Condoms +

"He may only touch your boobs if he is doing it with two separate Swiffers held from the length of their poles."

My daughter is now of an age where there's a real possibility that dudes will be touching her boobs.  She has a boyfriend (whom I adore), but he's still a teenaged boy with all the attending testosterone.  He's going to want to touch her boobs.   Hell, I'm her Mom and I want to touch her boobs.  That sounded wrong didn't it?  Oh God, I'm going to turn into that Grandma from Sixteen Candles!  I'm going to be feeling up my granddaughters.  It's just that new boobs are the antithesis of 45 year old, having nursed one's young, boobs.  There's a level of visual fascination there.  Mine haven't been like that in SOOOOO long.

Is it wrong of me to want my daughter to wear a mask that makes her look like Quasimodo?  Convince her to walk with a limp, talk in a terrifying accent?  Just until university. Knowing that she's holding hands?  Totally cool with that.  It's adorable.  I hear that she's being kissed goodbye on the doorstep and I have a moment of commiserative joy, of me going "Awwwwwwww."  Then I remember what it was like to be having those first kisses.  And then I remember what happens when you start to feel tingly.  When there's pressure to let him to second base and then to third and then he wants to slide home...

"You need to tell me when you start getting tingly.  Seriously. 'Cause then you need to be on the pill. Along with the condoms.  You cannot use condoms alone as birth control.  You can't!!!  It has to be Condoms +.  Condoms + spermicidal foam.  Condoms + the patch.  Condoms + an IUD!!!  And if he gets an orgasm, you get one too!!"

I'm facing the battleground folks.  I have a teenaged daughter.  From now until she leaves home, we're standing guard against teen pregnancy. There are those parents who will just forbid sex, or ignore the possibility that their kids will be having it, but I remember what it was like being 16 and feeling tingly.  I remember.  Sex is a biological imperative for boys, and though some parents don't want to admit it, girls too.  It's what we want to do - as a species.  To turn a blind eye to that fact is insane.  You might as well deny climate change.  12-15 years from now I will be ready to be a grandmother.  Until then, I will stand armed with a fireplace poker, ready to disable any sperm provider that wants to knock up my daughter.

I'm not being euphemistic.  It's a promise.

A sucker for snow

I woke up this morning and saw this in my backyard:

Then out the kitchen window, looking east:

And from our front window:

I know that there are naysayers out there, who hate the snow, who grumble and pout at the first sight of it, but I'm not one of them.  I love the first real snowfall.  Second and third snowfalls too.  The sixth and seventh ain't bad either.  I LOVE them.  Waking up to new fallen snow makes me happy. 

You know why?  Because it immediately brings out the 5 year old in me, filled with wonder and awe and the possibility of a snow day. That fresh snow, topping the pines, decorating the junipers... it's a moment of natural perfection.   White and clean - looking like a real-life Christmas card just from frozen precipitation. It makes me want to grab a toboggan and rush to the Catholic high school's track and giggle and shriek my way down to the bottom of the hills that surround it.  Let me have that.  Let me enjoy the moment before the +1 this afternoon turns the beautiful white into slushy grey and brown and has me yelling at family members to make sure to clean their feet off outside.

Carpe freaking nix folks - it's Canada, we're Canadians and winter is here!

Bankrupted by the Bulk Barn

They all seem so innocent.  Those plexi-glassed bins, with their silver scoops.  The aisle with its spices and herbs - the colourful cake sprinkles.  The plastic bags with their attending labelling closures.   The cute little golf pencils, to label the afore-mentioned closures.  A little of this, a little of that...

"Ooooooh.... plantain chips!  I LOVE plantain chips.  Aztec hot chocolate?  That's a must-have!"

Then you get to the cash and you find out that the 18 small items in your shopping basket, which don't even fill half the basket, total (attending ominous music) ...

$89.21  

"I'm sorry?  The total is WHAT?!?  Is the coloured sugar actually coloured cocaine??  This is less than ONE bag of food!!  $89.21?!?"

When you finally have that receipt in your hands, you are a crazy person.  You are the wife of a suspected philandering husband.  Your eyes flash over the totals.  Is this really stevia sweetener or is it diamond dust? What's that charge??  I just spent $6.78 for a scant cup and a half of white chocolate chips?!?

You've got to know your shit at the Bulk Barn.  The gluten free section??  HAH!  Gluten-free all purpose flour, pre-mixed, is 83¢  per 100 grams.  If you buy the individual ingredients separately and just mix it together at home?  32¢  per 100 grams.  And yet, it's still a billion times more expensive than regular flour.

And then add to that, the emergency mid-afternoon sugar-crash snacks that you buy, which, if you could just eat a chocolate bar instead, you could grab at the freaking Dollarama, and you'd spend less than 5 dollars on a week's worth of mid-day sustenance to stabilize your wayward blood sugar.  But no, you're at the Bulk Barn with their chrome impulse-buy shelves at the front cash. Those chrome shelves filled with Lara Bars and Luna bars and everything else that's so healthful and fucking pretentious... gluten free, dairy free, egg free, soy free, non GMO, vegan, kosher... and they cost between $1.79 and a gazillion dollars per bar, but sweet glucose index, you're eating healthy.

I come back from the Bulk Barn and I have to shift funds from one bank account to another to cover the impending shortage.  No seriously.  Sunday after I was at Bulk Barn - I had to move money around.  On the plus side?  I do have miniature muffin wrappers with adorable gingerbread men on them sure to elicit "Aren't they adorable?" murmurs at our holiday tea this year.

Chihuahua in my pants

Friday night.  Bedtime.  Rissa wriggles spasmodically under her blankets.

"I've got something in my pants!"

Sigh.  "What do you have in your pants?"

