Jet Engine Torso

Is it hot in here?

I have solved the impending energy crisis!  It's so simple.  We hook up all the women in the world who are having hot flashes... into a power grid.  Women 'of a certain age' giving off their heat - the combined estrus  would produce more energy than the SUN.  As long as there are women enduring peri-menopause - we will have a never-ending energy supply!

Not quite sure of the logistics yet... the way the machines stole power from humans in The Matrix kind of wigs me out - although frankly, if I kept my hair long, the outlet thingie at the base of the skull might be hidden.

Or... no, wait!  WAIT!!  The outlet thingie could be a feature!  You know - embellished with Swarovski crystals and other great shit.  It'd work like Mary Kay!! But instead of a pink Cadillac for so many sales - the more heat a flashing woman gives off - the more bedazzled her outlet would be.  High heat producers would have higher quality platinum outlets with more precious gems - the most prolific of heat producers would get the rarest gems in the world like blue garnets and jadeite.  Women in their 40s and 50s would be the saviours of the planet - we'd be frickin' rock stars.

"Bow to us you lowly youth - we rule the world!  Shower us with chocolate and salt and we will share our mighty power with you!  Show disdain for our wisdom and beauty and you shall die an Antarctic death!"

David just added his two cents.   "Or..."  There is a gleam in his eye.  "You could use some sort of turkey thermometer type thing, but you know with a, uh... vibrating capacity.  The power stations would be more like spas and you would, ahem, insert the, uh, vibrating probe, while women are on chaise lounges having pedicures.  Plus, you could film it.  Pretty much win-win all around..."

Microbes for Movember???

So this appeared in my news feed recently...

Movember moustaches may hold hazards

Seriously?  This is a news story?  What is the CBC doing?  And show of hands, how many men out there don't wash?  And by that I mean EVER.  How many don't wash their faces EVER?  How many don't take the time to wash after having raw fish and/or spaghetti and/or steak tartar? How many wait days and days and days with food and or bodily fluids resting upon your facial hair before you wash? Anyone?  'Cause I'm pretty sure that's when you're going to have hazardous microbes in your 'stache.

So, if you ARE one of those dudes who NEVER washes your face - for God's sake START WASHING - you are not a teenaged goat!  But otherwise, could the CBC stop trying to instill panic in the public at large not to mention the dudes who are just trying to raise awareness for men's health issues??

I think my fingers are having a stroke...

Or... I'm being possessed by the spirits of homophones past.  Instead of the word 'do' I type 'due.' Instead of 'red' I type 'read.'   I actually typed 'aisle' instead of 'I'll' this morning.

So?  Any thoughts?  Any closet neurologists out there?  'Cause right now?  I think I might be in a cross between Memento, Primer & Inception, my mind's feeling THAT fucked.  It's not like they're just typos.  Is this where all those brain injuries I've had through my life are coming back to haunt me?  I really should have had that brain MRI a loooooong time ago.

Does anyone else do this sort of stuff?  And before you suggest it - I don't use auto-spelling. I don't do text speak.  EVER.  That's not what's happening here.   I spell out my words - I never even type "laugh out loud" let alone the ... the... acronym for it.  (Just can't do it - would rather drive a frickin' nail through my eye.) I usually write "hee hee hee" to indicate I'm giggling or "HAH!" to indicate a guffaw of laughter.  And just to really screw me over this morning, it took me a full 30 seconds to come up with the word 'acronym' just then.  BANJO!  Just checking.  I don't use "8" for the 'ate' sound.  So WHAT.  THE.  POOH. 

Last night, I was trying to explain the misplacing my homophones thing to David.  I then spelled the wilderness mammal BEAR as B A R E.  And that was NOT my intention.

"You just spelled B A R E."

"No I didn't!"

"You totally did!"

"Oh God, that's it.  I'm having a stroke right now.  Or I've had a stroke and I've lost all my homophones.  Is my mouth drooping?"

"No, your mouth isn't drooping.  Why would you only lose homophones?"

"It's not just homophones - I lost BANJO the other day, and... and... I lost - SWEET MOTHER OF ALL THESAURUSES...  What else did I lose?"

"I don't know sweetie."

"You see?  OH GOD.  You could totally Gaslight me!!!  If you wanted, you could totally  Gaslight me.  I think I'm losing my mind anyway - so how would I even know?"  I back away from him in the bed, my eyes wild and wide.

"Good thing I'm not independently wealthy.  All you could get would be some crazily bad lounge music and a plethora of holiday decorations with a side of vintage dresses.  Maybe it's the dresses you're after!!!"

He shoots me a look of utter disbelief.

"Although frankly your back is much wider than mine and you'd have to have them altered.  No, not possible.  The amount of body hair that you'd have to shave/wax would deter that.  You don't even like it when I pluck your shoulder hair."

"Shhhh.... It's okay..."  He tucks me into his side and kisses me on the forehead.

"It's NOT okay.  I'm having weird-ass aphasia!"

"Sweetie if you didn't remember the word 'aphasia' then I'd be worried.  I think you're good."

"Due ewe reely mien it?"

If I were ridiculously wealthy...

The phrase "SPARE NO EXPENSE!!!"  would readily fall from my lips.  My holiday shopping would be joyfully a la carte.  I would tip with bills, not toonies.

I don't have that kind of disposal income... right now.  But very soon, very soon (insert scheming world-domination maniacal laughter here) it shall come to pass...

So here's what's going to happen until then.  Every time I see something that I know my loved-ones would go apeshit for, but I can't afford - I'm going to file it.  And for Christmas, I'm going to let everyone know about all the things I will get them when I am ridiculously wealthy.

I'm starting file folders for everyone I know.  That way, when I see that $700 etched print by Liz Menard  that would be perfect for David, I'll add it to his file.  Same with the ridiculous cat bean-bag warmer Cuddle Kitty that would make Rissa giggle...   And when I see an exorbitantly priced coffee table book that I know Meg would salivate for - it's going in her file.   Then I'll just give them the lists of their future gifts.

This epiphany hit me yesterday while I was helping my friend Lisa at the Moose Show.  Lisa, my crazy friend, my incredibly talented artistic friend, the friend who makes me snort ginger ale through my nose.  (That makes it sound like she has me tied to a chair and is waterboarding me with ginger ale.  She totally doesn't do that.  She does, however, make me laugh so hard that I snort and just so you know, snorting ginger ale is painful.  "It burns!  It burns!")

