JK Rowling got it right...

A respectful deviation on Wingsdomain Art and Photography's - Quoth the Raven Nevermore

Picture, if you will, a raven.  Now imagine that raven on the inside of your skull.  Imagine that raven has its claws firmly around your eyeballs.  Your optic nerves haven't been severed... yet... but you can actually feel the claws around the eyeball.  That is what a migraine feels like.  Raven claws around your eyeballs."RAVENCLAW" The perfect description for an ocular migraine.  JK Rowling must get them.


Am I right?  Can I hear a "TESTIFY!!" from all the other ocular migraine sufferers?  It doesn't take the pain away, but knowing exactly how to describe it?  Gives some measure of comfort.  And it makes me feel like I know JK Rowling just that much better.  She's probably an asthma sufferer too - I mean, come on... HUFFLEPUFF?!?   I'm not saying that I'd fist bump her or anything upon sight, but I think we'd give each other this knowing, yet pained, looked.

Hooray for Bollywood!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alpOkCbt5SU

Bollywood.  I want to be covered in Bollywood.  I want to wallow in its delicious colour and music.  I've been on the periphery for several years.  I saw Bride and Prejudice,  Monsoon Wedding and Slumdog Millionaire.  I love when So You Think You Can Dance assigns Bollywood as a dance style.  But last weekend?  Last weekend I experienced all that was Jhoom Barabar Jhoom.  There should be appropriately placed Bollywood Bangra music to accompany that last sentence.

It was perfection.  I had a big stupid grin on my face the whole time.  I was almost crying I was so happy.  Rissa and David thought that I'd lost my mind, but they didn't understand the brilliance of the film.  It was cheese from beginning to end.  Spontaneous dance numbers, over-the-top comedy, self-aware irony - PLUS (but wait there's more!) a seemingly endless dance competition sequence!  And yet... and yet in the midst of all of this... there were a couple of tender and true dramatic moments that honest to God, caught my breath.

I need more.  I need recommendations.  I want the best.  I want the worst.  I want to get on the ride again and wave my arms in the air shrieking with the all-encompassing joy of it.  I mean, sure, I can make my way through Netflix and just try everything...   Wait!  What am I saying?!? That's exactly what I'm going to do... The good, the bad, the ridiculous - I will discover it all.  BRING IT ON!!

I am now officially pretentious...

David bought me a single serving Bodum.  I have a freaking French Press.  I'm going to start using he word 'whom' from now on.

Thing is?  In its adorably wee and compact single coffee serving sized carafe, it makes a helluva good cup of coffee.  I feel so Cosmopolitan.  And pretentious.  I am prepared to accept the pretension because I am now enjoying my morning coffee so much more on account of the fact that it tastes like, well, coffee... instead of weak chicory-flavoured bark.

Death sucks

Big time.  Really a lot.  I mean, HOLY CRAP does death suck!  You think you're doing okay until the deathiversary happens.  That day bitch slaps you every time.  Four years gone and your heart ruptures all over again - an explosion of cardiac tissue splattering your rib cage and spine.

You struggle for breath. A sip of air dragged into your red-covered lungs.  How is it that you can still breathe without a heart?  Cling to a memory - one of the good ones - where you were laughing together, being silly.  That split-second of joy chased away by anger and sadness and pain.  The hurt.  Not as bad as when you first found out, not as bad as that first fortnight staggering through life without her in the world, but those waves of pain tearing through you, in the now, have you teetering on the edge of nausea.

And even though you know she wouldn't want you to wallow in it - to drown in that pain - you think you're entitled.  Just for today.  For today you will rage against the fucking senseless loss of her.  You can remember the good tomorrow.  But today, the anniversary of her death, you're going to wail, you're going to scream, you're going to pray for the calm to eventually return.  Tomorrow, you'll smile when you think of her, but today... today you're fucking decimated.

memoria meus amicus

Pouty Mc-Pouts-A-Lot...

In the continuing saga of how Heather is a brain-dead bunny...  Apparently, I caused my own withdrawal. Because why?  Because I am a moron.  I mean, seriously.  WHAT. THE. FUCK.  There should be a picture of me next to the "Do not operate heavy machinery" warning.  

Last week?  When I tried to circumvent the pharmacy staff to get the refills on my old angina prescription?  I didn't even need to. The pharmacy had already filled the scrip.  The day I went in.  A week before I ran out of meds.  They called my doc and he faxed it in, I guess.  But did the pharmacy call to tell ME they did this?  NO.  They did NOT.  So here I was, trying to tricky-dick my way around the system and I didn't even need to.    I should have double-checked with the pharmacy!  Why didn't I check with the pharmacy?!?  Because I'm a moron.  Because I forgot.  Because my body is being held hostage by thyroid and/or  peri-menopause symptoms!

This entire last week of me not being able to sleep because of horrendous hot flashes, nausea and chest pain?  Could have been completely avoided...  if I weren't a moron.  Next time, and there WILL be a next time, I'll send myself reminders through my email...  Or maybe, I should just hire an assistant to help me with all of this!  A fit, attractive, young man who could, you know, keep me on task.   By reminding me of my appointments... whispering hotly in my ear as he gave me scheduled back rubs...  I'm pretty sure that would keep me on the ball... so to speak...

I won't wear pajamas! I won't! I won't! I won't!

I don't know if it was a byproduct of me still jonesing for my angina meds or the couple of glasses of wine I had last night during dinner, but Sweet Bleeding Yoni - Saturday night's night-sweats were EPIC.

Jenn from The IT Crowd during Aunt Irma's visit

I was UP.  All night.  Every hour on the hour from 12:30 a.m.  Jet engine torso - whipping off the blankets - micro-seconds of cool-air respite before room temperature chills upon my naked body forced me to reach for the blankets once more. Cycling through that chain of events ALL freaking night.  I might have to wear freaking pajamas in bed.  I hate pajamas.  What is the point of having spouse to snuggle with under the blankets if you can't be naked with the spouse!?!