"A sliver or something!"

"A sliver?  How can you have a sliver?"

"I don't know, maybe from the dance studio."

Stalling.  She is stalling the bedtime process.

"Just ignore it."

"Ignore it?!?  ... IGNORE it?!?  If I had a Chihuahua in my pants would you tell me to just IGNORE it?  Would you tell me to worry about it in the morning?!?"

"WHAT?"

"Seriously, what if it was a... cannibalistic Chihuahua...?"

"WHAT?"

"If it was a cannibalistic Chihuahua...  and there was... was...  say a Golden Retriever... NO!  A GREAT DANE down there too..."

"You're telling me that there is now a Chihuahua and a Golden Retriever AND a Great Dane in your pants?"

"No, only a cannibalistic Chihuahua and a Great Dane - I needed complete opposite dogs to make an example.  Plus, after I said the word 'cannibalistic' I realized that the chihuahua couldn't be attacking me, I had to have another dog down there for it to attack."

"So you have a Chihuahua and a Great Dane in your pants?"

She then rolls her eyes at me.  "Of course not, but if I DID, you would just want me not to worry about them in my pants?"

Face palm.

In lieu of writing...

I am posting this... and so usher in the beginning of the holiday season...   Merry Christmas!

(Who knew that Kmart had it in 'em?)

My husband's so mean...

"Just rip it out!!  Please," I begged.

"Oh, love, I can't," said David.

"Yes, yes, you can!  Just take a spoon, or your thumb, or a FREAKING NAIL FILE, and pop out my eye.  Scramble it if you have to, but get it out!!!  Any of those will hurt less than the invisible railroad spike that is presently stabbing through my eye socket."

"I can't do that.  But I can get you a cold pack to put on your neck.  Did you take your drugs?"

"I took my drugs," I whimpered, pushing the heel of my hand into the cavity below my right eyebrow, desperately trying to remove the pressure.  "I took as many drugs as I can without damaging my liver.  They haven't kicked in yet.  Why haven't they kicked in yet??  Could you just knock me out please?  Just coldcock me upside the head and..."

"I'm not going to knock you out," David, holding my hand under the blankets.

"How about sawing my head off?  That'd do it..."

"Nope, not going to happen."

"WHY NOT?!?"

"Because I like your head.  And I like your eye.  Sure, you'd rock an eye patch for a while, but talking to one-eyed pirate version of you would get old pretty fast."  He gently squeezed my hand as I quietly sobbed.

Trepanation, by Herbert List 1944

"How about you drill a hole, just a small hole, in my head and we put in a wee pressure valve thingie??  You know, bring back the ancient art of trepanation," I suggested in a sultry tone, but I couldn't be too flirty with this appeal on account of the fact that I couldn't even open my eyes, because even the light from the night light was too bright, and my seduction really comes from my eyes.  And my boobs.  I arched my back a bit, hoping that the boobs might do the job on their own.

"No."

"You know how they have tornado sirens?  Maybe they could develop an early-warning system for barometric pressure shifts.  Like 20 minutes before it happens, the weather service could send out emergency emails to all those migraine sufferers who want to kill themselves when it shifts from extreme high pressure to extreme low pressure.  Then we could all dope ourselves up with our maximum drug dosage, before the pain has us suicidal.  Can we start a petition for that?"

"That, I will do for you."

And good morning to you...

Ggggggggggrowl...  grumble... grumble... grumble...  "Stupid yoga pants!  Stupid bra! My boobs don't belong in a bra yet!"  grumble... grumble... grumble...

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.  "Stupid stairs."

Trip. Slip.  "Stupid cat toy!"

grumble... grumble... grumble... "Stupid morning."

"Still sleepy, huh?"  Rissa comes over, enveloping me in a purple terry cloth hug.

grumble... grumble... grumble...  "Not awake yet..."

"You need a warm beverage," David says.  "The kettle's already on."

sigh.  whimper.  "Stupid kettle...  Sorry.  I'm tired."

"Yes you are."  Rissa pats me on the arm.

Collapse.

"Need to be on the floor, huh?"

"Yes."

"Comfy down there?"

"No... it's cold."  grumble... grumble... grumble...

David helps me up.  "Sit."

"I don't want to."

"Fine, don't sit.  Rissa, do you want 1/2 a banana?"

whimper...  tears... 

"Do you want 1/2 a banana?"

"Yes.  But then I'd be taking food out of my own child's moooouuuuth!"  Bigger tears.

"Okay.  You sit.  Here is a banana.  You going to be good to go in five minutes?"

sniffle... sniffle... "I don't want to go outside."

"I'll drive.  You just have to drive back.  You can do that right?  You'll be awake by then?"

"I DON'T KNOOOOOOW!!!"

David and Rissa share a commiserative look.

"I'M A BABY BEAR!!!! " grumble... grumble... grumble...

"Yes you are."  Pat. Pat. Pat.

"My eyebrows don't work."

"No, they haven't woken up yet either."

"I haven't even peed yet!'

"Well, you'd better go do that then."

***

Washing my hands... sniff... sniff... sniff... "This is disproportionate emotional response."

"Yes it is.  Come on." David hands me my decaf.  "This might help.  I'll drive.  You can even lie back and sleep for the 10 minutes."

***

whinge... whinge... whinge... "I can't lie back AND drink coffee!  Now I have coffee all over my coat..."

"You weren't supposed to be drinking the coffee, you were supposed to be sleeping."

"Which is it?? Do you want me to be awake enough to drive back or do you want me COMATOSE?!?  Sorry... sorry..."  tears

This is me, when woken in the middle of a sleep cycle and then being forced to drive.  I apparently need a sign: DISTURB AT YOUR OWN PERIL.