I was watching Lisa yesterday do a wire sculpture of a gold fish, from a freaking photograph.  She had the photograph and was artistically extrapolating.  My brain just doesn't work that way.  What I want to be able to do for her?  I want to be able to commission pieces and pay her WHAT THEY ARE WORTH!!!   If she spends 150 hours making something - she should be earning WAY more than just a couple of bucks an hour for her artistic labour.   I want to rent a public space in downtown Toronto to display her astoundingly awesome 7 foot long Korean Dragon wire sculpture so that the A freakin' G O stands up and takes notice of her brilliance.  Check out her works here: www.lbrunetta.ca

And now I need to research sand sculpting companies who might offer workshops.  Then I can tell David and Rissa that as soon as we're rich, we are going someplace like Hawaii or California and we're going to learn how to build even bigger and more bad-ass sand sculptures than the ones we do now.

'Cause you know what?  Dreams come true.  It's happened to me over and over again.  And I am determined to continue my dreaming in TECHNICOLOR and no frickin' bank statement is going to stop me!

Carly Sioux 2012

ps.  I'm included in a Blogger Soundoff this month at Circle of Moms along with other fantastic women!!

Losing my Nouns

I know that I know this...  Give me a sec...  Starts with a B maybe???

So lately, at least a 1/2 dozen times a day, I lose my nouns.  Yesterday I couldn't remember the word BANJO.  I could see the thing in my mind, knew it was roundish on one end, that you play it like a guitar, picks are really needed to make it sound good - what it was actually called?  Not a fucking clue.  So then this moment of panic sets in.  In the vaccuum that is left of my mind - I'm like a freaking USB drive with nothing on it.  And then later - all of a sudden I'll let out a mighty YAWP of realization:

BANJO!!!!

Relief slides over my being and I can breathe again, because I've been holding that breath ever since I couldn't remember the word.  It's called aphasia.  I know that word, but apparently banjo is just too difficult.  Or economy, or Gwen Stefani or the frickin' colour chartreuse - how can a person forget the word CHARTREUSE??   I mean just LOOK at it!  I'd remember having a stroke right?  I'm pretty sure that I haven't had a stroke, but given what else I've been forgetting, who knows?  I sometimes look in the mirror just to be sure that one side of my mouth isn't drooping.  Nope, still good. 

So this could just be middle age, or peri-menopause - or even thyroid - which I vowed just yesterday that I wasn't going to mention, but from what I've been reading 'brain fog' can totally be one of the symptoms.  Or, it could be from a brain tumor, infection or dementia.  Awesome.  So what I've learned is to never Google 'aphasia' when you're freaking out.  Basically, never Google ANYTHING when you're freaking out.

Let's put some spin on this:  If it's dementia - it could happen relatively quickly and I could be one of those happy demented people who smiles and wants to have sex all the time.  Maybe if it's a brain tumor it could press onto a part of my brain that suppresses hunger?  Or suddenly I might be able to play the piano?  Infection...???  I'm sure there's a positive way to look at that too, I just can't remember the word.

I am NOT an 83 year old woman...

I hear these words coming out of my mouth:  "Oh it's just the microvascular angina, hypothyroidism and the reynaud's syndrome...."  I think: Shut up!  Shut up!  Shut up!! You are not an 83 year old woman, just say you're 'fine'!  When someone asks you how you are, JUST SAY FINE!!!    Nobody wants to hear it.  Nobody wants your torrent of symptoms and self-diagnoses lobbed at them like a grenade full of energy-sucking leeches.  SHUT THE HELL UP!!! 

Problem is, people keep saying "How are you?  Are you okay?  You're looking a little green."  'Cause right now?  I look like utter crap.  Lay me next to a cadaver and we'd have the same skin tone.  Hence my honest reassurance to folks by poo-pooing all my many symptoms.  "Nothing to worry about... I've got my nitro spray... yadda yadda, sick speak, sick speak."  You can see when their eyes glaze over at the 'too much information."  It's pretty much the same time that the word microvascular leaves my lips... annnnnnnnnd.... they're... done.  Because people don't want you to be honest.  They want you to lie, like everyone else does, and just be FINE. 
 
So this is me, taking a different tack.  I will slather on the makeup - add some blush to take away the pallor, smile and say "I'm well, how are you?"   Cause I'm NOT 83  and won't be for another 39 years.  And even when I am 83, I don't want to be that person who defines themselves by their maladies.   My Granny lived to be 103 years old and I never once heard her complain.  When she was 100 she was knitting knee blankets for the 'old folks.'  She was mostly blind and mostly deaf and dropped a few stitches in those knee blankets, and they are the most BEAUTIFUL knee blankets in the world!    And when I get cold for absolutely no reason in our 20 c house because of my weird-ass health crap, I can wear one of those blankets around my shoulders, put on a hat and a scarf, shut the hell up and channel my Granny.

The most beautiful slipped stitch I've EVER seen!

There's a frickin' blue sky out there today and I'm going to catch some of those rays.  Cause I know for damn sure that fresh air helps EVERYTHING and that all I have to do is put one foot in front of the other and I am determined to do just that.

Candy Cane Coated Porn

Flyers... oh, sweet, non-denominational deity, the holiday flyers that have begun arriving at our house.  GIANT EXPERTS' SALE!  HOLIDAY BLOWOUTS!  BREED YOUR OWN REINDEER!

I want, nay verily, I NEED, a Self-Shaping Pre-Lit 8' Fir Tree for a mere $399.00!  No wait!  There is a 7' Pre-Lit Flocked Blue Spruce which has FAKE SNOW on it for only $199!!!  I can balance it on 6 large hardcover books, to make up that foot difference in height!  Plus I'll have saved a whole $200!!!  No brainer really.  Must buy, must consume, must own...    

We wish you a Capitalist Christmas!
We wish you a Capitalist Christmas!   
We wish you a Capitalist Christmas.... 

I LOVE Christmas. J'adore Noël!   Jeg elsker Jul!  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!  The carols, the ornaments the window displays...  I salivate just thinking about it all.  Literally.  There must be some sort of gastronomical response when I see sparkly Christmas things.  I'm like Pavlov's Dog, but with twinkle lights.  So when the Home Hardware flyer comes into the house with HOLIDAY merchandise, it's pretty much porn to me.  Candy Cane Coated Porn.  (insert drooling, slathering noises here) And I need it all!!!