David is researching how he can help me (and as a by-product of that, help him) through this time of my life.  These can apparently trigger hot flashes:

• Stress
• Caffeine
• Alcohol
• Spicy foods
• Tight clothing
• Heat
• Cigarette smoke

I don't smoke - boo yeah - big line through that one!  I try to avoid caffeine because I already knew that was a trigger.   How tight are we talking for clothing??  I don't wear skinny jeans and my torso apparel is generally loose to mask my back boobs and armpit boobs, so I think I'm good there.  That leaves stress, alcohol, spicy foods and heat.  Right now, until I get more angina meds, my reaction to stress is challenged, at best.  Alcohol - when I'm stressed - alcohol is incredibly helpful - not only does a Rusty Nail taste freaking great, the relaxation factor cannot be underestimated.  Please, oh please, please, please - I don't want to give up alcohol.  I will give up spicy foods if I'm allowed to keep the alcohol.  And  then there's HEAT.  It's Canada in the early spring.  It's not HOT.  At night our thermostat already goes down to 17 degrees.  Heat should not be a factor right now.

David's top idea is to have a small freezer in our room, storing specially-made cold pack gloves that he can whip on in the middle of the night when my core is heating to boiling and then he'll just rub them all over my naked body.  If we're both up anyway - we might as well do something fun, right?

Women know EVERYTHING!

Last weekend, my Mom and I were discussing periods.  You know, in that mother/daughter bonding/commiserative sort of way.  We waxed nostalgic about the days we started - she, the first day of high school... I, the evening after I'd been sexually molested by adolescent youths from my mixed softball team...  Mom then recounted, in minute detail, the weekend that she had her last ever period...  where they were, the drive up the mountain to the cabin... My Dad looked at us like we were idiot savants.

"How is is that you can remember the exact day that this happens?  How is that possible?"

"Dad, if you were bleeding out of your penis... you'd remember when it happened."

And that's how my accidental withdrawal started...

Okay, seriously?  Peri-menopause AND withdrawal symptoms?!?  WHAT.  THE.  FUCK.  Just frickin' shoot me now.

Last week, when I went to the pharmacy to refill my angina medication, they told me the scrip was over a year old and that they had to contact the physician to see if he would okay it.  Admittedly, the prescription was that old, but it still had 2 refills on it!    I'd only just started taking it again a couple of months ago, on account of the fact that when my attacks got really bad I did some more reading about this particular drug and discovered that said meds might take up to 4 weeks to work - which, it appears, they totally do, because after about 4 weeks, I could actually go out in cold air without pain and only the worst of stressors brought on agony in my chestal region. 

Yes, I should have called the doc's office myself and talked to them right then, when I had 6 more pills in the queue.  I forgot to call.  And then, when I finally remembered, it wasn't during office hours and the cardiologist's answering machine DOESN'T ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE MESSAGES!!  The fucking point of having an answering machine is to allow you LEAVE messages!!  Don't tease people by having an outgoing message and then totally fuck them over by informing them they can't LEAVE a message!!  What kind of sick fucks are you?  After some vehement ranting, I forgot... again.  Because, in addition to the angina, I have thyroid issues, of which, one of the symptoms is that you... FORGET THINGS.

Last night, when I had the mother of all hot flash attacks with accompanying nausea, I was all, "What the...?  Hot flash with a side of NAUSEA?!?"  I thought it might be the beginning of full-on fertility dry up, because why WOULDN'T the already enjoyable peri-menopause symptoms now involve incapacitating nausea?  So I got out of bed prepared to learn that my peri-menopause symptoms now had a +1.  Which is definitely a possibility according to many cross-referenced menopause sites, (you can't just read Wikipedia, it only counts if you look at at least another 4 sites) but (and this is one of those buts that you don't really want) I discovered that hot flashes with nausea could also be a sign of withdrawal - which set off my internal sound track that went DUN, DUN, DUUUUUUUUN... because I quickly realized that I've now run out of my angina meds.   So I called the cardiologist's office - again - outside of business hours, because that's the ONLY time I can apparently  remember to do it - and was reminded - again that their answering machine  DOESN'T ALLOW YOU TO LEAVE MESSAGES!!    Which I should have known, but FORGOT, because I have thyroid issues.

So now, I'm jonesing for calcium channel blockers.  Which, in turn, is making me stressed, which isn't the best thing for someone with angina who is no longer on her angina meds because she's been a complete fuck-nut and hasn't remembered to get in touch with the cardiologist during business hours to beg him to let the pharmacy fill her prescription.  Which he won't do, because the last time he saw me in person was over a year ago and if I wanted to see him again, even though I have seen him more than a 1/2 dozen times in the last 5 years, I have to go to my GP and get another referral to see the cardiologist.  I'm like that guest at a cocktail party who nobody ever remembers meeting, even though I'm at the same cocktail party EVERY frickin' Christmas!!

This morning, I circumvented the pharmacy and called the prescription in to their automated service, thinking that maybe the automated service would ignore that pesky date and only look at the number of refills and give them to me, because it's a machine - but then I realized that the machine probably won't actually be filling the prescription and that I'll get a phone call from a human at the pharmacy telling me that I have to see my doctor.  If this were The Matrix and the machines had already taken over the world, I'd have my meds by now.  And I'd bet they let me leave a message to thank them for it.

Small pill... SO much blood...

I'm taking baby aspirin.  In these wee, tiny, little pills - scattered amongst my morning vitamins.  They seem so innocent and nothing at all like blood thinners. 

Recently, when I maybe, just perhaps, gouged compulsively into my inner thigh, digging for a covert ingrown hair (for the love of Eastern Block Estheticians, can we please stop with the extra hair?!?), there was some self-surgical fallout...     resulting in lots and lots and lots of blood.  So much so, that I started quoting Lady Macbeth.  (Had I hit a freaking artery?!?)

I applied pressure with wadded up toilet paper for several minutes, but when that didn't work, I then sought out cotton balls... and band-aids.   And maybe a tourniquet.  Later, when I was taking the band-aid off, the teeny, tiny wound started to bleed again.  All this from one freaking baby aspirin a day.  Who would've thunk that such a small pill could be so powerful?  I'm glad that it was only one teeny-tiny ingrown hair that left me wounded - I'd have bled out if there'd been two.

Eat more! Get skinnier!

