebrows are down around her nose now.)  Seriously.  We've been doing this stuff in math.  It is only this big.  I can get my protractor and show you."

She's going to get her protractor?  "Where did you come from?" I ask - thinking that the math gene really must have skipped a generation.

"I'm smart.  In my brain." 

In other news... Rissa was unimpressed when when we then told her about Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  She felt we were doing a disservice to math.

Unswallowable... (and NO, I don't mean THAT)

There was a discussion around the dinner table about how many teenagers in the Family Studies class at David's school have ended up pregnant since the course began.  A lot.  Like more than a handful.  These girls are in a class that GIVES them condoms and information on how NOT to get pregnant!  I might have ranted.

"Are they stupid?  Is this a Family Studies Class for stupid people?  If they are sexually active, why are they not on the pill and using condoms!?!"

"Maybe they can't swallow the pill," says Rissa.

"Everyone can swallow the pill," says I.  "It's THIS big!" (indicating tiny pill size with my outstretched fingers)

"I can't swallow pills," says Rissa.

"Yet.  You can't swallow pills YET.  Hand me that jar of gummy vitamins and a knife - we're starting now.  By bedtime you'll be swallowing pills."

"Mummy..."  (with accompanying eye roll)

"Seriously.  We need to get on this.  Do you KNOW how much more expensive Children's Tylenol is?  If I put all the extra dollars we'll save by switching to actual pills into your RESP, you'll be able to attend Harvard."

"Mummy we were talking about sex."

"No we were talking about dumb girls who get pregnant."

"No, I was just saying that maybe they can't be on the pill because they can't swallow pills."

"So these girls aren't dumb - they just can't swallow pills yet?"

"Yes."

"If they are too young to be swallowing pills, then they are obviously too young to be having sex."

"But when you CAN swallow pills, you're old enough to have sex?"

"NO!!!  OH MY GOD, NO!!!"

"You just said..."

"Forget what I just said.  Say this with me now: 'Teenaged girls who get pregnant are dumb... teenaged girls who get pregnant are dumb..'   I'm serious.  It should be your mantra."

"Mummy."  (eye roll)  "Even if I could swallow pills, I'd probably forget to take them anyway."

"David we need to research the shot."

Funny, I don't remember taking banned substances...

A Jewel on Queen West

So I found these socks...  these mind-blowing, amazing, hyperventilation-inducing-from-so-much-glee socks...  on Queen West at a store that must, I think, cater to the drag queen set.  (Original - 515 Queen Street West in Toronto.)  This store was so awesome, I got a little dizzy.  Jon had to remind me to breathe properly as I stared at a wall of leg wear.

This store was kind of like... Heaven.  First, you walk in and there are fabulous shoes as far as the eye can see.  Floral oxfords and polka-dotted Mary Janes and Steam Punk red leather boots.  Counters with sparkly hair accessories and bracelets...  Fancy-schmancy dresses (+ a whole 2nd floor above with even MORE fancy-schmancy dresses)...   And then?  Then an entire WALL with the most fabulous socks and tights I have EVER seen.  I spied, designed in France!!!, Dub & Drino socks.  I held them to my chest like a brand new patchwork kitten.  When the cashier tried to make me hand them over to scan the price, I growled.  She eventually convinced me to move my hand closer to the scanner.

Dub & Drino tights and socks, from FRANCE

I escorted these festive foot accessories home.  Rissa got very excited when I shared their magnificence with her.  I took the socks from their cardboard banding - nearly salivating as I readied my feet for their glory...

And the fuckers didn't fit!!  When did I acquire Female Soviet Athlete calves?!?   Were my Flintstones laced with anabolic steroids in the 70s?  I could just barely get the socks on, but then my circulation was cut off from my knees down.  I got a little woobly.  I was close to weeping.  The socks, now reside in Rissa's sock drawer.

I looked on the wrapper and discovered these socks were made for sizes 5/8.5  feet.  See?  That was the problem there.  I needed either sized 9/11 socks, or the ones labelled "For those with freakishly ginormous calves."  I'm going back next time I'm in town and I'm reading the labels and I'm stocking up.  If Rissa hadn't so coveted them herself, I would have turned them into fingerless gloves for the winter.  I may still buy another pair, cut the toes off, make a thumb-hole and do just that.  'Cause you know what? My forearms WILL fit into the 5/8.5 sized socks and then the world shall marvel at my fabulous forearms and say "Oh my Heather.  Where, oh where, did you discover such marvelous mitts?"  And then?  Then I shall sing them the Ballad of the Fabulous Fingerless Gloves.

Hurray! I get to run on the beach and ride white horses!

HURRAY!!!!

Recently, Rissa arrived home from school, all moany and growly and generally not her usual bouncy self.

"Are you tired honey?" 

"NO!  My PERIOD started."  Grrrrrrrrrr...

(So... I have this thing.  Women shouldn't use their periods as a convenient excuse for just being moody bitches.  Yes, most definitely it can be a pain in the ass, both metaphorically and quite literally (say if your sit bones come into play - I mean Sweet Mother of Creation - how can you even HURT there - they are bones!?!)  But you know what?  You don't have to decimate the rest of the world with your hormonal fallout.  I had no cramping until I was in my 20s. It only really got bad for me AFTER having babies.  Unintentional moodiness happens, sure, but if I find myself doing it, that's when I know to take a breath, regroup and pour myself a scotch tea.  For me, the first 36 hours suck like a Dane getting the marrow out of a turkey neck; I'm pretty much medicated/drunk the whole time clutching my heating pad and watching bad t.v., but you're not going to find me yelling at random dudes on the street, "You fucking fuckers have no fucking clue what the fuck I'm going through here!!"  It is what it is.)

Rissa's new to the game, I therefore take a patience-filled breath before I ask, "Are you cramping?"  Maybe she's in true discomfort.  I ready my bosom for a commiserative hug.

"No... but the universe is mean!!  We shouldn't HAVE to bleed."

Well I can't really fault that sentiment.  "How about this?  How about you become a scientist and you can figure out a way for women not to actually have to bleed, but they can still ovulate and have babies?"

"No, that seems like a lot of work.  Especially if I'm having my period."

Chart Your Cycle - by Chella Quint - awesome zine!!