Except that I already have an entire ROOM in the basement filled with holiday decor.  It used to be the Coal Room, when houses used coal.  Not huge, but about 200 cubic feet of space to stack holiday things.  I have many boxes - all labelled.  My favourite:  Whimsical Ornaments - filled to the brim with Patience Brewster Krinkles ornaments that cost a frickin' arm and a leg at full price.  

But most of them I got after Christmas for 1/2 price - on account of the fact that paying $40 for a single ornament is  demented.  Although I did once spend $200 on ten 1/2 price ornaments.  But even David himself couldn't be mad at me when he saw how ecstatic I was as I showed him each dog in pajamas, each crocodile with fancy shoes, each polar bear in a tutu.  

Every year when I bring these whimsical ornaments out to put on our dining room tree*, I dance around like a frickin' sugar plum fairy.  The glitter that remains on my hands after placing the ornaments, I spread all over my body.  "Mummy, you have glitter on your knees!"  "Yes I do!!  It's CHRISTMAS!!"   And then I douse her in glitter as I listen to Elvis's Christmas album -  the best and the worst of Christmas music all rolled into one cd, but that's what my Mom always listens to - so it's the first album on our playlist every year.  But really, after Elvis gets played, I'm a traditionalist - Christmas circa 1930-1950.  Campy, sappy and deliciously steeped in nostalgia.  Christmas Lounge = Musical Perfection. 

For those other Christmas Fiends out there - this is for you...  Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians doing a 1954 tv special - at around the 10:00 mark there is a tribute to the Nutcracker suite which is almost my favourite Christmas thing ever.   (Uploaded by XmasFLIX.com Vintage Christmas Films on Jan 1, 2012)
Enjoy!

 *Three.  We have three.   Christmas trees.  THREE.  Dining Room Whimsical, Living Room Traditional and the Front Porch Slender. If I could afford it, I'd have one in EVERY room of the house - around which I would dance, covered only in glitter.

Autumn Chore Weekend

This weekend is the weekend things are supposed to get done.  Caulking (snerk - yes, I have the mind of a 12 year-old boy) of windows and such.  Maybe even a hedge trimming (snerk).  Round 1 of leaf raking was Thursday.  My inner thighs and quads are still complaining about that.  I guess I don't do a lot of squatting in my day-to-day activities.  Maybe I should have stretched first?  Oh GOD.  That's what it's come to... stretching before yard work.  Hello body - welcome to your 40s.

Errands that don't get done during the week while I'm carless are left until the weekend.  I've got my hands full, so here is a post about my crazy cats and the resulting stompery from late October...

Thou Peevish Sheep!

Meeeeh...

Yesterday morning...

David had been looking forward to sleeping in.  15 more minutes of it.  He wasn't carpooling because of an after-school literacy meeting.  He set the alarm in anticipatory joy -  there may have been some contented chortling and 'nom, nom, nom' noises as he snuggled into the bed.  Then, the cats fucked it all up.

Rissa got up before we did, but didn't feed the cats.  This had the cats looking for people in the house who would feed them.  Launching themselves onto the bed, they began their own version of an intricate Bollywood dance number.  David, doesn't enjoy cat dance at the best of times, less so when he thinks he should be sleeping in.  There may have been some hurtling of the cats off the bed, perhaps propelled by under-the-blankets feet, followed by some growling and stomping on David's part to get them out of the room.  Then a door might have been slammed.  Grumbling ensued and not the under-the-breath kind.  After two minutes of this, he left the bed and STOMPED down the hall.

What you need to understand is that we are emotional vampires in our house - we suck up the energy of others around us.  We then magnify that energy and spit it out onto unsuspecting civilians.

David was in a mood, ergo I was too.  And I already wasn't thrilled to be woken up by violent kicking followed by doors slamming.  What with Hurricane Sandy being en route, the barometric pressure was wreaking havoc with my head.  I was hoping to stagger to the bathroom, dope myself up and sleep the morning away.  And now?  Now I was up.  And worse, my stomach thought it was time to be up so I needed to eat.  So I STOMPED down the stairs.

And there was poor Rissa, minding her own business with two stompy parents grumbling and growling and having yet to even said good morning to each other on account of the fact that David was convinced that the cats should be thrown into a bag and then into a box and that box should be thrown into Lake Ontario; (it would never happen PETA - so re-fucking-lax, and un-twist your panties!)  and I was mad because instead of him asking me to do something about it he just got all stompy and slammy.

By the time I told Rissa that she couldn't wear her brand new ballet flats to school in the rain, she was ready to burst into tears.  I managed to turn her around by reminding her that her rain boots have polka-dots on them and that's ALWAYS a good thing to have on your feet. Then she got into the spirit herself.   She found a pair of knee high rainbow socks to wear underneath the polka-dotted rain boots,  and put on her stylish navy rain jacket - with belt.  Soon after, via email, David and I apologized for our peevish sheep attitudes and, at the end of the day, we all helped make dinner together.  Long-standing angry grudges averted.

We are NOT a mouse house...

Ahhh, the joys of autumn...  (Insert contented drinking your cocoa sigh here.) I sit typing at the north end of the dining room.  The early afternoon sun warms my shoulders.  The house is deliciously warm.  If I wanted, I could take my laptop and write in front of a blazing fire in the family room.

And yet...and yet... Our three cats stare with x-ray vision at the dining room walls... What's that noise?  What do I hear?  scritch, scritch, scritch, scritch...  I knew it was too good to last.  Rodentia.  Renovating our house to make it theirs.  To be fair it only sounds like something small, mousish in size and perhaps only one of them driven indoors by the cooler weather to stake claim on a rodent condo in our... main floor ceiling / 2nd floor flooring joists.

I just want to say, "DUDE.  Please.  Not now.  We can't afford an exterminator.  We still have to patch the roof where the frickin' raccoons roosted last season." 

I am a lovers of animals.  I had an encounter with a squirrel last weekend that was delightful.  He ate spiced pecans OUT OF MY HAND, and then hung like freaking Spider Man from the tree trunk upside down to eat them.   I love rodents of all shapes and sizes,  I just don't want to HOUSE them.  We already have three cats and frequently take in animals to babysit.  No more animals in our house. 

Unless, of course, if someone said, "This poor blind, nearly lame, elderly dog has to find a home or be put down." David would then have a fight on his hands 'cause my immediate go-to is "I'LL DO IT!!!" And then I hold onto that animal in a near-suffocating hug as David tries his best to quell that urge within me.  Limpid blue eyes would blink blink up at him and I would win.  'Cause really, if person says NO  to a blind, nearly lame, elderly dog who won't live for much longer any way and really has nothing wrong with them apart from the being blind, nearly lame and elderly?  That person must be a Nazi, and nobody likes being called a Nazi.  Right David? So we're keeping this theoretical dog!