I think I need to eat more.  At meal times.  Since I started working 'outside the home' again, my eating habits have gone to utter crap.  Over lunch I usually have a dozen rice crackers with one of those wee cans of tuna - or maybe I'll have a Lara Bar and wash it down with some herbal tea.  Here I thought with me NOT having a calorie-laden lunch - I'd be back down to fighting trim, but it seems the opposite is happening.

The muffin-top approacheth.  When I sit at the computer (which is pretty much what I do at work, and then at home when I'm writing), I am now aware of my stomach over top of whatever waistband I'm wearing.  I think it's because when I get home from work, I now feel the need to snack/binge on salty and/or chocolaty things.  On account of the fact that I might actually be, I hate to suggest this... HUNGRY?!?

So today, I'm trying something different. I'm going out on a limb. Doing something crazy.  I'm adding applesauce at lunch.  Unbelievable, right?  But maybe if I have that little something more, that's actually good for me, I might be able to get a handle on these snacky cravings that I'm having later in the day.  I might even have some carrot sticks. (I don't want to go too over the top, but it might just come to that.)  I'm trying the 'MORE healthful calories during the day = LESS compulsive salt/chocolate bingeing in the afternoon' plan... ergo... EAT MORE!  GET SKINNIER!!  Fingers crossed my hypothesis will work.

What Would Jesus Sing?

This song was playing this morning - on our way to Easter Brunch...  All I could think was... PERFECT JESUS THEME SONG!!!  I just had to make this:

Jesus sings The Clash

Then later I thought what if they rolled back the stone, and found this Easter morning?  So I had to make this one:

(I know, I know...  I'm going to Hell.)

I've lost my nuts!

I bought them.  I know I did.  I specifically got a container of the non-salted roasted almonds in the bulk section at the No Frills.  I remember, because last time?  I'd bought the salted roasted almonds and now as I'm trying to cut down on my salt intake, I picked up the non-salted kind.  On purpose. I know I bought them.   I have a distinct memory of putting them on the bench by the front door, so that I would remember to take them to work as my quick protein fix.  I have no freaking clue where they went.

I thought that David might have mistaken them for regular groceries and put them in a cupboard, but when I asked him about them, he looked at me, well... like I was nuts.  So either we're both losing our minds, or Rissa's trying her best to Gaslight us, or the cats have figured out how to transport 500 g containers.  Steve and Lola, could maybe work together, but without opposable thumbs, I don't think that they could move it onto a cat forklift their own, which means that they'd have to call in Minuit, and we all know she is NOT a team player.

I also think that my purse might be the Tardis.  In the last week alone, I have looked in the purse probably a dozen times for objects that should be there - am UNABLE to find them and then, when I check again 3 minutes later...  the objects ARE there. ?!?

I know what Occam's Razor would tell us.  Occam's Razor would tell us I've already lost my mind.

Would you say this is weird?

"Hey Mummy, would you say this is weird?"  Says Rissa, upon her arrival home from school.  She pokes her head around the corner and sticks her tongue out of her mouth and makes this noise: "Lardl-lardl-lardl-lardl..."

"Yes.  I would say that is weird."

"How 'bout this?"

She ducks out of view for a second and then comes around the corner once more, her face screwed into a fishy semblance making this noise: "pwuh-pwuh-pwuh-pwuh..."

"That, too, is weird."

"Would you say they are equally weird...?

"As opposed to?"

"One being decidedly more weird."

"Let me see them again."

Like daugther like mother...

Ryan could come stay with me... I mean us...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2013/03/21/ryan-gosling-acting-break.html

I'm just saying.  You know, if Ryan Gosling really needs a break and someplace to chill.  He could chill in our attic.  It would be a no-stress environment for him.  I mean, apart from dealing with the mid-40s woman pretending she's all nonchalant, who just happens to be on the floor below him, imagining him doing pushups right before bed...  on top of her. 

I could be all caj...(that's short for casual, see, I'm hip)... I wouldn't fawn over him or anything, that would be so déclassé. Occasionally I'd invite him to a family dinner, "Ryan, we're having pot roast!  You in?"  Ask if he wants to go the library, that sort of thing.  Small provincial town - if he wore a ballcap I'm sure that folks wouldn't recognize him.  Just sayin.'

Poohsticks with Rissa

Poohsticks from A. A. Milnes' The House at Pooh Corner.  Illustration by E.H. Shepherd

 
We played Poohsticks last weekend.  We had to be careful, and not cross the bridge willy-nilly on account of the fact that, for a small country road in Lanark County, there's a lot of traffic.  David, Rissa and I gathered our sticks - made sure we weren't going to be squished flat by asshole drivers who don't follow the 40 km/h speed limit - and launched our precious playing pieces into the Tay River.   We ran to the other side of the bridge, waiting for our sticks to come out, but to no avail.  We saw... nothing.  Where did they go?  Who had won?  The sticks must have been too small.

"We need bigger sticks," said I.

"We need Pooh LOGS," said Rissa, in her Eureka voice.

David and I shared a glance.  "Ummmm... I don't think we want to call it Pooh LOGS..."

"Why not?" asked Rissa.

"Well, it kinda sounds as if we're throwing bowel movements over the bridge.  Or maybe like we're sitting on the edge of bridge and poohing over the side."

Rissa thought for a second.  "I'm totally going to call it Pooh Logs from now on."

We all are.

And that's why my nipples were hard...

Protecting the masses from my nipples.

  
NOT because I was all het up.   But because it was 12 freaking degrees in our house.   We got home from a weekend visiting my parents and walked into a house where I'm pretty sure I could see my breath.  And, as a direct consequence, my breasts.  Well, at least my nipples.  On account of the fact that my nipples were frozen into temperature sensitive bullets letting the world at large know that I was freezing.  And this, through a t-shirt bra this is supposed to hide one's nipples...  I was THAT cold.

Our boiler's automatic pilot light conked out.  So that meant that until Monday morning, we were wearing longjohns, pjs, bathrobes, extra socks with slippers and afghans.  (The blankets, not the dogs... although a big-ass hairy dog (or two) would have been great to have had on my lap.)  We lit a fire in our incredibly inefficient fireplace, cooked pizzas with the oven door open, filled the bathtub with near-boiling water and had space heaters pumping heat in our bedrooms.  I held a hot chocolate between my hands and, after consuming it, put my mittens back on.