But now that there's the scritch-scritching, I'm imagining there must be an infestation, possibly of Biblical proportions - 'cause they apparently did plagues up really well back then.  So in the same way that when a pet has fleas every itch you have MUST be a flea bite, or when someone in your acquaintance has pink eye your own eye begins to twitch and water... Now, every sound in my century home that scritch scritches... is now a rodent with 26 others having a house party in our walls.  On the plus side though, the boiler isn't leaking as much...

I see Zebras...

...where there aren't any.  We were driving past a farm on the weekend and I was convinced there were zebras grazing.  With delighted glee, I thought to myself, "Hey look!  ZEBRAS!"  I was just about to point them out to David, but as we drove by, I realized that in actuality they were horses wearing plaid blankets.  Which had me in near hysterics because they really looked NOTHING like zebras seeing as it was brown and white plaid.  Really, I could have been imagining golfers dressed as horses and it would have made the same amount of visual sense.  Then when I tried to explain it to David he just looked at me like I was insane... AGAIN.

NOT a zebra.

I have 3 a.m. hallucinations.   There was a small hooded woman on the back of our bedroom door not too long ago.  Reality: David's grey bathrobe with a burgundy towel on top of it - but to me - random hooded woman freaking me out to the point of hyperventilation.   The ceiling fan might have been a luminescent sea creature, or a large bug with five wings and four eyes, or an alien face.  What's just a titch scary?  This is what I see when I'm 100% completely sober.  How schizophrenic does a gal have to be to hallucinate things?

I can walk down the street and make "come here, kitty, kitty" noises to a small bag of garbage on the curb.  It's only when I'm THIS close do I realize that I've been talking to a bag.  Or I'll see a miniature crocodile, and be REALLY EXCITED over the prospect of getting to touch a MINIATURE FREAKING CROCODILE (Just WAIT until Rissa and David hear about this!!!), in the middle of our sleepy little provincial town, only to find out it's just a boring ol' fallen branch.   I like to think of it as "hopefully hallucinogenic."   (TM Heather)

Those thingies that connect power lines to each other?  Couplers?? Groove Connectors?  Whatever the hell they are?  To me?  Frogs.  Well-balanced frogs with asbestos feet so that they can withstand the power from the lines beneath them.  Although they might just be balanced on telephone wires which I don't think have the same kick to them - otherwise there'd be an awful lot of fried pigeons up there.

But then, on my walk the other morning, there was a fox.  An actual REAL fox.  A red one.  On the boardwalk. 

Walking right towards me.  Foxes move differently than dogs.  They lope.  They gambol.  Which is why I knew, even from a 100 meters away that it wasn't a dog and I got EXCITED.  But I didn't want to get my hopes up in case it was just some random stray, skinny dog with palsy.    It walked nearly up to me - about 6 feet away it sat, regarded me (at this point I was crouched down on the boardwalk to make myself as un-threatening and friendly as possible) and then it skirted around me and loped on its way.  If I'd put my hand out, I could have touched it.  I didn't.  On account of the having had a series of rabies shots just this last July from the whole feral kittens incident and David's voice was in my head saying "I will not take you to the hospital if you deliberately keep touching wild animals."  This close.  I was THIS close.  And I wasn't hallucinating nothin'!

Brought to you by the letters... S C O T C and H

Clumping cat litter?  When it gets covered with a deluge of water?  When you're trying to get it off the floor with paper towels or scoop it up into a dust pan?  VERY close, in consistency and appearance, to cat diarrhea.  (quelling urge to vomit)  Even though I KNOW that it's NOT cat diarrhea, the look of it, the feel of it...  and given that the water covering it was slightly warm... the temperature of it?  NOT what I want to be cleaning up first thing in the morning.

Which is why the last time I had to do it, I then gave the job of emptying  the emergency (HAH!) water catcher container thingie, which resides under the boiler's pressure valve in the depths of our Hannibal Lecter basement, to Rissa.  Has she done it?? No, she has not.  I gave her the job because, at the age of 12, her brain should still work.  And yet, as per yesterday's post, the passing of that particular baton was... pre-mature.    Apparently, in all my peri-menopause, multiple concussions, wonky freakin' thyroid glory - my brain still works better than the other people co-habitating with me.  And I forget things ALL THE TIME!!  And I forget WORDS.  Words for nouns, like 'teapot' and 'dish towel'... and that's on a good day.

I'm going to have to put post-it notes all around the house, like someone with Alzheimer's, reminding me to do things because I get distracted.  (See Don't Open That Tupperware - 4th paragraph.)  Nearly last on my daily list of things to accomplish has been to empty the emergency water catcher container thingie.  We already had to safeguard our unreliable-boiler-circumvention-system by putting a paving stone in the bottom of the emergency water catcher container thingie, so that the cats wouldn't keep knocking it over, you know, for cat fun.   They would dance around in the faux cat diarrhea soup (quelling urge to vomit) and then leave little clay cat footprints ALL over the house.  Good times.

Some would suggest that it might be time to replace our inconsistent-at-best boiler.   Some have WAY more money in their savings than we do.  We just need to keep vigil over the water level and empty it every couple/three days during the heating season.  Easy Peasy.  (HAH!)  I had a EUREKA!! moment this morning and finally moved the kitty litter boxes further away from the sub-boiler flood plain, scooped, paper toweled, mopped the floors AND reorganized under the stairs (because I got distracted) ALL before 9:00 a.m.  And you know what?  Scotch smells really good at 9:30 in the morning.  Cheers!

THIS DOES NOT BELONG IN THE SINK!

It's like every time I have ever reminded her has NEVER happened.  Because there it was.  In the sink.  The empty apple juice bottle, from which Rissa had poured her morning juice, sitting there, IN THE FREAKING SINK!!!!

"RISSA!!!!"  I grab the bottle and hold it aloft - an impromptu weapon.

"Yes Mummy?"  She comes in to the kitchen.  Upon seeing me, she backs up a step.  Her ingratiating/panicked smile withers under the wrath that is me.

"BLARGH!!!!!! 

"THIS," I gesticulate with the empty bottle,  "THIS DOES NOT BELONG IN THE SINK!!!"

"Was that in the sink?"  Rissa feigns innocence.  She blink-blinks at me like a newborn fawn.

I make a noise that is not human.  Her eyes get very wide.  "You are NOT that cute.  Where does THIS belong?!?"

".........?"  I can barely hear her response.

"WHERE?!?"

"In the recycling?"

"YES!  THIS. BELONGS. IN. THE. RECYCLING!!   Now please, for the love of everything holy in this galaxy, please put it IN the recycling before I beat you to death with it."   I throw in another "BLARGH!" for good measure.  She laughs, which is good, because it means that she doesn't know how close I truly am to bludgeoning her with the bottle.

It's a virtual mantra. "Rinse.  Please rinse.  Please rinse and deposit in the recycling."  She's heard it so often that she should now be annoying her peers with her vigilance when they visit.  In hushed tones she should be saying, "Never leave anything in the sink that could go in the recycling or the garbage.  My Mom's head actually implodes if she catches you." 

Oh GOD.  I have morphed into this... this naggy, anal-retentive,  MOTHER...   I tell her EVERY morning to make her bed.  After my reminding her, literally THOUSANDS of times,  that her bed should be made,  it's as if I'm speaking in tongues.  She looks at me in confusion.  I am an incomprehensible, tenuously polite woman and this new-found knowledge is a revelation.

"Why yes, Mummy.  What a great idea!  Making my bed would make my room much tidier.  I will hasten to do your bidding."

She was there, even commiserated with me a while back when we stared in disbelief as David cleaned up his own kitchen mess.  She was my wingman.  They know, they both know that the house would devolve to anarchy without me in it.  And yet... and yet...  I frequently find myself turning into the snorting, crazy-eyed woman in a bath robe threatening the life of my child.  Because, it's not like she has a brain injury.  She's not Drew freakin' Barrymore in 50 First Dates where each day she has forgotten everything she learned the day before.  SHE SHOULD KNOW THIS!!! 

9:00 a.m.  Too early to start drinking?

Ball Gag Mouth Warmers

"I have a plan!" he says.  "I know what we can use!"

"For what?"

"Your outside angina."   

"Excuse me?"  I gave him the "I couldn't have possibly heard that correctly"  look.

He rolls his eyes at me.  "AN-gina.  I said Angina."

"Okay, that makes WAY more sense to me.  I was a bit confused by the whole outside vs. inside notion - it pretty much HAS to be inside, doesn't it?"

He shoots me a look.

"Wow.  Tough Crowd.  Okay.  Tell me your plan!"

"Whenever you go outside in the winter and breathe, it sets off your angina, right?"

"Right."

"So we can take a dryer ball with the air holes in it, cut it open and then insert a hotpocket handwarmer in it and make some ties to hold it on your head and... VOILA!"

"A ball-gag mouth warmer!  AWESOME!"

"No, no, no!!  That's not what I meant... I meant..." he's now obviously picturing it in his head ... "Oh my God!  It's totally a ball gag mouth warmer."

"But in blue,"  I offer.  "With pointy plastic spikey things.  It would be a real conversation starter."

Instead he ordered me these:

Look!  It's a minature flask  - ON A CHAIN - so that I can have 1 oz. of emergency booze on me at all times!!!

AND he also got me this!  It's called the COLD AVENGER  - It should really come with a cape to complete the ensemble. 

Can't wait to wear that around town.   It's almost like I'm Darth Vader.

Rissa says "I think you should just actually GET a Darth Vader mask.  It would be WAY cooler."

JUST WEAR PAJAMAS!!!

Rissa repels blankets.  She starts the night all cozy underneath the sheets and duvet and comforter and afghan, all of which she apparently needs to have.

"I like the WEIGHT, Mummy.  It's almost like there's an elephant on me."

David and I reckon we can upgrade to a lead blanket or, perhaps chain mail - less bulky, but still weighty enough to keep her happy.  But I digress.  It doesn't matter how many blankets we put on her, whenever we check on Rissa, she is either a) on TOP of the blankets, huddled in a ball in the centre of her bed shivering for warmth  or b) sideways on the bed with limbs splayed EVERYWHERE, blankets now underneath the bed.

This kid can splay like no other.  She has the longest frickin' legs that I've ever seen.  Rissa's always been a splayer.  She did it in her crib.  Arms and legs extended - pushing against the rails, usually sideways.  She'd often wake up with divots on her forehead from the crib rails. 

As we come into winter, trying to keep her zero-body-fat body warm overnight is a challenge.  Long pajamas seem to be anathema to her.

"JUST WEAR PAJAMAS!  YOU'LL BE WARMER!!"

"I AM WEARING PAJAMAS!"

"YOU ARE WEARING SHORTS AND A TANK TOP!"

"THESE ARE MY PAJAMAS!"

"THOSE ARE YOUR SUMMER PAJAMAS!"

"YES, BUT THEY ARE STILL PAJAMAS!!"

So this is what I'm going to do:  I will make her a sleep sack.  Not a sleeping bag.  A sleep sack.  You know, like the ones toddlers use because they can't be trusted not to strangle themselves with a blanket.  Like this - except for a 12 year old.

Grobag Baby Sleep Sack

 
I'll find me a cheap-ass comforter and cut out arm holes and a neck hole and I'll make her a sleep sack.  I might even let her choose the cheap-ass comforter... she could help with the sewing!!  See that?  Mother-Daughter project right there!  Teachable moment!  HAH!  And if I can actually get her to wear a long-sleeved shirt - perhaps she might make it through the night without dying of hypothermia.

Halloween Hangover

When Rissa has stayed up too late the night before... like last night, Halloween... the next morning is... interesting.

Let's say that she is fragile.  She uses her frowny face a lot.  She grumbles.  She has been known to flop on the floor and emit a "Wailey, Wailey, Wailey!"  Traversing the space between the island and the cutlery drawer is too much for her. 

"Mummy... Mummy, could you please...?"

"Could I please what?"

"Could you please get me a spoon?" Pitiful labrador retriever eyebrows.

I look at her, I look at the cutlery drawer 6 feet away from her.  "No."

"But... but...  It's SO far and you're closer."

My snort of response was not delicate.

She then did her tribute to Charlie Brown over to the cutlery drawer and sadly retrieved the spoon.

Uploaded by TheReturnOfStephan1 on Dec 3, 2009

Fan Post.
CD:"A Charlie Brown Christmas"
Purchase CD/MP3: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7271693
(c)1965, 2006 Fantasy/Concord

"It is very difficult to be me."

Bedtime should be sacrosanct.  Especially when Halloween falls on a school night.