Always the problem solvers, David and I decided to use some extra one-on-one friction last night... you know... to stay EXTRA warm.  There was no point in wasting those hard nipples, right?

I'm just a girl who can't say no...

This is NOT me eating something bad for me..

To chocolate.  And salty foods.  And apparently Rusty Nails...  My healthful ingesting self-control seems to be at an all-time low.  What the hell is wrong with me?

And what am I eating now?  Chocolate covered pretzels.  They were a gift.  How was the gifter to know they are my kryptonite?  Salty-wheaty-chocolatey-sugar-coma-inducing kryptonite.  I can feel my throat coating with phlegm and my stomach bloating already.  It's alright.  8 pretzels = only 140 calories.  Of course I've had probably 35 pretzels - not a problem - I just won't eat dinner. And I won't wash them down with that Rusty Nail that I was craving - or at least not a double Rusty Nail.  See?  I still have self-control!

Frenzied Feline Ferocity

Every morning outside our door, the cats lie in wait.  Pawing first.  Then head-butting.  Then heaving their shoulders into it.  Chirping, meowing, then yowling follows.  Lola's the yowler.  She yowls when Minuit growls then bites her.  Minuit is NOT a morning cat. Steve, our dopey orange male, runs up and down the upstairs hallway any time it seems that someone is close to rising from between the sheets.

We learned not to leave the door open.  Because if we leave the door open?  Then we basically live Simon's Cat  ... x 3 cats - one of whom, when she walks on your abdominal aorta, can actually make you pass out.  FYI - Simon Tofield's cat animation is pretty close to perfect - quite a feat with simple line drawings.

I HATE this part of being a Mom...

Detail from: http://www.etsy.com/listing/94665109/sick-girl-vfisit-by-mother-nun-1890s

I hate, hate, HATE - this part of being a Mom.  Rissa has a stomach bug.  She's so pale.  Almost as tall as me, yet as I'm smoothing her back while she woofs her cookies into the porcelain, I feel so freaking helpless.  She's a delicate woofer - no over-the-top gagging, just a complete emptying of her stomach contents.  She's fairly upbeat for having projectile vomited. 

"I broke my 7 year streak Mummy," she laments.  The last time she woofed her cookies was when we moved to this house.  She equates it with having eaten Cheezies while in the care of  her David's Moms - which isn't necessarily a bad thing - she hasn't touched Cheezies since then.  I sort of wish I'd had the same experience with ice cream when I was younger.

"Mummy, is this the flu?"

"No sweetie, it's not.  People call it the stomach flu, but it has nothing to do with the flu."

"Then why do they call it the flu?"

"Because someone made the mistake of calling it the flu a long time ago and now people no longer know the difference."

"You mean like when they say orangutan-g and nuc-u-lar?"  (My biggest pet peeve.  If you want to see my head explode talk about nucular orangutangs and you'll see it happen.)

The liquid children's diarrhea medicine (not to be mistake for children's liquid diarrhea medicine - which gives you an altogether more disgusting image...) we had on hand made her vomit and she can't swallow pills yet.  In between her half dozen trips to the bathroom last night, I was self-screening the noises in my own body.  Is this gas?  Is this the onset of bowel evacuation?

And today the hard part is going to be to try to keep her resting.

"You should be back in bed sweetie."

"But why?"

"Because you fell asleep at 1:30 a.m."

"I'm too hot to be in bed.  I'm going to stand out on the porch to cool down."

"No.  You're not.  Go down to the kitchen without slippers on, you be cold soon enough."

My debating whether or not I can leave her here for my 4 hours of work has now been answered - she's not going to rest.  She's going to stand naked on the porch and then develop pneumonia.  She needs a guard.  And maybe some snuggling.  And some bad tv watching.

Southern Ontario family perishes from hypothermia...

Yesterday morning it was 16 degrees in our house.  I met Rissa in the kitchen - she was bundled into her ginormous bathrobe, over which she had thrown on my down-filled winter coat.  She was breathing on her hands to warm them.  My first thought: Dear God, the boiler has given up the ghost, we're all going to freeze to death and we are THIS close to spring!  The news will report, "Despite entering the 'Out like a lamb' part of March, this Southern Ontario family sadly perished from hypothermia. Memorial Services will be held this weekend."

The floors were cold, the walls were cold - I'm pretty sure that I could see my breath in the downstairs bathroom.  I reached out for the radiator, dreading what I might find to be true.  Boilers are expensive.  They are very, very expensive.  We have money put aside, but it was put aside for the new roof that we didn't manage to fix last year  Maybe if we started buying lottery tickets?  My palm touched the radiator.  The radiator was warm, deliciously hot, in fact.  It was the house that was freezing.  What was going on?

Last week was March Break - we did a lot of sleeping in.  David and Rissa had the week off and I didn't have to go into the office until 10:00, which is why we didn't notice that we'd forgotten to spring ahead the thermostat clock until yesterday morning when we all rose at the crack of dawn.  The radiators  thought it was 5:35 a.m. instead of 6:35 a.m.

"It's okay sweetie!  We were just morons!" See that? Bright side totally found!

That erection is not for me.

Warning: Adult Sexual Content

Sunday morning, I gently wake.  Snuggling into David in bed.  He moves his arm so that I can rest my head on his chest.  I make yummy noises.  This is perfection.  I run my hand over his chest and then downward.

"Well 'Hello Sailor!'" Nothing like being given a full salute from below decks first thing in the morning.  I tilt my head to give him a closed-mouth kiss - on account of the fact that neither of us has brushed our teeth yet.  The day is beginning well.  Then I remember.  It's Sunday morning - we've slept in.  He's just woken up.

"That erection isn't really for me, is it?" I pout.  "You just need to pee, don't you?"

He reaches down and squeezes my derriere a couple of times.

"Now it's at least half for you."

I always have to have my own spin...

Thank you so much Bad Word Mama for nominating me for the Liebster Award!