*Anything here tickle your fancy?  Please vote for me as one of the 25 Best Mom Blogs - the button's on the top left.  You can vote once a day until Nov 16th!

Poulet-Vous!

It's no secret that Rissa gets wound up at bedtime as soon as I'm in the room.  I imagine that it's crazy breeding crazy.  I'd been in the city all day, so last night, Rissa was desperate to show me what she had created as an 'add-on' to her peacock costume. 

"Ooooh!  Ooooh!  You have to see what I made!"  She claps her hands in glee.

The picture doesn't really do it justice, it's way more sparkly in person. 

Then she brings out her 'Beak on a Stick" - lollipop stick inserted into folded sparkly yellow cardboard and then hot-glued in place, to make pretty much the perfect peacock beak.

"It's a great disguise," she says.  "I could totally rob a bank with this."

David and I exchange a look.

"I'd be leaving with my bags of loot..." She mimes carrying heavy bags of cash in each hand.  "Then the security guard would say 'HEY YOU!!!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE?'  And then I'd do this!"  She holds up her beak, blinks wide eyes and lets out an blameless "Bwok-ka....?" while hiding the loot under her armpits and fluffing out her imaginary beautiful plumage as a distraction.     "Then the security guard will be all 'Oh, excuse me ma'am - you go right ahead.'   And I'll be rich!  Rich I tell you!"

Shortly thereafter Rissa and I might have created a rousing rendition of POULET-VOUS - our tribute to Abba and chickens worldwide.

POULET-VOUS (bwok-ka!)

Take our eggs and breed us (bwok-ka!)

Oh how we can peck (bwok-ka!)

If you try to break our ne-ecks!

 POULET-VOUS (bwok-ka!)

Don't want no incision (bwok-ka!)

Please don't make us stew (bwok-ka!)

La question c'est Poulet-vous

POULET-VOUS?   OOOOOOOO?

On a side note:  This morning, I smoothed my fingers through David's hair, trying to convince a cowlicky part to lie flat.

"I am going to get my hair cut," he says, determinedly.  "I hope the barber shop is open.  It is Hallowe'en after all."  His lips twitch in a barely suppressed smile.    "Sweeney Todd would be open, but my chances of survival at that shop would be haphazard at best."

ps. Rissa's pumpkin this year, is carved to spell the word "GOURD." 

Thou Peevish Sheep!

Meeeeh...

Yesterday morning...

David had been looking forward to sleeping in.  15 more minutes of it.  He wasn't carpooling because of an after-school literacy meeting.  He set the alarm in anticipatory joy -  there may have been some contented chortling and 'nom, nom, nom' noises as he snuggled into the bed.  Then, the cats fucked it all up.

Rissa got up before we did, but didn't feed the cats.  This had the cats looking for people in the house who would feed them.  Launching themselves onto the bed, they began their own version of an intricate Bollywood dance number.  David, doesn't enjoy cat dance at the best of times, less so when he thinks he should be sleeping in.  There may have been some hurtling of the cats off the bed, perhaps propelled by under-the-blankets feet, followed by some growling and stomping on David's part to get them out of the room.  Then a door might have been slammed.  Grumbling ensued and not the under-the-breath kind.  After two minutes of this, he left the bed and STOMPED down the hall.

What you need to understand is that we are emotional vampires in our house - we suck up the energy of others around us.  We then magnify that energy and spit it out onto unsuspecting civilians.

David was in a mood, ergo I was too.  And I already wasn't thrilled to be woken up by violent kicking followed by doors slamming.  What with Hurricane Sandy being en route, the barometric pressure was wreaking havoc with my head.  I was hoping to stagger to the bathroom, dope myself up and sleep the morning away.  And now?  Now I was up.  And worse, my stomach thought it was time to be up so I needed to eat.  So I STOMPED down the stairs.

And there was poor Rissa, minding her own business with two stompy parents grumbling and growling and having yet to even said good morning to each other on account of the fact that David was convinced that the cats should be thrown into a bag and then into a box and that box should be thrown into Lake Ontario; (it would never happen PETA - so re-fucking-lax, and un-twist your panties!)  and I was mad because instead of him asking me to do something about it he just got all stompy and slammy.

By the time I told Rissa that she couldn't wear her brand new ballet flats to school in the rain, she was ready to burst into tears.  I managed to turn her around by reminding her that her rain boots have polka-dots on them and that's ALWAYS a good thing to have on your feet. Then she got into the spirit herself.   She found a pair of knee high rainbow socks to wear underneath the polka-dotted rain boots,  and put on her stylish navy rain jacket - with belt.  Soon after, via email, David and I apologized for our peevish sheep attitudes and, at the end of the day, we all helped make dinner together.  Long-standing angry grudges averted.

Bulemic Kitties...

I'm not sure if it's the worst sound that I've ever woken to, but it's in the top three*...  All toasty warm - sleeping in past 8:00 a.m. on a weekend...  Someone else in the house has fed the felines...  Dozing, thinking of delicious things that I might do to my spouse, when I hear this:

guh, guh, guh, guh, guh, HUYAAACK!    

The sound of a cat getting ready to hurl its breakfast on my duvet.  I bolt straight up in bed, the sudden movement terrifies the gagging cat, it departs the bed,  and leaves the resulting pukage on the hall carpet. 

It's Minuit, our oldest and fattest cat.  She eats too fast.  She maows down on her kibble like its the last food she'll ever see and then regurgitates it, usually in a place where you'll be stepping with a bare foot.  For a while there, we had a golf ball we kept in her food dish, you know, to slow her eating down, but we recently had a toddler in the house who started playing with it and it disappeared.  The golf ball, not the toddler.  For sure I'd know if there was a lost toddler in the house.  They're noisy, the little boogers.  And at the very least, the toddler's mother probably would have come looking for it.

Food is a motivator for all three of our beasts.  Every morning at 6:25 a.m. they meow and dance all over you until you get up to feed them.  The youngest, Steve & Lola, GALLOP down the hall in some sort of Cirque du Soleil choreographed gymnastics and hurl themselves down the back stairs - trying to break the sound barrier.  Minuit stumps her way down the hall and ba-doomps down the stairs (she can't move too fast or she'll just become a black, furry, stunt-cat ball).  The three then mew and yowl as if they will most certainly die before you manage to fill their food bowls.