Very kind of you indeed.  It is always nice to know that someone thinks well of you.  And that someone thinks well enough to encourage you to post a kick-ass graphic and share the love with other bloggers?  Pretty gratifying.  Nice too, to know, that Bad Word Mama is a gal, like me, who doesn't have a lot of extra time and she's into streamlining the process.  Instead of asking a blogger to answer 25 or 10 or even 5 questions about themselves, she's asked for one (1).

What is the biggest regret that I have?

The regrets that I have come from my wedding day.  Oh CRAP! That makes it sound like I'm not happy to be married to David.  Which would be a complete and utter lie.  I'm very happy to be married to David - it'll be 15 years this August - we're having a big-ass party celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary.  I love him lots! And more importantly, I LIKE him lots and still want to do the bouncy-bouncy with him. 

My regrets, and there are a couple from that day, are these:  when David and I got to the speeches, we thanked everyone for coming and offered up the mic to the Fathers of the Bride and Groom.  When they didn't leap immediately at the opportunity to speak - we basically said, "Nope?  No one wants to say anything?  Okay, then we're good to go... everybody start dancing!!"  I really wish that we'd urged both our fathers to talk.  I would have liked to hear what my Dad and David's Dad thought about it all.  They're both great story tellers, they probably would have made us cry.

The other regret from that day is that we had several relatives who had passed away and couldn't be there with us.  We had a table set up with pictures of our absent friends/relatives who were no longer with us, but I really wish that I'd mentioned them all by name and really talked about how much they meant to us.  And as by-product of that regret, I wish that Rissa had had a chance to meet all these people - that she'd known how great they were and had her own memories of them instead of the ones I share through story-telling.

And now... the  NOMINATIONS.

Folks should know this: I'm the person on Facebook who, when assailed by one of those "pass it on if you have a soul" posts happens, I completely change the wording, take the chain letterness out of it and encourage folks to share it, only if they want, with no potential karmic fallout.   I've posted about that in my Magical Meerkat post.

So here's what I'm going to do.  The 5 people I have nominated write well and make me laugh and I think other people should read them and laugh too.  If they, in turn, want to post the kick-ass award on their blog and nominate others, lovely, if not... no worries, it's all good.  If you want to share something about yourself - do so... If you want to answer the question that I answered, go for it...  Paying it forward is a great thing, I am a big supporter!  So check these folks out - they're worth it! 


A Whole Lot of Nothing

Mommy Adventures

Pink Dryer Lint

Stuff White People Like

Not Your Average Mom

Self-amputation should not be your go-to...

David wants to amputate his right leg...  and replace it instead with a sproingy prosthetic.  He has a pinched sciatic nerve - which if he were to actually see the chiropractor and/or physiotherapist, he could probably fix.  But right now he thinks the best idea would be to amputate said limb and get a cool prosthetic. I'm hiding the the hack saws.

David: "This is not fun any more."

Me:  "Was this really ever fun?"

David: "It had novelty for a while.  I was enjoying the wallowing."

Me: "Maybe there's somebody out there with a voodoo doll who is sticking pins in your hip!"

David: "That would mean that somebody out there really hates me."

Me:  "I think that's the only logical explanation, I mean, other than you not going to the doctor, chiropractor or physiotherapist. So Big Guy, who did you piss off?"

David: "I really don't know."

Me:  "Must be one of those many women who, when they throw themselves at you for sex, you turn down on account of the fact that you're married to me."

David:  "That must be it."

Tuna Sweater

Every time.  Every single time.  When I open a can of tuna - I end up with tuna sweater, or tuna shirt or tuna blouse or tuna dress.  If I have long sleeves on - I end up smelling like a fish market...

I met David at the door the other day, wrapped my arms around his neck, leaned in for a kiss...

"What have YOU been up to?" He said, waggling his eyebrows at me.

"Dude!  I'm making dinner!   It's tuna juice."

"I'll say it's tuna juice..." more waggling of the eyebrows.

"No seriously.  It's TUNA juice.  We're having tuna melts for dinner."

He looked a little crestfallen for a moment.  Then he perked up.  "I like tuna melts."

The Anal Gland Squeeze

WARNING: This post is gross

Me, averting my nose.  Minuit, really pissed.

My cat, Minuit, stinks.  Really a lot.  She has impacted anal glands.  Probably on account of the fact that she's so fat - something that happened when she developed her fear of people when we lived in New York for 6 months.  When Minuit walks by you, you are almost certain that you have just stepped in cat shit.  Except that it's her and it's coming from her own anal glands.

The last time that I took Minuit to the vet, the beast had her anal glands squeezed.  (Minuit, not the vet.)  I held Minuit, the vet squeezed.  Not Minuit's finest moment methinks.  Although after that, when she was taken to the back to have her nails trimmed she was positively passive - I guess when you've had your anal glands squeezed, the hardship of a nail trimming seems less traumatic.

After the anal gland squeeze, Minuit didn't stink!  She was fresh as a daisy.  It was like having a new cat in the house.  But now it's been a couple of months and the stink has returned.  So I either have to take her bi-monthly to the vet to have her anal glands squeezed, or I need to learn how to squeeze them myself.  The cost-efficiency quotient of my learning the technique is out-weighing the gross-out factor.  One of my sisters-in-law is a vet - I'm thinking she might be able to coach me.

The Naked Heather

You never know how much time you really spend naked until your kid has a sleepover. Thursday night, Rissa had three other friends sleep over, and I had to make a concerted effort NOT to be naked in my own home.  I had to close doors, I had to take a bathrobe with me when I took a shower... I had to get dressed in my bedroom...  Which lead me to this thought: I must walk around naked ALL the time. 

I get dressed as I'm walking to the kitchen.  I might have pants on, maybe my bra is on, maybe it isn't... rarely is a shirt upon my person.  I start the kettle to boil, I feed the cats, all while going topless.  Rissa frequently greets me with a "Mother!  Clothes!  ON NOW!"

I'm the only who really does it in our house. Though Rissa spent her first decade rarely wearing clothing inside the house, at the age of 11 she starting wrapping herself in towels, bathrobes and generally not wanting to be naked.  At all.  EVER.  David started covering up a few years before that, probably on account of the fact that Rissa did a lot of pointing and tittering at his groinal direction.  But me?  Nekkid.  Most of the time.  I cavort, I skip down the stairs (although when I do, I must hold my tatas so that I don't give myself a black eye), I lounge.