At dinner time they get more creative.  Steve will start pushing shit off my desk to get my attention: pencils, cd cases, carefully stacked piles of paper.  Lola usually stands on the back of David's chair and shoves at him with her cat elbows.  Minuit is an Achilles Tendon nipper.

When they are NOT begging for food, they are perfectly lovely beasts.  They are the beasts who warm the very cockles of my heart.  They are the beasts who purr loudly as they snuggle down under the blankets, the beasts who lovingly head butt you before palpating your lap and settling in for a cat nap in front of the fire.  I'm an animal person in general.  A cat person in particular.  Sometimes to the detriment of my health.

see http://whatthepoohdude.blogspot.ca/2012/07/dont-cuddle-feral-kittens.html

Yesterday we went to Rissa's friend's farm and I was informed that there were 12 kittens in the barn.  Her friend's dad said we could take home as many kittens as we could carry!!!  I looked at David with ecstatic, pleading baby blues, my eyelashes fluttering.  Telepathically I promised him ANYTHING he wanted. 

"No way.  Nuh-unh.  No more cats.  You will just have to come here and play with them in the barn."

I have no problem with that.


*Waking to a toddler with the barking seal cough of croup IS worse.  I know this because the last time I heard it was almost a decade ago and just the memory of it throws me right back to driving to the hospital in the dead of winter trying to keep it together so that my 2 year-old didn't see her mother panic. 

Upper body suckage...

So the other day after my walk, I had a small reserve of energy and I thought that I'd mow the lawn.  David usually does it but I was thinking I'd get major spouse points if I did it for him.  Except  I couldn't start it.  I tried like 10 freaking times to yank the starter thingie.  Nothing.  And now both my arms were strained on account of the fact that I tried with my left arm when my right arm couldn't do it.

Why I would think to even try my left arm, when my right arm is OBVIOUSLY the stronger one, I don't know.  I could have plugged in the electric mower, but that is a real pain in the ass.  Of course now thinking about it, I'm feeling guilty for not having tried it, but I almost always  mow over the cord, which even I know is bad.

Can they (whomever 'they' are) not have a gas-powered mower that you don't have to dislocate your shoulder to start?  I hate to say it, but can they not make a girlie mower?  I mean, I'm not some frail little flower here.  I actually HAVE arm muscles.  I can do pushups (real ones) and everything.  I'm one of those girls folks refer to as "STRONG LIKE BULL."  I can heft things.  (As long as I'm lifting with my legs too, you know, so my lower back doesn't go out and I don't displace a rib.)

So I messaged David and he said "Did you hold the lever down?"  And I thought AH-HAH!  That must be it!  I didn't hold the emergency release lever down.  So I  went out and tried again, holding the emergency release lever down...  and...  NOTHING!!!  (Why you need to hold that down while you're mowing doesn't even make sense to me.)  Now the slight strain on my arms had morphed into real strain.  And I was getting stressed about it too, so now my angina kicked in.  So then I needed to have a rusty nail and lie down for a bit.

And then of course, David came home and he could just do it - ZIP BOOM - because he's a man and stupid men have more stupid upper body strength (by and large) than women.  I'm not being a dismissive of feminine strength here girls, I mean, maybe there are tonnes of you out there who have crazy-ass upper body strength and awe the general populace when you're called in to tighten lugnuts for your neighbours and such.  I'm wallowing in my own personal physical ineffectuality here... I might need a moment and another rusty nail.

JOYFUL DISBELIEF!!

David is twisting the lids back on the peanut butter and jam.  I am looking at him incredulously -  eyes wide,  my eyebrows raised nearly to my hairline.

"What?!" asks David.

"It's just..."  I'm nearly speechless.  "I never see you do that."

He snorts.  "I do too!"

"HAH!  You NEVER put things away."

"I put things away in the morning!"   He turns to Rissa for backup.

"No, Daddy, you don't."

"Usually I do!"

"No Daddy."

"At least half the time."

Rissa and I shake our heads.

"I put things away!!"

I place a consoling hand upon his shoulder.  "Sweetie.  I'm sorry.  Let me restate.  Yes, occasionally you do  put your sandwich making ingredients away, but you always leave something."

"Not always."

"Yes.  ALWAYS.  You might put the sandwich meats away, but you'll leave the wrappers from your cheese slices.  You'll put the cheese slice wappers in the garbage, but you'll leave the bread bag open and Miracle Whip knives on the island."

"I just leave those things so that Rissa can make her lunch."

"I don't use Miracle Whip Daddy."

"Fine!  Fine!  I will put away EVERYTHING!  You just watch me!!!  See this!?!  I am PUTTING AWAY the sandwich meats!  These knives?  Going in the dishwasher.  You," he turns to Rissa,  "are going to have to find a NEW knife!"

"Okay Daddy."

In a dramatic show of domesticity, David takes the dishcloth and 'cleans' the island of its bread crumbs and morning muck.  His hand carefully carries the detritus of sandwich preparation to the garbage under the sink and he deposits it with a flourish.  "Let it not be said that I can't clean up after myself!"

Rissa and I hold our tongues.

David leaves for work. Then, Rissa makes her lunch and leaves for school.  I have already started writing this post.

I make my way back into the kitchen, I tidy the cheese knife Rissa has left behind and put all of her breakfast dishes, which she has left on the counter right above the dishwasher, into the dishwasher.  Then I take a damp dishcloth and wash the island before cleaning up the floor under the sink where dramatically thrown crumbs have fallen short of the garbage can.  And as I'm doing this?  All I feel is LOVE for the pair of them.  Because after I nag and nag and nag?  They really do try.

Storm's a comin'!

David arrives home, a little later than usual. 

"I have things for you,"  he says, before running back out to the car.

"Oh really?"

He comes back, hefting a full bag of firewood and making He-Man- look-how-strong-I-am noises.

"Firewood?"

"In case you're cold."  He says as he runs out once more.  (Yesterday, I'd had a fairly violent code blue - David kept throwing blankets on me and Rissa ran me a hot bath.)

He returns, arms laden with a veritable cornucopia of items.  He displays them with husbandly pride.  "You can have Fleur de Sel dark chocolate  and/or chocolate chip cookie lava cakes and/or cookies & cream ice cream!  You could have all three - together!  Plus (but wait there's more!)  I have these too!  (He indicates a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a box of Shiraz.)   I wasn't sure which you might want.  And there's a six pack of Stella Artois - mostly for me, but if you want them you can have them.  I wanted to cover all bases.  You can do a little from column A, a little from column B if that works."  He is an eager border collie puppy.