Being naked is a great thing.   I enjoy my liberation from garments.  I alone, the mother, have this freedom in our home.  I send out a call to other mothers - embrace this!  Cast off your clothing and luxuriate in nakedness with me!  Embarass your adolescent children, titillate your partners!  Mothers of the world - DISROBE!!

Sex is GOOD...

WARNING!! Adult sexual content in this post!

The grinding of pelvises, the bumping of uglies, the making of the beast with two backs...  The orgasm that makes you laugh or cry or yodel.  It's so freaking good!

For the first time in at least a month, David and I reconnected... intimately.  Right afterwards, we turned to each other and said "This is SO GOOD.  We should do this more often."  That night, I slept like a baby.  When we came down the next morning, we shared knowing glances.  I giggled like a school girl, he waggled his eyebrows at me.   The tension release was fantastic!

And yet we don't make it a priority.  It doesn't take that much effort.  I mean, once you get through the squaring of the shoulders in preparation for the mount.  You know what I'm talking about.  You're tired, your pillow whispers dirty nothings to you, or that last chapter in your book beckons.  You lean in for that half-assed attempt at a kiss, mentally rolling your eyes.

But then... if you're actually present in the moment?  You remember that kissing this person is not just a good thing, it's a great thing.  That tasting this person makes you wet... If you can just get through the first part and get to the remembering part?  The sex is pretty much always good.  I mean, if you're doing it right.   And after almost 15 years of marriage, David and I are definitely doing it right.  We excel at sex.  We should be given medals for it.  We just have to keep jumping up into the saddle and embracing the yodel.

That is NOT vacuuming!

I love my husband.  I adore him.  I do.  He is the best spouse in the world.  He buys me pre-emptive chocolate when he senses the arrival of my period, he tells me I'm beautiful, he gives a great orgasm.  But he cannot vacuum for shit.

Our house is still on the market.  (Want a quick way to add stress and lose your mind?  Put your house up for sale.)  Now that it's been on the market for 6 weeks, some of the blush has come off the rose.  We're not in that constant state of readiness because 1) we have to live in the freaking house when its on the market and 2) nobody puts shit away any more.

When we get the call for a showing, it's always the same thing.  We have the 24 hours notice and then we have a 3-4 hour cleaning blitz, which, if we were selling a 1000 sq. foot condo, would render the place spotless, but in a 2.5 story century home with furnished attic and basement spaces?  Ain't enough time.  And this week?   Our living room was covered in set decoration and tools from our recent production of Peter Pan.  The house cannot stay clean. Or at least not my level of clean

It comes down to this: I want the people who come to view the house not to think we're white trash.  Which means that I want to clean and dust everything.  In a house so freaking huge, after getting home from work, I don't have time to spend the remains of my day, ensuring that our dust bunnies haven't morphed into dust rhinoceroses and that the baseboard dings have touch-up paint on them.

David is all about the cursory clean.  The 'First-Glance' clean.  "They're not going to notice this stuff!"  My problem is that on my way out of the house, I'll notice that the kitchen tap hasn't been polished or that the front hall runner has cat hair on it... again.  I'll dust and polish and David will do the vacuuming.  But then, when I see where he's vacuumed?  It's not vacuumed.  There are still bits of things ON the carpet or the vacuuming marks suck.  We have  a shag carpet in our study - if you haven't vacuumed the WHOLE carpet - it totally looks like you HAVEN'T VACUUMED THE WHOLE CARPET.  The vacuuming marks don't lie.  And yes, I'm anal about vacuuming marks.  You don't just willy-nilly vacuum - you start at the farthest end and work your way back in little archways of recently-sucked clean.  You leave a pattern.  You've got to take out the attachment wand for the vacuum and suck off the bits of dirt that are beside the front hall runner.  The cat hair on the occasional chairs needs to be gone. 

David doesn't see these things.  And because I don't want to nag, and I don't want him NOT to volunteer to help, I do the surreptitious 2nd clean after he's gone.  My level of clean.   It's mostly working out.

Riding the Red Roller Coaster - a bloody beat poem

True peri-menopause is upon me. It has been 15 days since my last ride on the red roller coaster.  17 before that.  23 before that.  Desperately seeking the silver lining while my body is reeking of blood...  Perhaps this portends the end?  Blessedly sooner than my worry of 60?  It does explain my cravings for salt, chocolate and fetal positioning.  I thought I was developing yet further symptoms of thyroid failure when in actuality, the cause isn't so rare.

My mother, who also began her journey towards menopause early (at the age of 37), gave me her PollyAnna take on the menstrual legend.  "If you're irregular now - it could be a good thing.  I was spotting and spotting before I had the Period from Hell.  It was the DELUGE to end all deluges but it ended my time tied to Tampax and pads with wings."

I'd been worried, see?  Figuring that the bleeding and the hormonal imbalances would leave me unbalanced, prey to the pain and inconvenience more frequently, until I could flash my senior card for discounts on Tuesdays.

"How old were you Mom?" I ask.  "When the bloody roller coaster stopped?"  And my mother, who charts time in postings from my father's career in the Air Force, easily replies: "Colorado."  Which then has her doing the mental math, equating that location with actual dates.  Her eyebrows dip down towards the bridge of her nose as she subtracts from today - or maybe adds from her birthday.  "I wasn't 50 yet," she states.  "I think 48."

48?!?  48?!?  With me turning 45 this summer, the possibility of less than half a decade of this nonsense throws the silver lining at my feet.  I thought this rapidly unravelling cycle would have me under its thumb for another 15 years.  The glimmer that this lunacy could now disappear?  It has me smiling... hugging that silver lining...

And then my mother, soon to be 68, says, "I'm still prone to the occasional hot flash."  But her PollyAnna quickly pipes up. "Winters in Canada can be rough.  Being your own mattress warmer can be a feminine perk.  And when you really think about it?  A hot flash doesn't actually hurt."

Trophy Kills

This morning, as I was stumbling to the bathroom in a near catatonic state - I noticed something in the hallway.  I couldn't quite make it out - I had yet to wipe the sleep from my eyes.  In the dawn's early light, the something was dark and lumpy.  And possibly rodent-shaped.  And I'm not talking a mouse - I'm talking teenaged-rat-size.  I took a tentative step or two closer.   Actually it wasn't that lumpy.  It was kind of uniformly... dome-shaped.  Again, being half asleep I'm wondering how the cats managed to get a small turtle  into the house.  Wait there was another one!   Another step closer...

Okay, so you know how a lot of sports bras have those padded, smoothing inserts to add support and hide your nipples?  (Cause we all know how excited gals get while exercising...)    I wash them separately in little meshed lingerie bags so that they don't disappear into the realm of lost socks.  They usually end up stacked on the shelf in the laundry room, depending how many of those sports bras I use during the week.

So what I woke to this morning?  Was a trail of sports bra insert kills from the upstairs hallway to the laundry room.  Which, when my first thought had been a trail of rodents?  Way better. 

Astronomy 101 with Rissa

We are coming home late.  The stars are brilliant in the night sky.

Rissa says, "I know Orion's Belt."

I say, "I really only know the Big Dipper.  And maybe the North Star."

"Well, that one?" Rissa says.    "That's the, um... triangle... and over there is the octagon constellation and that one... is the irregular trapezoid constellation... OH MY GOD!  That one looks like a boob!"

"Does it have a nipple in the centre?"

"It does!  And that one there looks like a dog eating a duck."

And here is a picture of Rissa pointing to the Bala sign "Everyone's been to Bala..."

It's an honour to be nominated...

I have been nominated for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award by Menopausal Mother - very kind of her indeed!  Please check out her blog! 

These awards encourage bloggers to read each other's blogs and to let the public at large know about the blogging community.

I am, in turn, nominating 15 other bloggers.  It's like a Blog Hop but with pretty pictures attached and more patting on the back!

Fresh Parsley
T-Rex Trying
Ugly Renaissance Babies
My Drunk Kitchen 
Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber
That Artist Woman
Twin Dragonfly Designs
Soul Pancake
Improv Everywhere
Daily Grommet
Girl's Gone Child
Dooce
Kate Inglis
Blog Con Queso
Fin Slippy

 

 

The rules for this award are the same:

1.  Link back to the person who nominated you.
2.  Post award image on your site.
3.  List 7 random facts about yourself.
4.  Nominate 15 other bloggers.
5.  Notify the bloggers that they have been nominated and link back to their site.

7 Random Facts about me:

1. I have a NO-FAIL sound that will make all babies laugh.
   
2. I dressed my younger brother in my old clothes and called him Cynthia when he was too young to know to stop me.
   
3.  I was a surrogate for another family.
   
4.  I have been known to eat peanut butter on hotdogs.
   
5. I lived in California for 2 years and came back beige, not tanned.
   
6.  My husband made a list of all the qualities he wanted in a woman before he met me.  I meet all those qualities except for "healthy."
   
7. I am fiercely loyal to friends and will fight dirty to protect them.

Kitty Litter Cloud

From canitbesaturdaynow.com

We have three cats.  We have three boxes of kitty litter.  You'd think that would mean that each cat would use its own box.  You would be wrong.

Two boxes are used for number one and one box is used for number two.  Which means that one box is mostly dry with stinky bits of poop and two boxes are somewhat wet with rounded balls of cat pee.  And no matter what anyone tells you?  The clumping kitty litter doesn't really stay clumped.  It's more like disintegrating kitty litter that can't really be sifted, but needs, rather, to have the top layer skimmed to take all the grody, stinky wet stuff out.

And the one kitty litter box that holds the number two?  When you sift it to gather ye olde cat poop, there is this cloud of kitty litter that then permeates the air. Which means that when one is leaning over said kitty litter box, the hazy fog of odour that you can practically taste, tends to cling to one's clothing and hair.  Which makes the cleaning of the kitty litter job even more pleasurable, on account of the fact that when you leave the basement with three tidy boxes of kitty litter left behind you, you can smell the stench of feline feces on your person. 

At first you don't notice it; you're pleased with having accomplished the kitty litter chore.  But then, as you make your way through the house... there is this niggly sensation... something on the tip of your tongue - and seeing as what's on the tip of your tongue is a cloud of kitty litter, that's when you start the dry heaving...  that's usually when you need to either have a full-on shower or at least immerse yourself in a vat of baby powder to remove said stench.  On the bright side?  The kitty litter cloud serves as a particularly pungent reminder of when you have to completely change the litter from the one box that holds the number two.

Panty Liner Soccer

I love watching the cats play.  Steve and Lola are batting something all over the kitchen floor.  They're having so much fun.  Galloping to and fro - the epitome of feline friskiness.

I throw a glance their way - can't quite make out what they're playing with.  White and... pink??  What are they playing with?  It looks like a wad of toilet paper maybe?  Nope.  A paper towel?  Noooooope.

It's a panty-liner that they've stolen from the upstairs bathroom waste basket.  It's a panty liner that Steve is now carrying in his mouth.  Thankfully, it's a panty liner that has been rolled onto itself, thereby trapping any residual... (insert inappropriately descriptive imagery here) in its centre.  And all I could think was this:  Thank God we flush tampons.

Crazy-Ass Hand Veins

When did I start having these crazy-ass hand veins?  How did that happen?!?  I'm 44 with the hands of a grandmother.  I want to raise my hands above my heart so that all the blood rushes from them and I can pretend they are still young and pretty and not all  blue and bulgy and veiny.

The last time I was under a general anesthetic?  I didn't have bulgy veins for several weeks.  It was fantastic!  My hands looked like a teenager's.  Does your blood get thinner with a general?  If I had elective surgery every little while, would my hands look younger too?  They could give me a shot of botox for my forehead lines, but do it while I was under a general and I'd wake up with a young face AND young hands. 

My hands totally give me away.  My face, from a relative distance, appears young - full of vim and vigour.  My hands?  Might be mistaken for the Evil Queen's from Disney's Snow White.  I shall endeavour to turn this into a 'glass 1/2 full' moment... If I were to be hospitalized, they'd have NO problem finding a vein for the IV.  There, see?  Always a bright side.