So either... he is making up for that extramarital affair he is having or...

"Is this because my period is coming?"  (I'd been on the cusp for a couple of days now)

"... I thought I'd be prepared."

"So you're saying that my period is akin to preparing for a category 4 storm front?"  (His eyes widen slightly.)    "Oh my God!  I'm Hurricane Heather!  You're battening down the hatches!  This is you calling in food and alcohol equivalents of the National Guard!"

 I can see him thinking very carefully about his response.

"No...  this is me, your faithful and loving husband, providing coping options to you, my lovely wife, in the event of any situation that might arise."

Smart man.
 

Don't open that Tupperware!

We could make our own penicillin with some of the contents of our fridge right now.    Show of hands, who else only cleans their fridge out on a quarterly or bi-annual basis?  As a science experiment it's kind of cool - as a surprise when you're opening a container - not so much.  That's why I highly recommend the see-through containers.  Then you can just see all the delicious, moldy-green bits (shudder) and know what has to go before opening the vessel and releasing the new species you're cultivating into the air like Anthrax.  There are times, when the entire container ends up in the garbage.  Usually it's David who does that.  I can't stand to throw anything away that could be properly recycled.  I will empty even the foulest container, overcoming my food odor gag-reflex to get that sucker washed and put into the recycling bin.

We don't have a garburator, which means that when we do have a refrigerator stacked with muck and yuck plastic containers - we need to take a large spoon, walk to the main floor bathroom (oh so conveniently located off the kitchen) and begin the FQQ (Food of Questionable Quality) purge into the toilet.  WARNING - make sure the food is in bite sized pieces when you do this!  Don't just take a whole freaking chicken breast or head of broccoli /cauliflower and think you can flush it - it WON'T work!  Also - make sure that you have a plunger on hand - just in case your bite-sized pieces of FQQ get clogged in said toilet.  'Cause nothing says party like a bathroom floor filled with an inch of contaminated water.

Fridge cleaning is one of those household chores that just gets put on the back burner for other more noticeable things, like say dirty dishes in the sink or occasional chairs covered in cat hair.  I'm all for the lower effort housecleaning - the things that take next to no time to do but make it look like the house is really clean.  Vacuuming is a good one.  You see those nice vacuum marks on the floor and it can go a great way to perfect the illusion of cleanliness.  Every day when I'm done my shower I make sure the bathroom sink is clean.  I can do that quick fix in about 60 seconds.  I was a Molly Maid during university, so when I'm motivated, the house can get cleaned fairly quickly.  Or it would if I didn't get all distracticated - which happens ALL the time to me. 

I start in one room and then something else will catch my eye, so those papers that I had intended to file up in the study wind up on the stairs as I break down cardboard boxes which remind me there are more in the basement, but then I notice that the kitty litter needs to be changed, and when I'm in the tool room locating the garbage bags for the kitty litter I see that the floor needs to be swept and then when I go to get the broom, I notice that the cats have taken a strand of the carpet underneath David's drum set and are unraveling it... and then it's the end of the day and other than the clean bathroom sink that I managed to wipe after my shower, the house pretty much looks the same.  And then, even when I do go on an all-out cleaning fit and the house is vacuumed and counters are clear of crap, Rissa comes home and says "Is someone coming over tonight?  The house is so clean!" 

"NO!! NO ONE IS COMING OVER!!!  YOU KNOW IT IS POSSIBLE THAT WE, AS A FAMILY, WORKING COOPERATIVELY, COULD LIVE IN A HOUSE WHERE THINGS ARE CLEANED, TIDIED AND FREAKING VACUUMED AS A MATTER OF COURSE!!!!"

Brad Pitt and Chanel No. 5??

Okay, so Chanel No. 5 ads.   WHAT. THE. POOH.  Brad Pitt is the new face of Chanel No. 5?  My friend Meg said that it happened, but I thought she was high.   Brad Pitt?  Chanel No. 5?

And then I found it - a 31 second commercial that can make the most nonsensical hallucinogenic experience seem like watching the most simplistic inaugural address.

"It's not a journey;* every journey ends, but we go on.  The world turns and we turn with it.  Plans disappear, dreams take over."

My eyes rolled back in my head so far in disbelief, I almost gave myself a brain aneurysm.  My snorts of laughter almost choked me.   But then, somewhere around the 18 second mark...   Brad Pitt actually turns to the camera and looks directly... at ME.

"But wherever I go... there you are... "  

And there it is folks, that's where my near-hysterical scoffing got stuck in my throat.  Because when he looked into the camera and said those words?  I actually clenched.  With my girlie bits.  Dead serious.  My mouth got dry.  It was akin to Johnny Depp in Chocolate suggesting that he'd "come round sometime and get that squeak out of" Juliette Binoche's door.   But then?  Pitt looked away and the spell was completely broken with these words...

"My luck.  My fate.  My fortune.  Chanel No. 5.   Inevitable."

I had to watch it again.  It was like a train wreck.  Eye roll, eye roll, snort, scoff, eye roll, snort, snort, scoff, eye roll, eye roll, eye roll,  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, eye roll...  OH. MY. BLESSED. GOD, blah, blah, blah, snort, scoff, snort, blah, blah, blah de freakin' blah.

Six times.  I have watched it six times.  And I gotta say that in the midst of those 27 painful - they paid him HOW MUCH?? - seconds?  The other  4 seconds where I'm pretty sure he's promising that he will leave Angelina Jolie for ME?   Effective advertising.  And you know how I know that?  Because I'm not even attracted to Brad Pitt.  I mean sure, when David and I play Would You Rather - we both pretty much get stuck at the "Would you rather have dinner with George Clooney and Brad Pitt?"  option, but that has everything to do with how much fun they are in the Oceans movies.  So I was a bit surprised that there was any attraction for me at all.  'Course, my period's due (again) and I am incredibly horny.

Chanel perfume ads always seem to be fashioned as cinematic melodramas from the 1940s.  And let's face it, Bette Davis did it so much better in Now Voyager.   

"Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars."   

You know why these ads don't work?  Because it's no longer 1979 and none of these spokespeople are Catherine Deneuve.  You have to be her to pull off that existential, melodramatic shit.   Although Audrey Tautou did a pretty good job in 2009.  So maybe what I should say is that you can't be American, or Australian, or British or a Russian immigrant to pull off a quintessentially French ad.  I think you have to be French.  Like with a capital "F" and italics, kind of French.

* and you just KNOW that there would have been a freaking semi-colon there!