Although, when I'm having sex, I do try to leave my hands over my head so that David doesn't think that he's giving an octogenarian a good rogering.

Got me by the short and curlies!

Curly hair.  Not every stylist gets it.  You just can't cut curly hair the way that you cut straight hair.  It has a life of its own.  You lose length when it dries.  It SPROINGS.  My regular stylist - Amanda - the one who can cope with curly hair, is off work, expecting her third child.   She obviously doesn't understand her importance to me.  When you only get trims on a quarterly or half-yearly basis, you need someone who knows what they're doing.  She abandoned me in my hour of need.

I asked the new stylist (whom I was assured could cut curly hair) for several shorter pieces to give the top layers some bounce.   Amanda does this all the time.  This is what I ended up with:

Yes, this shank of hair is 5 inches shorter than my shortest layer.

I want Amanda to come back.  I want her to quit having kids and going on Mat Leave.  Although, by the time I go for my next trim - she'll probably be back and my hair will have grown out again.  So I will chalk this up to a learning experience.  And next time?  When I'm booking my appointment? When I ask "Can the stylist cut curly hair?"  and they say yes... I will have a follow-up question.  "REALLY?"

Where's my salt lick?

Anybody else craving salt?  I feel like I could have a freaking salt lick and it wouldn't be enough for me.  I keep making "nom, nom, nom" noises when I pass the salt aisle at the grocery store.  You know the one... chips, peanuts, popcorn, tortilla chips...

I want to take the salt shaker and shake it directly on my tongue.  Is that wrong?  When I go to our local movie theatre, they have a popcorn salt shaker on the counter.   I shake-shake-shake it into the popcorn and then jostle the popcorn so that the popcorn salt will settle and then I'll shake-shake-shake it again and jostle...  I might even do it a third time.  In addition to totally loading it up with salt, in ensures that neither David nor Rissa can eat the first 1/3 of the of popcorn.

Are my taste buds out of whack?  Am I low on sodium in my diet?  Would it be wrong to carry a small bar of salt in my purse - just for emergency purposes? Then when I get the craving, instead of eating a bag of chips or making nachos, I could just have a couple of surreptitious licks of the salt and I'd be good to go.  Less calories, more sodium.

How early is too early for Pina Coladas?

I open up the freezer, seeking concentrated orange juice.  I've got a brutal cold and my body is craving the vitamin C.  I am Stanley, looking for my Livingstone.  This is one of those real adventures into the freezer.  I lift things up.  Sole filets from 2010, Freezies from when we moved to this house, freezer-burned mixed veggies... No orange juice.  So I'm phlegmy AND there's no orange juice. 

But there are a couple of frozen pina colada mixes...  7:03 a.m.  Too early for pina coladas?  I look at the caloric value - if I don't eat any actual food for the next 12 hours, I should be okay.  Plus the rum might just take the edge off my cold.

You ever have one of those mornings??

Lie on me!!

"Wait!  Wait!" Rissa says, as I'm trying to depart her bedside.  She clutches at me.  "You can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"You have to lie on me!!"

"Because why?"

"Because then I can put my arm on my stomach and see if I can escape."

(This is one of those things that happened by accident one night and is now apparently 'the thing to do' at bedtime.)

Rissa arranges her limbs - one arm out to the side and then one lying across her stomach.  "Okay, I'm ready.  Hit me!"

I collapse my considerable torso upon her tummy. Rissa wriggles like an ineffectual escape artist for several minutes - giggling madly, snorting and gasping with the effort to dislodge her hand.  I get up.

"No!!  No!  Not yet!!  I can do this!  Let me try the other arm!!!"

"You're insane."

"Yes, but I'm uniquely insane."  She puts her other arm on her stomach.  "Lie on me!!!"

We repeat the same procedure - she almost manages to extricate the hand at one point, in spite of my nearly double body weight upon her.  She has worked herself into a near seizure doing so, which brings on another gale of giggles.  Unable to resist, I find myself snorting, almost choking on laughter.

"You are a goof," I say, kissing her goodnight. 

"I know," she says.  She snuggles down under her duvet contentedly.  "But I'm a satisfied goof."

Popcorn Apocalypse

It's afternoon snack time!!  I have just thrown in a bag of microwave popcorn when David calls to have me find a file.  I run upstairs to find it, but immediately realize the folly in leaving unattended microwave popcorn, so I run back downstairs and ask Rissa to stand guard.

"Can you please listen for the popcorn?  2 seconds between pops." 

She rolls her eyes - immediately transforming into a 20-something who knows everything.  "I know Mummy! I know how to make popcorn.  I'll get the popcorn."  She then gives a 'you scoot' gesture with her hand.

I head back upstairs.  2 minutes later I'm wondering if I'm having the beginnings of an epileptic fit.  I'm smelling smoke.  Acrid, eye-stinging, oily...

Rissa comes up the stairs...

"I might have, um...  maybe just a little...."  She collapses on the floor.  "I can't make popcorn!!!  WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!"

In my head, I'm remembering a conversation we had not three minutes before.  "Dude!  I just told you.  You were right beside the microwave!  You had to wait 45 seconds!  What happened?"

"I don't know.  I was washing up dishes and then... then... WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!  I... I... I...
I CAN'T MAKE POPCORN!!!!"

You know how long the odour of scorched popcorn permeates your house?  48 hours.  Plus, we now need a new microwave - it looks like vagrants used the inside of it to keep themselves warm before adding gasoline and allowing it to really spark up.

Rissa - in mid "WAILEY"

Thigh Sliver

"So, how was your day?" I ask Rissa.

"People looked at me weird when Nerine was holding my leg while I was feeling up my inner thigh."

Beat, two, three...  I close my eyes for a moment.   "O...kay...  Explanation...?"

"In Science we were using plasticine and toothpicks for a project, and I ended up sitting on one of the toothpicks, so I had a sliver in my jeans, so I went to the office and asked the secretary if they had tweezers in the first-aid kit, and she did, which was great, but then I couldn't reach it, which was bad, so I needed Nerine to hold my leg up so that I could feel for it... So it sort of looked like I was feeling myself up... In the office.  There were some kids in the hall who gave me some weird looks."

"I can't imagine why."

Maternal Reenactment of event